Four Ostrich iron gall blue-black inks: A Serial Review

[PithyProlix]

What’s a ‘Serial Review’? Instead of tackling a comprehensive review of four inks in one shot with the result that I’d probably never do it, I’m creating a review with smaller, bite-size chunks. I plan to add more parts of the overall review in the future, all in this thread. In future ‘episodes’ I plan to show writing examples with fountain pens (Japanese fines, most likely, and perhaps some flex nibs) and on different papers, examine each ink’s properties (flow, feathering, sheen, etc.) with some detail, color change over time, and compare with other iron gall inks I have.

 

Episode 1: Background & First Impressions

I have several PenBBS inks and inks from the Ostrich Flower series and I've been very happy with those products, with very few exceptions. I have been super-curious about inks that are not widely available outside of China and have been exploring various brands the past few months. The latest exploration is four Ostrich blue-blacks, supposedly all iron gall, made by the Tianjin Ostrich Ink, Co., an ink maker that has been in business since 1935:

• 223 (48 ml bottle)
• 313 (55 ml bottle)
• 553 (60 ml bottle)
• 903 ‘Tianjin Museum’(60 ml bottle)

I’m not sure but I believe this may be the first non-Chinese review of these inks.

 

Background

I noticed Ostrich’s four blue-black inks online when researching their Flower series inks a couple years back. I wrote the company, asking which of their blue-blacks are iron gall. The somewhat vague initial response was, in part, “We have two types of blue black ink.” so I replied with the same question. This time, the response was “All blue black of ours are made of iron gall. Only the differences of formulations.” [sic]

 

Many of their ‘normal’, workhorse writing inks – blues, blue-blacks, blacks, reds, and a green – have been available off and on from the Lazada and Shopee shopping sites here in Thailand. Lazada and Shopee are Amazon.com-like sites, with country-specific sites in many SE Asian countries (and I see that Shopee has spread to some South American countries plus Mexico & Poland). The price has been OK – while low, still a bit expensive for workhorse Chinese inks – and it wasn’t until recently that I saw prices that were low enough that my curiosity could be satisfied with minimal guilt about spending money on ink I really don’t need. I ordered from Lazada, here. (Link is not an affiliate link - I make no money.) The lower price bottles – 223, 313, & 553 – range from about $2.50 to $3.00 USD, with a fairly similar price per ml. 903 is about $5.25 USD, with a significantly higher price per ml than the others. The total for the four bottles shipped and after a small promotional discount was the equivalent of ~$13.25 USD - approximately $0.06 USD per ml, which is quite low (and with proportionally low guilt). You can find at least some of these inks on AliExpress, but at higher prices.

 

I put in the order 7 days ago, the inks shipped from China, and they arrived today, which is a typical amount of time for goods purchased on Lazada and imported from China to arrive here. Since I live way out in the country, about as far away in Thailand from Bangkok as I possibly could, it typically takes an extra day or two.

 

Packaging

The boxes look ‘classic’, not cheap, with professional-looking labelling that is nothing like many of today’s ‘boutique’ inks. Same for the bottles, all of which are classic-looking stout, glass bottles that are unlikely to tip over. Each bottle has a single label. You might have noticed that there are emus rather than ostriches on the labelling. (While I do like the name ‘Ostrich Ink’, I think ‘Emu Ink’ has a better ring to it. That said, the Chinese word for emu is a bit drab …). 223 and 313, which have similar caps that come off with a mere 2/3 of a turn, were packaged in clear plastic, zip-lock bags inside their boxes. Packing was adequate - the boxes arrived with no damage and there was no leakage.

 

Box Front & Back

 

 

Box Top & Bottom

 

 

Box Sides

 

 

Bottle Front & Back

 

 

Bottle Side & Top

 

Odor

Note: I have a slight cold so take these with a grain of salt, please:

• 223 – To my nose it is a pungent & sweet odor very similar to the smell of Hero 232, another Chinese iron gall blue-black ink.
• 313 – Not very pungent and sweeter than 223 but not as sweet as the Rohrer & Klingner iron galls, Salix and Scabiosa, and Pelikan 4001 blue-black, another iron gall ink. (These German-brand iron gall inks all smell like some kind of sweet liqueur, at least to me.)
• 553 – Same odor as 223.
• 903 – Supposed to be “teak” scented but my nose isn’t picking that up. The least pungent and most sweet of these four Ostrich inks. But not as sweet as the Germans.

