Ink Swatch Wednesday: Birmingham Pen Co Weathered Papyrus

I recently bought a couple inks from Birmingham Pen Company because of their latest release called Cold Snap. As an addition to that purchase, Weathered Papyrus of course caught my eye since it's a brown ink (😆). Initial bottles of Cold Snap ended up having an issue – the resulting ink was green, instead of a cool blue shade – so I won't write about it until the replacement ink arrives. But in the meantime, Weathered Papyrus has impressed me.

If I were more on top of things, I'd post a short video of how the ink goes on and then dries, because like some inks, it goes on a bit different from how it ultimately dries on the paper. It goes on as a warmer brown that kind of reminds me of some shades of lighter brown leather, but then dries to a cooler brown that resembles the color of aged paper as its name suggests.

The scan may not be entirely accurate, but it's as close as I could get it. Interesting browns tend not to scan that well, since the scanner ends up going too red or yellow.

You'd think that with how many brown inks I have, that this might be a dupe of several in my collection, but I was surprised to see I only had three that looked similar, with one of them somewhat of a stretch:

To my eye, Platinum Khaki Black seems the closest, despite the scan appearing warmer. The shade is similar, but the ink is a little more opaque.

Colorverse Arrokoth is similar in level of saturation and shading, but its scan looks a bit more milk chocolatey (in real life, it's a tad less warm/red than the scan).

And Anderillium Atlas Moth Brown reminds me of Weathered Papyrus in color, but it's much more saturated/opaque.

If you have an ink you think might be a good dupe, please let me know!

Birmingham Pen Company makes a lot of really interesting inks, but they don't keep certain inks around for very long, so if you like ones that are not in their "standard" library, the safe bet is to pick up a bottle when you can. I hesitate to recommend stuff like this, since it kind of perpetuates the FOMO that is rife within the fountain pen retail space. But I also can't deny that Birmingham Pen Company makes good stuff. It's up to you to decide whether the "limited edition" quality of some of their inks is worth purchasing or not. I will say that I wish they a) provided samples of their inks, and b) sold smaller bottles of ink. Their standard bottle size is 50 mLs, which is quite a lot.

As many of us know, it can be easy for ink libraries to get out of hand, quickly containing more ink than we could finish in a lifetime by ourselves. But I guess if the ink you happen to buy from Birmingham never gets remade, perhaps a 50 mL bottle will last you long enough so that you don't feel the need to buy more and hoard... 🤷‍♀️ To help keep the FOMO at bay, remember that there will (almost) always be another ink or pen! 😅

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