Brown Ink Help!

[DrDebG]

Another nice brown is Akkerman SBRE Brown. Also, DeAtramentis has some great browns (sold at many online retailers or directly from DeAtramentis if you in Europe).  

 

Another nice brown, but not quite as red is Scribe Jamocha.  It is the remake of Parker Penman Mocha, but is much, much better behaved.  

[mouse2cat]

It's a warm toned brown 

The inks is reminds me of are:

Platinum Pigment sepia (in a very wet nib) 

De Atramentis Document Brown 

Noodlers walnut (a little yellower but still in that color range) 

[MATT_THE_GREAT88]

Yeah, so not a fan of Waterman Absolute Brown. It behaves well enough, but it's essentially a dirty red. I have Diamine Deep Dark Brown (Cult Pens Exclusive) - perhaps I'll go back to using that. 

[MATT_THE_GREAT88]

Or, actually, I think I'll ink up my pen with Diamine Merlot - for some inexplicable reason, I love that colour. 

[FLZapped]

Maybe Pelikan Brilliant Brown.

[sirgilbert357]

I can't believe no one has said J. Herbin Lie de The...

 

I'd also try Pelikan Edelstein Smoky Quartz if you can find a bottle for sale anywhere.

[dftr]

I know jherbin is a well established ink but was lie de the around in 1950?

[sirgilbert357]

21 minutes ago, dftr said:

I know jherbin is a well established ink but was lie de the around in 1950?

 

No, I'm suggesting possible modern equivalents. The thing about ink is that how it looks on the page is HIGHLY dependent on the pen/nib putting the ink down (how wet and how wide of a line) and the paper it is being put on. The best one can hope for is a near match with modern equivalents. Even then, you'd have to expect different pens to put down the same ink differently. My Pelikan M800 with a broad nib puts the same ink down much differently than my Pelikan M800 with a fine nib -- or my Diplomat with a medium nib, etc, etc...

 

Even if we found the exact ink that was used for that letter, in a perfectly preserved bottle, how it comes out of a modern pen and what kind of paper it was used with would determine how it looks...and it likely wouldn't match the letter in the picture.

 

Just setting realistic expectations, not trying to be a jerk. It would be much more satisfying and profitable (emotionally) to spend a little time with a myriad of modern brown ink samples and a couple different papers to see how close one could get to what one is seeking...

[inkstainedruth]

That's a good point.  My ink testing notebooks are actually inexpensive Piccadilly sketchbooks from Barnes and Noble and the paper is actually pretty terrible an absorbent (and sometimes does very weird things to ink colors).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[amberleadavis]

If I haven't mentioned it before, be sure to check out the brown thread in the signature below.

[Viseguy]

Noodler's inks mix well inter sese, in my (ancient) experience. A few drops of N's Red in Walnut might do the trick -- and might just make that Walnut a smidge less dry, to boot.

[inkstainedruth]

Uh, some Noodler's inks *might* mix okay -- but others?  Not so much.  

I remember the thread a few years ago where someone decided to make the "ideal" blue-black and mixed Noodler's Black with Bay State Blue.  And the results?  They weren't pretty....  The two inks barely mixed (so part of a line might be in one color and part in the other -- I don't know if adding something as an emulsifier would have helped or not).  And then the chemical reaction happened -- and the ink coagulated in the person's pen and was coming out in SOLID CHUNKS (the OP didn't put the miix in a sample vial to see what would happen -- jut mixed the two inks together and stuck them in a pen...). 

Even Noodler's says to not mix the Bay State line inks with anything except themselves....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[tzee]

I concur that it’s either Waterman’s Aztec Brown or Sheaffer’s Skrip Brown, both of which I own. Aztec Brown has a sepia look, whereas Skrip Brown has a darker hue. 

 

I don’t have any vials on hand, but I’d be happy to send you samples of both for the cost of shipping 

[Runnin_Ute]

I have the following browns 

 

KWZI Brown #4 (might be the closest I have to what you are looking for)

J Herbin Lie de The'

Diamine Saddle Brown 

 

Diamine Ancient Copper in that strange not really brown, not really orange range.......

[Viseguy]

On 4/27/2022 at 3:18 PM, inkstainedruth said:

Uh, some Noodler's inks *might* mix okay -- but others?  Not so much.  

I remember the thread a few years ago where someone decided to make the "ideal" blue-black and mixed Noodler's Black with Bay State Blue.  And the results?  They weren't pretty....  The two inks barely mixed (so part of a line might be in one color and part in the other -- I don't know if adding something as an emulsifier would have helped or not).  And then the chemical reaction happened -- and the ink coagulated in the person's pen and was coming out in SOLID CHUNKS (the OP didn't put the miix in a sample vial to see what would happen -- jut mixed the two inks together and stuck them in a pen...). 

Even Noodler's says to not mix the Bay State line inks with anything except themselves....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

My experience, admittedly ancient but still extensive, was mixing Noodler's "standard" and bulletproof/semi-bulletproof inks -- Red and Walnut fall into these categories. I never went anywhere near BSB -- seemed like too much trouble, despite the dazzling color -- and would never advise mixing a Noodler's special-formula ink with anything else.

[MATT_THE_GREAT88]

UPDATE: Hi all, thank you for your helpful replies, and sorry for not replying sooner: I'm doing a teacher training course at the moment and I've been inundated with essay submissions and observation feedback. Anyway, to the brown ink. The other week I visited Charleston farmhouse in East Sussex, the country home of Bloomsbury Group artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, for what must have been the seventh or eighth time. I knew from previous visits that in the upstairs library there were a couple of bottles of ink left out for display purposes--Quink Black, and what I thought was 30ml bottle of Pelikan 4001 Black. On this occasion, however, I was with the conservator, who (on asking) let me examine the 4001 bottle. While I did not dare undo the cap, I held the ink up to the light and saw that it was in fact brown, not black. Quentin Bell, whose brown ink this post is concerned with, was the son of Vanessa Bell, but -- more importantly for our purposes -- a key figure in the restoration of Charleston in the early 1980s. I propose that the half-used bottle of Pelikan 4001 Brown was from his own desk, given to the house as a prop, and is the very same ink used in the letters attached to my initial post. I've just received a bottle of the Pelikan 4001 Brown in the post from Cult Pens, and on comparing my written sample with Quentin's letter, think (albeit tentatively) that we have have a match. I'd love to know your opinion -- is the mystery solved? Did Quentin Bell use Pelikan 4001 Brown ink? Answers on the back of a postcard, or, failing that, in the comments section! M x

[dkatiepowellart]

Waterman's Havana or Absolute Brown may be too purple (below).

 

I've offered a couple of other browns below.