(Sarah Read is an author, editor, yarn artist, and pen/paper/ink addict. You can find more about her at her website and on Twitter. And check out her latest book, Out of Water, now available where books are sold!)
Yoseka Stationery in Brooklyn partnered with the Ink Institute in Taiwan to create Yoseka X Ink Institute - No. 01 由 Origin Ink that pays tribute to their shop's colors and founding.
This is a dye-based ink that comes in a 30ml bottle made of frosted glass. It's a really nice bottle--sturdy and easy to fill from. It costs $18, which is standard for a bottle of ink this size.
The color of this ink is fantastic. It's a deep, complex green that shows shades from pale pine, to emerald, to deep green, with a bit of red shading on the right paper. Chromatography shows a wild color split with some orange and gold, lime green, emerald, and bright cyan. Definitely in my top three most exciting chromatography tests. It shows a lot of shading, so your writing shows the full range of its complexity.
I don't have any duplicates for this color in my swab library, and it fits in nicely with my other greens, so it easily justifies its place in my ink collection.
While the ink is nicely lubricated and flows very well, it also dries quite quickly at 20 seconds. I didn't even have to use the 25-second spot I'd already written down, as there was no trace of smearing at 20. There is no sign of feathering on Rhodia paper, and the only place where the ink bled through was where I let a full-liquid drop sit until it dried. Even the ink swabs show very little show-through.
This ink has no water resistance. All traces of lines disappeared at the slightest hint of water, and where water was wiped away, the ink was completely erased.
This is, overall, a very balanced ink. It's a fun color, but calm enough to use at work. It's dark enough to read in low light, but bright enough to bring life to your writing. It has fantastic characteristics while still remaining practical. It's the first ink I've tried from the Ink Institute, but it won't be the last.
(Yoseka Stationery provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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