 

Enough Boring Stuff: On With the Show

I pulled out a dip pen with a “1” nib, a glass pen, a piece of Kokuyo Campus loose-leaf paper (WCN-CLL1110 – I believe this might be the old version of Kokuyo’s Sarasara, their smoother paper. It’s a fairly creamy color.), and a Rhodia pad and went to town. You can see the results below. Mobile phone photos in indirect afternoon sunlight. (I believe I must have had Hero 232 on my mind …)

 

Kokuyo

 

Rhodia

 

Color and Behavior on Paper: Initial Impressions

Notice that 223, 313, & 553 look the same! My initial impression is that there might be some differences in flow between these three and then there’s the different odor of 553 but, given that the Ostrich rep indicated to me that there are two types of blue-blacks, it very well could be that they are pretty much the same. I’m confident we will find out more about this in a future episode of this serial.

 

903 is, however, very different. While much darker it seems much more a very rich blue than a blue-black. Not a stealth black, however. Note 903’s feathering, which is unacceptable on the Rhodia paper and a little on the Kokuyo. There’s also lots of bleed-through (not shown here) and 903 has a thicker line than the others, even with the glass pen. Don’t be quick to judge - the dip pen really lays on the ink, as can the glass pen. And, on initial impression, 903 has a quick flow. Again, we’ll see more about the feathering, bleed-through, etc. in a future episode.

 

Fading

I am writing this review episode about 3 hours after I used the ink and there is very little, if any, fading of the blue color in any of the inks. I think this may be quite different than the other iron gall inks that I have experience with. Hero 232 fades towards grey much more quickly, for instance.

 

Sheen

All these inks have visible rosey gold sheen, much more prominent on the Kokuyo than Rhodia, as expected. 903 has relatively much brighter sheen, which, unlike the others, seems to tend to spread out and make more of a halo effect. All the images below are from the Kokuyo example.

 

223

 

313

553

 

903

 

[Lighting conditions changed during the last photo.]

 

Chromatography

Just ‘poor man’s’ chromatography for this pilot episode: a drop of ink on a napkin. Again, 223, 313, & 553 look the same. Also, based on this rough chromatography, I believe there is a good chance that all these inks use a single dye.

 

 

Water Solubility

Iron gall inks have a reputation for permanence. About an hour after I finished writing the Rhodia sample I got a small paintbrush, repeatedly dipping it in water to keep it wet, and I brushed the large numbers written with the dip pen and all the glass pen writing. Only a slight bit of 223, 313, & 553’s dye is moved – pretty amazing. More of 903’s dye is moved by the water but plenty of the ink remains in place.

 

 

 

Watch this thread for new Ostrich blue-black review episodes!

[yazeh]

Wow, great review

That 903 looks quite awful, hope you can redeem it with FP. The others looks quite nice and it's great that they're not pseudo IG's with minimal water resistance.

I wonder if they have turned darker or black by now. Essri turns black overnight, especially on absorbent paper....

Looking forward to the next episodes.

 

[Nick T]

Awesome review. Thank you for sourcing these inks and all your thoughtful work to bring them to the community. These inks look very interesting. Love the shading!

[mizgeorge]

Excellent review! I quite like the first three (though they do seem to be the same), and will be interested to see how they age. The last one looks like a bit of a car wreck.

[PithyProlix]

2 hours ago, yazeh said:

Wow, great review

 

Thanks! It's kind of you to say! 

 

2 hours ago, yazeh said:

I wonder if they have turned darker or black by now. Essri turns black overnight, especially on absorbent paper....

 

I'll put up a couple new pics tomorrow. 

 

2 hours ago, Nick T said:

Awesome review. Thank you for sourcing these inks and all your thoughtful work to bring them to the community.

 

Thank you very much and you are very welcome. 

 

38 minutes ago, mizgeorge said:

Excellent review!

 

Thanks much! 

 

38 minutes ago, mizgeorge said:

I quite like the first three (though they do seem to be the same), and will be interested to see how they age.

, 

To my eye the first three look like the prototypical, though elusive, blue-black color I have in my mind - well, at least now. It will be interesting to see how it evolves. 

 

38 minutes ago, mizgeorge said:

The last one looks like a bit of a car wreck.

 

While I hardly ever use something so dark, I think the color is quite nice - I can't recall a blue this dark that doesn't tend to flip over to black. Fingers crossed it will stage a comeback. If not, I might try cutting it with plain distilled water. 

[amberleadavis]

Very nice comparison.

[Dip n Scratch]

I read all of this review and avoided buying 903 'Tianjin Museum'. I have just ordered a bottle of the Ostrich 313 from Aliexpress.

Would you agree that the 903 is probably purely dye-based?

I have an assembly of various blue/black inks, that have different tones and I match them with pens based on the flow-rate.

I will hold-off on cracking a new bottle of Hero 232, (my sixth) until after the Ostrich Ink arrives.

[PithyProlix]

6 hours ago, amberleadavis said:

Very nice comparison.

