TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hiroshige ruri

[namrehsnoom]

TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hiroshige ruri

TACCIA is a Japanese stationery company, that - as far as I know - is now part of the Nakabayashi group. They offer high-quality fountain pens, inks, pen-rolls, notebooks, etc. More specifically, TACCIA produce a line of inks, inspired by the unique look of Ukiyo-e prints from Japan’s Edo period (1603-1867). Ukiyo-e paintings are woodblock prints where the work of an artist is carved into wood by woodworkers, and pressed onto paper by printers. This allows the production of multiple prints of an artwork with some different colours as well.

 

In this review, the spotlight shines on ruri, a colour that I can only describe as a dark and saturated light-blue 😉. I know – that doesn’t make much sense, but that’s what I feel you get. The ink has the softness, fragility, tenderness of a light-blue – but at the same time it is quite saturated and can get fairly dark. A really nice ink colour with a lot of depth to it.

The ink’s inspiration comes from a woodprint design by the Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige, more specifically from his first print “Sunny Morning after Snow at Nihonbashi Bridge” (1856) in the “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo” series. The ink’s colour is derived from the different shades of blue appearing in the river. The print has a limited palette of bright blues and soft red, grey and brown. Particularly striking is the vivid ruri blue of the river and the sky, for which Hiroshige took advantage of the new European pigment Prussian blue. Although far from realistic, the colours evoke the crisp light of a bright winter’s morning.

 

Ruri is an inspired vivid blue, wet and saturated, and with a complexity of dyes that really add depth to the colour. The ink shows little shading with fine nibs, but with M-nibs and above the shading is really prominent while still being aestetically pleasing. The darker parts of the ink show an impressive and beautiful red-purple sheen on the right type of paper (more specifically Japanese papers like Tomoe River, Kobeha GRAPHILO, Yamamoto bank paper). The ink writes really wet though, a bit too much for me in wet & broad-nibbed pens. The sweet spot for this ink is in the M-B-1.1 range with a dry-writing pen: great shading, and the vivid saturated blue looks particularly lovely.

The ink comes in a 40 ml bottle, that is packaged in a beautiful box showing the corresponding Ukiyo-e painting. Lovely packaging for an excellent ink.

 

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 a strip of 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. TACCIA ruri has a narrow dynamic range, with limited contrast between the light and darker parts. This translates to very gently but still prominently visible shading. With wet pens, the increased saturation tends to burn away most of the shading though. Dry writers lean towards the left side of the saturation range, showing that nicely saturated light-blue with excellent shading.

 

The chromatography shows the complex nature of this ink: ruri mixes sky-blue and rose-pink dyes that magically combine to give us that elegant vivid blue. Lovely stuff! The bottom part of the chroma shows that most of the dyes detach from the paper when coming into contact with water. Not a water-resistant ink, as is confirmed by the water test at the end of this 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, written with a B-nib Platinum 3775 Century
• Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari)

This vivid and well-saturated blue ink can handle both white and cream-coloured paper. For me, it looks best on pure white paper, like the Clairefontaine Triomphe. The ink writes really wet, and as such requires high-quality paper. With cheap & absorbent paper, you get quite a bit of see-through and bleed-through. Surprisingly for such a wet-writing ink, drying times are fairly short with the M-nib Lamy Safari: 10-15 seconds on most paper types, climbing to 20-25 seconds for the hard-surface high-sheen papers. Technically, the ink is really good too: on crappy paper, you get only the tiniest amount of feathering – fairly impressive for such a wet ink. Even on Moleskine, the results are surprisingly good.

 

For the sake of completeness, I also add a photo of text written on a number of different papers.

 

Writing with different nib sizes
The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. The ink’s saturation makes for a good contrast with the paper across all nib sizes. Shading is soft & gentle, almost undetectable in the finer nibs, but becoming truly stunning with the M-B-1.1 nibs. It really adds to the character of your writing. Beware that wet pens will shift the ink to the saturated portion of its dynamic range, where the shading is mostly burned away. The sweet spot for this ink are dry writers combined with broader nibs – great colour and lovely shading!

