Ink Swatch Wednesday: Van Dieman's Encore Inks
I think I saw a mention of the new Encore series of inks from Van Dieman's in one of the many fountain pen retailer newsletters I get, so I checked them out on Vanness's site. There are 16 inks in all, and I almost got samples for all of them, but besides that being a bit of an expense, I also knew I wouldn't like all of the ink colors, so I chose 8 – Aria, Graceful Pirouette, Stage Fright, Lost Love Letters, Swan Lake, Le Grande Jette, Marriage of Figaro, and Madame Butterfly – the last 4 being shimmer inks.
The non-shimmers are very nice light and bright colors that kind of remind me of spring rather than summer, but I'll happily ink some pens with these colors next time I need to refill.
Aria, Graceful Pirouette, Stage Fright, and Lost Love Letters swatched on Tomoe River 52gsm paper with a folded nib
I think Tomoe River shows more of the chromoshading of Aria and Lost Love Letters more than Rhodia does.
The last 4 inks are shimmers: Swan Lake and Le Grande Jette with rather light base colors, and Marriage of Figaro and Madame Butterfly with pretty dark bases.
Swan Lake is a very, very light pink with a little green chromoshading that I think would be very hard to read in regular writing. The scan kind of makes the ink appear a bit darker than it is in reality.
Marriage of Figaro is a very dark blurple ink that is kind of overwhelmed by the red sheen and shimmer. It is also rather wet and viscous, so I'm not sure which of my nibs would be able to render the ink as the dark blurple it is instead of a very dark, almost black color.
Madame Butterfly has a dark purple gray base that looks pretty nice, even without the shimmer. It's possible that in a broader nib you'd be able to distinguish the base from the dark magenta shimmer and dark black (or green?) sheen.
Because scans never show shimmer that well, here are some additional pictures:
Swan Lake, Le Grande Jette, Marriage of Figaro, and Madame Butterfly swatched on Tomoe River paper
I'm really loving Van Dieman's inks. They release a lot of inks for a given theme, and their shimmer inks look really nice. I ordered a full bottle of Azure Kingfisher from Van Dieman's Wilderness series along with these ink samples, as I enjoyed its ink sample that I bought a long while ago.
Out of these Encore inks, I'd be interested in getting bottles of Aria, Lost Love Letters, Stage Fright, and Le Grande Jette. If I could find a good nib for Marriage of Figaro that would show it as a blurple rather than black, I might be nudged into getting a bottle of it, but maybe having a sample or two is good enough for trying and enjoying these other inks. There are too many inks out there to buy full bottles of all of them! 😅
Which are your favorites from this batch of inks? Comment below, or catch me on Mastodon. ✌️
