In recent posts, I have been looking at my fountain pen ink accumulation. Today it is the turn of my red inks to be in the spotlight.

I like red ink but do not use it very much. As somebody who uses mostly blue or blue black inks, it came as a surprise to see quite how many different bottles of red ink I have. This is due to the temptation to try new shades of red, combined with the fact that finishing a bottle, at my rate of use, takes forever.

Every fountain pen enthusiast needs at least one bottle of red ink. A Waterman Audacious Red, for example, would probably do. You cannot go wrong with Waterman ink. Rummaging through my ink drawers, I had forgotten that I owned a bottle of Lamy red and cannot now remember buying it. Others triggered happy memories – such as buying the Beefeater Red from KWZ Inks at the London Pen Show one year, or the Pure Pens Cadwaladr Red, also at the Pen Show.

The little bottle of Campo Marzio Bordeaux was purchased at the delightful Campo Marzio shop in Piccadilly which I recently heard sadly may not be there any more.

The Montblanc Corn Poppy Red was an ink that I had heard about a lot on the internet and had to buy for myself – probably from Harrods, whilst Graf von Faber-Castell’s lovely Garnet Red came either from Harrods or Selfridges in London. I was thrilled with Garnet Red when I first discovered it. It was just what I had been looking for as it had a very pleasing orangey brown hue to it. But when using it more recently, it seemed to have lost this feature that I particularly liked and seemed to have changed from how I remembered it, to a Burgundy. I fear that I may have accidentally contaminated my bottle by filling a pen which still had traces of another ink inside. Time to buy another bottle perhaps.

However, I later purchased a bottle of Montblanc’s William Shakespeare Velvet Red, a premium ink in a 35ml bottle, which I was fortunate to bag at a London Pen Show for a mere £10.00. This also has the special orangey hints that I had liked so much in the Garnet Red.

Today, to illustrate the differences (and also the similarities, to be fair) in my red inks I have swabbed them all. This was an exercise that turned my writing desk briefly into something resembling a science lab. I swabbed the inks with cotton buds, onto a spread in a Tomoe River paper note book which I keep for ink sampling. Also for good measure I swabbed them on a SemiKolon Grand Voyage journal, which uses a cream coloured laid paper and is, I was told, related to Leuchtturm.

I used a Moonman glass nib dip pen for the writing samples, although this is not a good representation of how an ink may appear from the more controlled flow of a fountain pen nib

While gathering my red inks together for this exercise, I thought that I would include a few ink samples that I was given, such as a scented ink by Campo Marzio, given to me by a dear friend in the fountain pen community and a sample of Diamine Sunset, a well regarded ink, given to me by Jon of Pensharing. The Onoto Passion Red was one of three inks, generously given to me by James Boddy of Onoto.

Ironically, the only pen in which I have red ink at present, (out of around 18 fountain pens inked) is an Online Campus Fluffy Cats edition, in which I am using the excellent Kaweco Ruby Red in cartridges, not bottled ink. I was therefore unable to do a swab but have included it in the spread nonetheless.

I am conscious of there being a great many excellent red inks that I do not have and am yet to try, such as Sheaffer Skrip red, or Diamine Red Dragon, to name but two, but you can’t have them all. It is the wanting that has led to my present predicament and I am already at saturation point and ready for any eventuality calling for a massive amount of red ink writing.

It is not very often that I take stock of what bottled inks I have. Until now, the most recent count up was in 2020, which I posted about in The Great Bottled Ink Count on 21 November 2020. At that time I had 65 bottles. It has since grown to around 82 bottles.

Whilst it is nice to have such a variety to choose from when inking a pen, there is also a nagging feeling that I have got more than I need and will never use it all. If we chop and change inks every time we fill a pen, and have multiple pens inked at once, we very rarely manage to finish a bottle. It takes sustained use and many repeat fills, to drain a typical 50ml bottle.

When I got all my inks out recently, it was hard to make them all fit back in their drawers again. Having them stacked on top of each other in drawers means that you forget what is underneath. It leads me to fantasise about having just one ink, or say one of each main colour. How much simpler that would be. The same goes for fountain pens and notebooks. Imagine having only one pen, one ink and one notebook. No difficult decisions about which to take! You can temporarily create a such a position by going on a retreat or even just going to a coffee shop, bringing only one pen, one ink and one notebook with you.

I am unlikely to reduce my ink stash unless I have to. I am set up for life! But meanwhile it can be a fun exercise to reflect on which inks I would select, if I could keep only five of them. Currently, if it came to this, I would nominate the following.

Waterman Serenity Blue

An attractive royal blue ink, that is readily available, inexpensive, and behaves well. An excellent general purpose ink. It flows well in a pen, dries quickly, doesn’t stain and is easy to wash out of a pen. It can also help to clean a pen that has had something less well-behaved in it before. If I could keep only one ink, this would probably be it. But I would miss not having Graf von Faber-Castell Cobalt blue.

Conway Stewart Tavy, by Diamine

This is blue black ink and named after the River Tavy in the county of Devon where Conway Stewart at one time was based. I first discovered the ink at a London Pen Show and it became an instant favourite. I recall later buying a spare bottle.

But the memory plays tricks on us. When laying out all my inks on view recently, I discovered that I actually had three bottles of Tavy. I had written their dates of purchase inside the lids: October 2017, March 2019 and October 2021. All were at pen shows. But when I opened the bottles recently to check how much was left, I could not understand why they were all full, or nearly full. And then I spotted an empty Tavy ink bottle on the book shelf behind my desk, and remembered that I had been through a whole bottle. It turns out that after that first bottle of Tavy, I had bought three spare bottles, not one.

Montblanc William Shakespeare Velvet Red

This is a gorgeous orangey red, like a Venetian red and is a premium ink from Montblanc in a 35ml bottle. I was fortunate to find a bottle for £10.00 at a pen show. For a long time I used it exclusively in my Montblanc 145 Classique, although now I am a little more relaxed about letting other pens share it.

Graf von Faber-Castell, Moss Green

As green inks go, this is a dark, rich green which shades well, rather than the viridian shades of some others.

Pelikan Edelstein, Smoky Quartz

This ink was a free gift at the London Pelikan Hub gathering one year. It is a distinctive earthy light brown, very different from say the Montblanc Toffee Brown. It is described on the box as a softer ink and has a tendency to bleed through certain papers and so needs to be used with care but is a gorgeous colour and shades beautifully too.

As well as being very pleasing inks used on their own, these five also have the advantage of looking good on a page together, as if they all came from the same set.

But trying to decide which Inks I would keep and which I would part with, is surprisingly painful. I am clearly not yet ready to let go.