Tabs

14 February 2011

March Inks

First, an apology: I have been absent from these pages for quite some time. Too often we must take care of urgent matters instead of those truly important. And such was the case during this past month. Hope this hiatus in my writing is over by now.

Some days ago, however, I had the chance to take a break to attend the monthly meeting of the Wagner association. Indeed, the right place to catch up with recent news and with old pens.

Some Wagner association members brought the latest news regarding inks. Platinum seems to have finally understood the new trends of fountain pen ink business. Up to now, this Japanese brand was selling a very limited selection of inks: washable red, blue-black and black; and permanent —or pigmented— pink-rose, sepia-brown, blue and black. Some other colors are only available in cartridges to cater the market of the inexpensive range of Preppy pens.

The nine new inks. From top to bottom, Smoke Black, Aqua Blue, Aurora Blue, Silky Purple, Cyclamen Pink, Flame Red, Earth Brown, Sunny Yellow, and Leaf Green.

The new line of Platinum inks is composed by nine different colors with the generic name of “Mix Free”, in the best “Engrish” tradition. Their selling point is that these new poetically named dyes can be freely mixed among them. The ads include a chart with all the equally proportioned binary mixtures.

The mixing chart for binary compositions.

The indications included with these inks claim they are not washable, and advice against mixing them with those by other manufacturers.

The mixing kit, for sale at JPY 1200 (plus tax).

These inks come in 60 ml. inkwells at a price of JPY 1200 (plus tax) in Japan. They will be released this coming month of March.

My thanks to Wagner association members Terry and Yamada.

(Twsbi Diamond 530 – Pilot Blue-Black)

Bruno Taut
(Shinjuku, January 30th, 2011)
[labels: tinta, Platinum, evento]

4 comments:

Leigh said...

You are writing again! This is good. :) And I love these inks!

Nina Johansson said...

Interesting!
Do you know if these will be possible to use in fountain pens (as Noodler´s bulletproofs, for example)?

Bruno Taut said...

Thanks for commenting.

And my apologies for the lack of precision in my text. Somehow, I assumed we all knew this is about fountain pens, and fountain pen ink.

The answer is yes, these inks are for fountain pen. And Platinum says they are "non-washable". Now, should you want really permanent inks, pigmented Platinum or Sailor inks might be more reliable. First commentator Leigh (http://leighpod.posterous.com/)has experimented a lot with pigmented inks with beautiful results.

Hope this helps.

BT

Nina Johansson said...

Thanks for replying so fast, Bruno, yes it does help. And MY apologies for being totally clueless - I only found your blog today, and commented here without even checking any of your earlier posts, so I had to ask to make sure. (I have read a whole lot more of your posts now, though. :) )

I will most certainly try these inks out when they are released.
I live in Sweden, where the 'waterproof' fountain pen ink business is not exactly flourishing, I have to order from abroad, so I always try to find out as much as I can beforehand.

I´m dying to find some coloured inks that I can lay down some washes of watercolours on without making a mess. I´m ordering Platinum´s sepia and rose red to see what they can do.

Thanks for the link to Leigh, I have seen some of her work before, but not this particular site. A real feast for the eye!

Cheers!

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