(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 first novel, The Bone Weaver’s Orchard, now available where books are sold!)
I am really digging the lineup of 3 Oysters inks, and the lovely golden yellow of Hwangtowas high on my list to try. Their colors are inspired by the cityscape of Seoul and the bottles and boxes show beautiful Korean designs.
Hwangto means yellow soil, and it refers to the rich clay earth that is believed to purify sacred places and keep bad fortune away. It's a beautiful, saturated color. It's not too pale to read and it shows some gorgeous shading. Chromatography shows it's a pretty pure goldenrod color, with some darker orange added in. It pools in a lovely tangerine color.
The ink is water and dye based and is specially formulated to be pH neutral. It is very safe for pens. I didn't see any sign of sheen on either Clairefontaine paper or the swatch card. The ink does feel a bit dry, but actually has a longer dry time of around 25 seconds. I saw no bleeding or feathering on any fountain pen friendly paper I used. The ink is not water resistant, but my drip test didn't completely wash away the lines, even when the water was wiped away.
The 38 ml bottles are interesting. They're rectangular blown glass, but one back corner of the bottle is flat, so it can be balanced on that edge. This is supposedly to make it easier to get the last drops of ink out of the bottle, even when you need both hands to hold the pen. It makes me a little nervous, though. It isn't super stable balancing on one corner.
This color fits into a noble family of golden-apricot-tangerines. It shares some similarity with Diamine Autumn Oak and Noodler's Apache Sunset, but it's different enough from all the others that you can easily justify adding it to the collection.
(JetPens provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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