 

Thanks! I hope to go beyond just a comparison and do parallel reviews of the 4 inks. 

[PithyProlix]

2 hours ago, Dip n Scratch said:

Would you agree that the 903 is probably purely dye-based?

 

All of this is just conjecture, especially since it's very early in my observation of it:

 

I believe that 903 also is iron gall based, as the Ostrich rep indirectly indicated, but that it also has a relatively high amount of dye and/or dye that somehow stays separate in the solution, at least in part. That might account for a lot of the dye staying in place when I brushed it with water as well as, perhaps, the feathering and bleed through.

 

Again, I think we will find out more. There's a bleach test for Iron gall that I plan to try. 

[PithyProlix]

Episode 1 Addendum

 

It's been about 30 hours since I wrote the samples. I don't think there has been much shift towards grey or black - regardless, all still have a strong blue component. 

 

The natural lighting conditions are very different from when I took the photos yesterday. I used my light box with LED lights for today's photo and, though the lighting is very different, you can still see that there's a lot of blue. 

 

[LizEF]

My favorite color.  Sorry, still don't have the time to dig into this review, but thank you for posting it.  Since you plan to add to it, hopefully it will still be active in a couple weeks when I have more time.  Thanks again!

[PithyProlix]

42 minutes ago, LizEF said:

My favorite color.  Sorry, still don't have the time to dig into this review, but thank you for posting it.  Since you plan to add to it, hopefully it will still be active in a couple weeks when I have more time.  Thanks again!

 

You're welcome! 

[Brontosaurus Pluto]

The 553 is a very nice color and it looks like it holds up the best against the water. Thanks for the review. Any other Ostrich inks you would recommend?

[PithyProlix]

35 minutes ago, Brontosaurus Pluto said:

Thanks for the review.

 

Of course! 

 

35 minutes ago, Brontosaurus Pluto said:

Any other Ostrich inks you would recommend?

 

The only ones I have tried are the Flower series inks. There were two editions of the series, one in 2017 & 2018, each with twelve colors in 15ml bottles, which can be gotten with or without shimmer. I got the whole 2018 series at a good price and they work well as my token shimmer inks, particularly because of the variety of colors. (I use shimmer inks in dip pens, Pilot Parallels, and cheap Chinese and Indian pens that I have put wide nibs in and can easily disassemble to clean.) I also have a few individual bottles without shimmer from both years. These are aimed at the boutique ink market and totally different from their workhorse inks. Many of the colors are soft, delicate, and feminine, if I may. Honestly, I use these inks for love letters to my wife and they work well for that.   I haven't looked lately but I think the prices on Aliexpress are likely much higher than I can get on our local sites. 

[Frank C]

Thanks for posting this. I like all esoteric inks, especially if they are iron gall. Please continue this series. 

[PithyProlix]

Just now, Frank C said:

Thanks for posting this. I like all esoteric inks, especially if they are iron gall. Please continue this series. 

 

You're welcome and I will. 

 

By the way, I noticed that Ostrich is not listed in the so-called comprehensive lists of iron gall inks, such as this one: https://gdoc.pub/doc/1po8jfMHv-Uz_ioZ9-2DQzASb1FNs-RSfmkkR4GaZ23g

 

[Frank C]

3 hours ago, PithyProlix said:

 

You're welcome and I will. 

 

By the way, I noticed that Ostrich is not listed in the so-called comprehensive lists of iron gall inks, such as this one: https://gdoc.pub/doc/1po8jfMHv-Uz_ioZ9-2DQzASb1FNs-RSfmkkR4GaZ23g

 

Is  T. MEDEIROS, the author of that compilation, someone who hangs around FPN?

[Dip n Scratch]

The Aliexpress system just gave me an estimated arrival date: In November. They gotta be joking.........

[A Smug Dill]

13 hours ago, Dip n Scratch said:

The Aliexpress system just gave me an estimated arrival date: In November. They gotta be joking.........

 

No, especially when liquid products will not be shipped internationally by AliExpress “standard shipping” method(s), but only Cainao special goods shipping or some such, presumably by sea and that's after clearing Chinese Customs that generally prohibit liquids from being sent outside of the country's borders by post or by worldwide courier services.

 

I had two orders of ink taking >90 days to actually get delivered, and that was before the pandemic made everything worse.

[yazeh]

On 8/23/2022 at 12:28 PM, PithyProlix said:

 

You're welcome and I will. 

 

By the way, I noticed that Ostrich is not listed in the so-called comprehensive lists of iron gall inks, such as this one: https://gdoc.pub/doc/1po8jfMHv-Uz_ioZ9-2DQzASb1FNs-RSfmkkR4GaZ23g

 

Send him an email. He's very personable and nice person and will add it.