Hi All,

Before posting an ink swatch off to Phil and Diamine (per this thread), it occurred to me that I ought to scan and post a portion of it.

Herewith: a side-by-side scan of the legendary Skrip Persian Rose and one of the current inks intended to emulate it: Private Reserve Arabian Rose. On my monitor the colors are dead on, but, of course, your mileage may vary.

Clearly, the Arabian Rose is a very different color from the Persian Rose. Bear in mind, though, that there is apparently some controversy about the "true" color of the Skrip - surviving samples seem to vary somewhat. If that variation is a function of batch-to-batch inconsistencies, then the Private Reserve ink may very well be a perfect match for some other, darker bottle of the Skrip. On the other hand, if the variation is a function of deterioration over time, then this particular bottle of Persian Rose may be as good as it gets: when I received it, the inner paper liner had actually adhered itself to the glass mouth, creating an airtight seal.

To my eye, the biggest single difference - apart from the dissimilarity in color - is the clarity and "translucency" of the Skrip, as against the opacity of the Private Reserve.

Click to view attachment


Please note that this image is an amalgam of two portions of a single scan; that is to say, irrelevant sections of the scan were deleted. It's not a patchwork of two separate scans. (The paper is Black n' Red; the pen is a NOS reservoir dip pen.)

Sorry that I don't have bottles of Shah's Rose and Ottoman Rose available to complete the head-to-head comparison. I no longer use Noodler's, so I will have to leave that endeavor to some other enterprising soul.

Cheers,

Jon

Thank you for this scan of such a rare color -- and a lovely one. The sample in my copy of Greg Clark's Ink Sampler is completely different, although also not like Arabian Rose. I think your scan shows the translucency you speak of very well.

That's interesting - and really nice to have.

The only other example of genuine Persian Rose that I have seen was a very dark aubergine colour.

If my screen colours are accurate (and the PR Arabian Rose doesn't look too far off my bottle), I'd say that the existing Diamine Crimson is almost a dead ringer for the Skrip Persian Rose. Certainly very close.

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for your post. Very interesting - I've seen other references to Persian Rose as a dark aubergine. And I've noted that Michael Richter's review of Caran d'Ache Storm calls that purple/burgundy shade "the closest modern match" for the Skrip - also supporting the aubergine characterization.

Maybe the Skrip really was a horribly unstable brew, and there's no single "true" color. I do have to say, though, that I've always had trouble reconciling the ink's name with an aubergine color. I mean, with apologies to Gertrude Stein, a rose is a rose is a rose...but a rose is not an eggplant. Then too, I've seen print ads from the Persian Rose era featuring little dots representing all of the available Skrip colors, and I seem to recall that there was a "rose" among them; and I can't imagine what other Skrip color that could have been. So I tend to think, maybe self-servingly, that my bottle represents a reasonably accurate color sample.

In any event: if Persian Rose were nothing more than an interesting enigma, then this would all be of academic interest only. But the color - this color, at least - is truly beautiful. So I continue to hope that some ink company can do a better job of recreating it (hence my letter to Diamine).

Cheers,

Jon

I have a sample of Diamine Crimson & a bottle of Herbin Rose Cyclamen, another case of almost dead ringers for one another.

In each of my 2 copies of Greg Clark's Ink Sampler, Persian Rose looks like a deep purplish burgundy, with one swatch having a tiny greyish tone to it. The color from Jon's bottle certainly looks more like what I envision as rose!

Best, Ann

You can also add YOL Claret to the list! It is very similar to the Diamine Crimson - the difference is very slight, in that the Crimson has a slightly more blueish tone to it.

On the Persian Rose matter: My own guess is that the Noodlers Ottoman Rose may be the closest to what it looked like originally. When I've seen pots and the like described as "Persian Rose" on ebay and the internet, they have tended to be a dark, slightly pinkish red, which is what Ottoman Rose is. There may be some support for this theory in that Sanford's were making a ink called "Dubonnet Red" at around the same time as Skrip PR. From what I can tell, this was also fairly similar to the Ottoman Rose. Since ink manufacturers back then often had very similar colour ranges, this could suggest that they were similar.

Incidentally, the people at Private Reserve told me a while back that their Arabian Rose was actually based on a sample of the genuine Persian Rose.