Teranishi Guitar - Modern Red

July 13, 2024

Teranishi Guitar – Modern Red

Teranishi Chemical Industries – based in Osaka, Japan – was founded during the Taisho period around 1916, and got quite some fame as one of the earlier ink producers in Japan.

For their 105th anniversary, the company introduced some stylish retro-inks, hinting at this exciting start-up period. The inks come in beautiful – almost art deco – boxes, containing a nice-looking 40ml bottle of ink. And please take a close look at the ink’s bottle cap: it’s marked with Teranishi’s original “Gold Star Guitar” brand, featuring a queen strumming a guitar … weird!

I discovered the Teranishi inks in 2022, and have enjoyed them a lot. These inks are typically well saturated, but at the same time manage to look muted and toned-down – and the subject of this review is no exception. Modern Red is a beautiful cardinal red and as such a bit darker than your standard middle red. In my opinion also less pushy … looking at a full page of red can be difficult on the eyes, not so with this Modern Red. This ink has toned down the brightness a full notch, making it much more suitable as a writing ink. What I also like about this Teranishi ink is that it changes its looks depending on the paper used: from dark cardinal red to more orange-brown tones. Nice complexity that adds to the character of this ink.

Modern Red is well-saturated, and writes with a nice wet and smooth flow. The ink works effortlessly with any pen and paper combination that I tried. Drying times are decent, but depend greatly on the hardness of the paper used. On smooth coated paper, you consistently get medium-long drying times in the 20-25 second range. On absorbent paper, the ink gets soaked into the fibers almost instantly with drying times in the 5 second range. With cheap copy paper this translates to a fair amount of bleed-through.

To illustrate the colour span of this Teranishi ink, I did a swab on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper, where I really saturated portions of the paper with ink. Modern Red has a medium colour span, ranging from a soft pastel-like red to the darker cardinal red. The contrast range is not too extreme though and translates to nice and subtle shading. Not a heavy shader, but it’s definitely there and looks aesthetically pleasing.

On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – the ink shows lots of smearing. The text itself remains perfectly readable, but you get red all over the page. Something to be aware of. Water resistance is largely absent. From the water test at the end of this review, you’d deduce that all writing is lost. Surprisingly, that is not the case. All of that red colour simply disappears, but a grey ghost of your writing is left behind, which is just readable enough to reconstruct your writing. This is also evident from the chromatography: The red dyes get flushed away by water, while a grey base colour remains firmly attached to the paper. I wouldn’t call this disaster-proof, but it gives some peace of mind that reconstruction is possible.

I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On each scrap 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 a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen
The name of the paper used, written with a B-nib Safari
A small text sample, written with the M-nib Safari
Source of the quote, written with a wet F-nib Pelikan
Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari)

The multi-paper writing test shows that Teranishi Modern Red works well with both white and cream paper. There is a tiny amount of feathering on low-quality paper but nothing too serious: even Moleskine paper worked quite well. This ink works surprisingly well on crappy paper. Just be aware that the back-side of the paper becomes unusable, due to a fair amount of bleed-through. Overall, a technically solid ink – what I’ve come to expect from Teranishi.

I used photos for the writing samples above to get the most accurate results. For completeness, I also add a scan of some writing samples. Beware that both photos and scan are slightly off – the ink’s colour looks a bit too brown, and shows more red when viewed by the naked eye. The saturation and title pics above are closest to the true colour. So use the sample text pics primarily to get a feel of the ink across a range of writing papers.

Below you’ll find some zoomed-in parts of writing samples. On HP print paper, there’s a tiny amount of feathering with the bold nib – just noticeable enough to be annoying. With F and M nibs, there’s still some feathering present, but only if you look really close. If you restrict yourself to EF/F nibs on low-quality paper, this Modern Red will do just fine.

Writing with different nib sizes
The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing (written on Rhodia N°16 80 gsm paper). All samples were written with a Lamy Safari. I also added a couple of visiting pens: a Pelikan with F-nib, a fairly dry Kaweco Special with M-nib, and a wet-writing Pilot Capless with M-nib. This Teranishi Modern Red looks good in all nib sizes. You’ll also notice a substantial difference between wet and dry writers: the wetter Pelikan and Pilot pens write a much darker saturated red. So you can tune this ink to your liking by adjusting your pen. Nice!

