TAG Kyoto - kyo-iro Stone Road of Gion

[namrehsnoom]

TAG Kyoto – kyo-iro Stone Road of Gion

 

TAG is a stationery shop in Kyoto (Japan) that produces some interesting soft watercolour-style inks. With the kyo-iro series they produce a line of inks that that are inspired by the city’s many beautiful and historic sights. Each of these inks is dedicated to a specific town in the Kyoto area. The inks come in 40 ml bottles, packaged in luxurious thick paper with a texture that feels like heavy watercolour paper.

 

In this review the center stage is taken by Stone Road of Gion. The cool grey-brown colour of this ink is a reference to the stone-paved streets of Kyoto’s Gion district, where it’s still possible to glimpse a traditional geisha-san with her apprentice. 

This ink’s colour ranges from a soft almost sepia-brown to a a much darker grey-brown. A cool-toned brown that I like best in its most saturated grey-brown incarnation – wet pens are your friend here. Personally, I would have preferred that the ink would be a tad darker-looking, with more of that lovely grey-brown at the lighter side of the spectrum.

 

This ink is a heavy shader, with quite some contrast between light and darker parts. Shading looks best with drier pens, where contrast is more subtle. With wet pens the shading looks harsher, due to the increased contrast between the sepia-brown light parts and the much darker grey-brown. For optimal results, you need to hunt a bit for the right pen/nib combination. In my case, the ink looks great with my Pelikan M405 Tortoise Brown with a F cursive italic nib. This combination delivered the right combination to get both good saturation and not-too-harsh shading.

Be aware that Stone Road of Gion is a very dry ink. It’s not a pleasant experience when using dry-writing pens or EF nibs – it feels like you’re fighting the paper. Stick to wet pens with this one! 

 

To show you the impact of saturation on the ink’s look & feel on paper, I made some scribbles where I really saturated portions of the 52 gsm Tomoe River paper with ink. This gives you a good idea of what the ink is capable of in terms of colour range. Stone Road of Gion has a fairly wide colour span, which translates to strong shading that can sometimes be a bit harsh. I personally prefer my shading to be soft & delicate, so with this ink I had to hunt for the right pen/nib combination.

 

The ink’s chromatography clearly shows the grey undertones in the ink, with hints of pink and orange in the mix. It’s also clear that most colour dissipates with water – this is not a water-resistant ink, which is confirmed by the water test at the end of the review. 

 

I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On every small band of paper I show you:

• An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip
• 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation
• An ink scribble made with an M-nib Lamy Safari
• The name of the paper used, written with a B-nib Lamy Safari
• A small text sample, written with the M-nib Safari
• Source of the quote, with a Platinum 3776 Century with B-nib
• Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari)

The ink looks good on all papers, but is really at its best on off-white paper (not yet creamy, but moving in that direction). I noticed a tiny amount of feathering on lower-quality papers (mostly Moleskine and the printing paper in my test set). Also a small amount of bleed-through on the lower quality paper. Overall, a nice-looking cool brown, but personally I would have preferred an even darker brown colour. 

 

 

Since scans alone are not always enough to give you a complete picture of the ink, I also provide you with a few photos for an alternative look at Stone Road of Gion. In this case, the photos work best to represent the ink – in the scans, the contrast in the ink’s shading is too exaggerated.

 

 

Writing with different nib sizes
The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. Stone Road of Gion writes with good contrast in all nib sizes, but feels very dry in the EF/F nibs (with the Lamy Safari). Writing quality improves substantially with wet pens. With wet-writing pens, the ink gets more saturated and moves to much darker grey-brown tones. In my opinion, that’s the sweet spot for this ink. Combine it with an off-white paper, and it just looks great.

 

Related inks
To compare this kyo-iro brown with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. My personal preference would be an ink that looks like iroshizuku yama-guri at the low saturation point, and Stone Road of Gion at high saturation. 

 

Inkxperiment – walking home
I love to experiment with my inks in an artistic context. With these inkxperiments, I limit myself to the single ink I’m reviewing, allowing me to explore all of its colour range nuances. I love this part of the review: experimenting with different techniques, and trying to coax many different shades of colour from the single bottle. 

 

For this drawing, I used an A4-sized piece of HP photo paper. I wanted to do a landscape with a dark sky, but the clouds turned out to be way too dark and weird-shaped. Instead of starting over, I tried to salvage the drawing, turning the clouds into trees, and adding the town on the horizon line. I finally added the walking people as a foreground subject. The trees lacked life, so I sprinkled bleach on top of them to add some sparkle (a bit too much, to be honest – at the right side the bleach burned away too much of the ink). Nevertheless, the end result is not too bad for a salvage operation – I’m quite satisfied with it. The picture definitely gives you an idea of the many colour tones you can extract from this kyo-iro ink.

