Bungubox Ink of Witch
Posted by Lois Ho on
In Japan, it seems most fountain pen shops have custom fountain pen inks made by Sailor. This is one from the highly sought after “BunguBox” range. BunguBox is a store in Hamamatsu, Japan, which is roughly halfway between Osaka and Tokyo on the Shinkansen. They have also recently opened a store in Omotesando, which I visited while I was in Japan not long ago.
Unique, custom Sailor inks have always been popular, due to their rareness and uniqueness of their colours – it really is amazing how many different ink colours one single company can manage to produce. BunguBox inks have been popular mostly due to their unique colour range and also because they are so difficult to obtain – they are rumoured to produce each colour only once a year.
I purchased this version – Ink of Witch online, before I ever visited Japan because I was on the hunt for a work appropriate ink that was not blue or black. My previous work place was reasonably conservative and so I wanted something that was inconspicuous but still had a bit of colour to it to keep it interesting for me.
This ink is an extremely dark purple, which borders on black. Looking at it from any distance other than close up, it appears black to all, but when you get closer, you realise that it is an extremely dark, eggplant purple. It stays that way for all of the nibs I tried – wet, dry, thin, wide, so its not going to let you down in a traditional board meeting by leaning too bright (unless like me, you have put it in a demonstrator and allowed the ink to pool up, leaving a purple tinge on the plastic).
Given how saturated this ink is, there’s very little shading to speak of. There is a little bit of gold sheening, similar to what you would see in Dark Lilac, but not so apparent that it takes over the colour. Like I said, conservative with a bit of interest for the user.
Despite the saturation and pigmentation in this ink, I found it reasonably easy to clean out and there was little staining in my TWSBI, which I’m happy with. I didn’t time how long it took for the ink to dry but it seemed reasonable for such a dark ink, which can struggle to dry even after a long time. It also behaved well in all of the papers I tested (note – the blobs in the Rhodia Dot pad review is the fault of the nib, not the ink itself. The nib was doing a strange burping thing at the time).
I’ve been really impressed with all of the inks I’ve tried from the Bungubox range. I typically prefer brighter or lighter purple inks now, but for a dark moody option, this one is perfect.
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