Related inks
To compare Teranishi Modern Red 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. As you can see, there are lots of alternatives in this colour range: Diamine Blood Orange and Carnival are fairly close matches for Modern Red.

Inkxperiment – architexture “Lighthouse”
As a personal challenge, I try to create interesting drawings using only the ink I am reviewing. A fun endeavour that’s always good for a couple of hours tinkering around with the ink. I simply love experimenting with inks to see how they behave in a more artistic context. Red inks have always been a challenge for me when creating an inkxperiment, and this Modern Red was no exception.

I’m a great fan of Jim Butcher’s writing – especially his Harry Dresden novels. The author has now started a steampunk series “The Cinder Spires”, which I’m thoroughly enjoying. So I decided to try my hand at some architexture drawings with a steampunk feel. When the airships move to home base, it’s always good to have a guiding light. That’s where the lighthouse comes in. Its beacon shows the safest path to the docking bay even in the darkest hours.

I started with an A4 piece of cardboard paper and painted in the foreground and lighthouse contours with water-diluted ink. Immediately things went wrong… red inks don’t dilute easily, and the ink was still way too dark. The lighthouse should have been a much lighter rose-red. Instead of jumping out of the window, I decided to own my mistake and follow through with the drawing. I used a glass dip pen and fountain pen to draw the lighthouse interior, and the side schematic of the beacon mechanism. I finished the drawing by adding the houses in the foreground, and the square imprints the airship sailors left with their beer glasses. I like the concept of this drawing, but not its execution. Well… lesson learned for next time.

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.

In order to save the lighthouse drawing, some heavy duty digital manipulation is required. I started by using a filter that really stretched the contrast range. This worked wonders, and lifted the technical interior details from the too-dark background in the original drawing. I next used a vintage filter to give the drawing a more aged and steampunk feel. The resulting image fits my original intention nicely… and saves the inkxperiment from disaster 😉

Conclusion
Teranishi Modern Red is a fairly saturated cardinal red, that writes wet and smooth. The ink works well with any pen/nib/paper combination. A decent ink … nothing wrong with it. But there are so many other reds in this colour range. If you already have some, there is not enough extra here to jusitify getting this Teranishi ink. Good but not exceptional.

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

Backside of writing samples on different paper types

July 13, 2024

Great review, as always... also as anticipated. Great is also the red itself (IMO). How variable, how flexible. Here a bright red, there a subtle red. Some plum, some orange. Do I see blood? Variety is the spice of life. "Modern" seems to be a good term. "Cardinal" may be the very best nomination.

July 13, 2024

3 hours ago, namrehsnoom said:

This ink has toned down the brightness a full notch, making it much more suitable as a writing ink. What I also like about this Teranishi ink is that it changes its looks depending on the paper used: from dark cardinal red to more orange-brown tones. Nice complexity that adds to the character of this ink.

Sold! But alas, none of the places that offer samples sell this brand. Well, who knows, maybe in three years they will... Meanwhile, onto the list it has gone.

Really like how this ink looks, especially on Paperblanks and from that wet Pelikan nib!

And wow! You really outdid yourself with this architexture! Absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for the art, a fabulous review, and picking this wonderful ink!

July 13, 2024

Have wanted to get these inks the moment I saw them!! Very very cool review @namrehsnoom. I'd say from here that cardinal red gets a vote from me.

I do find that good reds are hard to come by. I do like them though, with or without sheen.

Wild that on Graphilo it looks like dried blood, big difference between that paper and the others.

Thank you!

July 13, 2024

Thanks @namrehsnoom for another glorious ink review :thumbup:

I really like this colour. It's elegant, up to B nibs.

I also love the "imperfect" art work.

I believe I said it another time. If you want to apply different shades of a colour, get yourself a water brush.

When you apply the brush to the nib/feed, you can control the the saturation. And if it's too saturated you can simply squeeze the water brush to dilute the ink.

When I want to really have saturated ink strokes, I often time, dip the brush directly in the convertor.

Obviously it always helps to have a paper towel right beside you and using water colour/ mix media papers. Either to clean/ desaturated the ink, or to wipe up the mess.

Looking forward to your next review