 

Related inks
To compare ruri 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. Diamine Blue Velvet comes really close colour-wise, but lacks a bit of the depth & complexity that makes this ruri such a great-looking blue. 

 

Inkxperiment – Dark Side of the Moon
With every review, I try to create an interesting drawing using only the ink I am reviewing. These small monochromatic paintings are an excellent way to show the colour-range nuances that are hidden within the ink. And I totally enjoy the fun couple of hours these inkxperiments provide me.

A couple of days ago, I had my favourite rock band’s album on the speakers: “Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd. The first album I bought as a teenager, and still a musical highlight. I realized that this album got published in 1973 – making it 50 years old today. Unbelievable! The music sounds as fresh, compelling and mind-bending today as it did all these years ago. This is truly an all-time classic! No need to look any further for inspiration!

 

For this drawing, I started with a piece of A4 HP photo paper. I started by taping out the iconic prism of the album’s cover art with washi tape. Next I drew the background, applying water-diluted ink through a kitchen towel. After removing the washi tape, I used a plastic card dipped in pure ink to draw the prism and the rays of light passing through it. I then added the psychedelic sound waves travelling across the soundscape. As a final touch, I added the iconic heartbeat from the intro/outro title tracks. The end result is my tribute to the 50th anniversary of this timeless classic.

 

Inkxpired – computational art
I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper, and have added another layer as part of the hobby. I’m exploring computational art, inspired by the ink drawings I do during ink reviews. Another fun offshoot of the hobby… and all that starting with a few drops of dye-coloured water on paper.

 

For this computational derivation, I started with applying a negative filter to the original drawing. I then used an urban art filter to lift out the main topic (prism and heartbeats) and place them on a gritty grey & black background. Next I used an ‘antique photo paper’ filter to age the colours and arrive at a more monochromatic look. I really like the end result that keeps the main topic of the painting, and makes for a great neutral-looking computer screen background.

 

Conclusion
TACCIA Ukiyo-e Hiroshige ruri is a great-looking blue – vivid & saturated, while still keeping a soft, fragile and light apperarance with great depth & complexity. I really like the colour of this one, especially with what I consider its sweet spot: a dry writer with a broader nib, while using high-quality pure white paper. A really nice ink from TACCIA’s ink brewers. Recommended.

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

 

Back-side of writing samples on different paper types

 

 

[yazeh]

Another excellent review @namrehsnoom 

I had a chuckle when reading "dark and saturated light-blue" and loved how you managed to do a Pink Floyd inspired Dark side of the blue. 😛

This look like a delightful blue for once and perfect candidate for your famous ink shoot outs  looking forward to it!

 

[LizEF]

Fabulous!  I recognized Pink Floyd before even reading the text describing the image.  Thank you, @namrehsnoom for a trip through this ink!  (Can't say I like the color, but I always enjoy your reviews.)

[Lithium466]

Thank you for that beautiful review...and darn it now I need some of that blue in my life 🙃

[inkstainedruth]

@namrehsnoom Am I seeing some red sheen in some of the images?  Oh and thanks as usual for the comprehensive review, but my wallet does NOT thank you at all....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[lgsoltek]

This is gorgeous. I particularly like how it matches perfectly the vibrant shades of blue on the artwork that inspired this ink colour. I'm sure I can find several very similar colours in my ink collection, but I still want a bottle.

[Karmachanic]

On 7/23/2023 at 2:04 AM, lgsoltek said:

I still want a bottle.

 

Don't hold back.  And let us know how it goes

[AndyYNWA]

Even though I have blue inks in this type of shade, it's really tempting...

Some of the other Taccia Ukiyo-e inks also look quite interesting. I might have to try some of them. The price is slightly on the hefty side though...😬 

[InesF]

Thank you @namrehsnoom for the comprehensive ink review. I'm always impressed by the effort you take to present an ink, to demonstrate its behaviour on different papers and to compare it with other inks!  As always, your graphical representation is inspiring and fascinating. 👌

 

Surprisingly, the ink contains a lot of pink-purple dye although it looks like a true Prussian Blue in your scans. I may love Hiroshige ruri if I would not know and use Hokusai koiai already - another Taccia ink I love thanks to your inspiring review.