 

Conclusion
TAG Kyoto kyo-iro Stone Road of Gion is a cool-toned grey-brown with a wide contrast range. A heavy shader that looks best in wet pens and on off-white paper. The ink is really dry, and you need to hunt for the right pen/nib combination with this one. A nice enough ink, but not one that really wow-ed me.

 
Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib

 

Back-side of writing samples on different paper types
 

 

[lapis]

I love it! The ink and your review, too, of course. Sort of a grey-bronze, or bronze-grey... who cares. I'd say we can all do a lot with that ink!!!

[Audrey T]

Very interesting, thank you -- I even thought the mistakes were fun and interesting!

[yazeh]

Amazing review, beautiful sketch. Funnily enough the colour reminds me of House Divided.  🙏

[mizgeorge]

Wonderful review as always @namrehsnoom - thank you so much. I'm especially impressed at the 'save' on the inkxperiment, which is brilliant!

 

This is a marmite ink for me - I love the colour - it's not quite as lovely as my beloved MB Swan Illusion, but it's right up there. Sadly, the dryness is tricky, and it's one that doesn't respond well to wettening agents - the colour seems to lose it's lovely 'dustiness'. As a result, I tend to use it more for drawing or with dip nibs than in pens, and I'm not sure I'll replace my bottle when it's finished. Which is a shame, as these are generally a range I like enormously.

[LizEF]

Thanks again, @namrehsnoom!   I like what I see in the pictures - especially on Paperblanks.  Now I may need to try this ink out, in one of my Paperblanks journals and my Pelikan m405 (F that writes like an M) - it looks sort of vintage-y and I find browns calming.  Your image (and its title) gives the same sort of feel.

[axialix]

Excellent review! I like this color. If it weren't so dry I'd add it to my wish list. Great photos though, and I love that bleach effect in the trees.

[AmandaW]

Thankyou for the warning about the dryness. I do like the colour and have been tempted by it. I do not enjoy dry inks.

[PithyProlix]

Thanks for another wonderful review. I'm sorry that the ink was so dry. 

 

Stone Road is a favorite and I use it a lot. The bottle I have, while not as wet and lubricated as, say, Ochiguriiro, is not overly dry at all - and I have tried it in pens that are on the dry side. I'd call my bottle just left of middle of the road wrt dryness/wetness and lubrication - maybe just slightly dry and slightly less lubricated than average (or, at least, my conception of 'average'). For me, that's a sweet spot. It currently happily lives in a vintage Pilot Elite pocket pen and a Sailor 1911/Profit Standard, both with soft fine nibs, and neither could be characterized as wet pens. 

[JulieParadise]

Thank you @namrehsnoom for this great review! After the shoot-out between Kyo-Iro Stone Road of Gion and Montblanc Swan Illusion Plume www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/338196-ink-shoot-out-kyo-iro-stone-road-of-gion-vs-mont-blanc-swan-illusion-plume I am very happy to see you dug out this beautiful Kyo-Iro brown again to give it a separate review.

[PithyProlix]

6 minutes ago, JulieParadise said:

Thank you @namrehsnoom for this great review! After the shoot-out between Kyo-Iro Stone Road of Gion and Montblanc Swan Illusion Plume www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/338196-ink-shoot-out-kyo-iro-stone-road-of-gion-vs-mont-blanc-swan-illusion-plume I am very happy to see you dug out this beautiful Kyo-Iro brown again to give it a separate review.

 

A comparison in which Stone Road was found to be the wetter ink... 🤔

 

[JulieParadise]

2 minutes ago, PithyProlix said:

 

A comparison in which Stone Road was found to be the wetter ink... 🤔

 

Yep, and rightly so, I'd say. Stone Road is not a wet ink, but I also found my sample of Swan Illusion to be even drier in several pens.

[Dione]

This ink and several others from this manufacturer seem to benefit from the addition of a drop of White Lightning. Thank you for the very good review.

[namrehsnoom]

9 hours ago, PithyProlix said:

 

A comparison in which Stone Road was found to be the wetter ink... 🤔

 

Yup… with these two dry inks side-2-side, the Stone Road is the wetter one. Seen in isolation, I found it quite dry… as in: not really enjoyable in a dry pen like the Lamy Safari. But nothing that couldn’t be solved by choosing another pen: I really enjoy it in my Pelikan with F cursive italic nib, where it just looks beautiful (also more saturated, showing that lovely grey-brown colour).