Carter's Tulip Purple

[ToasterPastry]

Carter’s Tulip Purple

 

[Preface: At Ann's request, I have reformatted my two reviews of Noodler's Tulip Purple and Mountain Violet-- which I believe were identical inks, rebottled, reformulated and remarketed--into two separate reviews. My original review of these inks was moved to Ink Comparisons section of this bulletin board. Meanwhile, I collected and corrected a bit more data that was not present in my original review. I plan to review about 4 or 5 Carter's inks, once the largest ink manufacturer in the world. They are now no longer producing ink for pens since Avery-Dennison's purchase in 1975. By this time Carter's had diversified into more profitable ventures, like the Marks-A-Lot felt-tip markers, mucilage, and printer's inks. Fountain pen inks, much like fountain pens themselves, were a novelty that saw little use. Carter's inks are available on the vintage/collectable market. In most cases the bottles are empty. Sometimes the ink has dried to powder and can be reconstituted. Rarely, full bottles turn up.]

 

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn130/ToasterPastryphoto/Carter_violet8.jpg http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn130/ToasterPastryphoto/Carter_violet6.jpg

 

 

Introduction

 

For me, there has always been a small connection between Noodler’s and Carter’s ink companies, largely because both companies are Boston-based. Noodler’s has claimed that their famous Baystate Blue was based upon a Boston ink company’s formula. Although there was more than one Boston-based ink manufacturer, I have always wondered if it was some creation by Carter’s, perhaps Atlantic Blue or American Blue. Nonetheless, this connection between the two companies became more obvious the other day, when I pulled out a document written with Carter’s Mountain Violet ink. The writing seemed to glow under the fluorescent lighting, that same effect seen with Baystate Blue.

 

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn130/ToasterPastryphoto/Carters_cubes_1937.jpg

 

Carter's cubes, originally produced in 1934, contained multiple colors, including their "Sunset" colored-ink series, featuring a rising-sun label. This label was later replaced by a ship-at-sunset label in 1937, as shown in this advertisement. Washable inks featured an aquarium theme, while permanent inks featured flying geese.

 

Mountain Violet (1945?) was preceded by Tulip Purple (1943) and previously by Sunset Violet (1934), when Carter's began introducing colored inks in the "Sunset" series. These inks, from my perspective, appear to be exactly the same color, just repackaged, renamed and reformulated. Carter’s ceased operations as an ink company, selling their business to Avery-Dennsion in 1975. Although some products, such as stamp pads still bear the Carter’s name, fountain pen ink is no longer produced.

 

After the purchase, Dennison destroyed all 100-years of Carter’s meticulous ink research, something that probably made good business sense at the time, but seems a crime to those of us in the collector/hoarder business.

 

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn130/ToasterPastryphoto/Kitties_Carters_ink.jpg

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn130/ToasterPastryphoto/staehle_carterink_aw23apr44-1.jpg

Carter's kittens were introduced in 1943. This artwork by Albert Staehle. These two ads appeared in Life Magazine in 1943 and 1944 respectively. The kitten mascot featured prominently in ads for Carter's up until the late 1950s.

 

 

Cost: The ink originally sold for 15¢ for a 2.5 ounce bottle. Typically these bottles now sell from $4 to $25, depending upon the condition of the box container.

 

Characteristics: Water-based.

 

Pen: Several vintage fountain pens with flexible nibs were used to demonstrate this ink. I would not recommend using any pen with an ink window, as the purple can stain.

 

Background: I believe that both Tulip Purple, Mountain Violet, and Sunset Violet are identical colors, with slight changes in formulation. Tulip Purple (No. 1746) preceded Mountain Violet (No. 46) by about 5 years. Tulip Purple was contained in a ribbed oval 2-1/2 ounce bottle, whereas Mountain Violet was contained in a 2-ounce cube. The cubes were designed to be inserted mouth-downward into Carter's ink-stand (1945).

 

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn130/ToasterPastryphoto/Carters_stylewriter_desk_set.jpg

Carter's initially introduced the ink stand in the late 1930s, designed to hold the cube-shaped bottle at the side of the pen. By 1940, Carter's created a one-way valve in the mouth of the ink-bottle opening, allowing the bottle to be inserted upside down into the stand, creating an ink well. The 1945 Stylewriter, shown here, placed a cover over the ink bottle.

 

Lubricity: Adequate. The pen glides across the paper.

 

Drying time: Very fast for a vintage ink: 5 to 10 seconds.

 

Shading: Some. It’s a relative homogeneous and saturated ink for a vintage product.

 

Bleedthough: On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the worst, I would rate this as a 1 to 2. It will bleed through some papers. Though, in general, I have seen modern inks bleed more heavily, and vintage iron gallic inks barely bleed at all.

 

Feathering: 1/5; it dries quickly. There is some feathering with very flexible pens. But for general use, there is none.

 

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn130/ToasterPastryphoto/Carters_purple_remastered_3.jpg

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn130/ToasterPastryphoto/Carter_violet4.jpg

 

Images of Tulip Purple compared to Mountain Violet and modern inks. These images were scanned and photographed.

 

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn130/ToasterPastryphoto/Carters_purple_remastered_4.jpg

 

Some will ask, "Why go way out of my way to find a vintage ink?" The answer is intuitively obvious in this scan. Notice how the two modern (middle) inks feather terribly when applied liberally with flexible nibs. This was no coincidence. Despite saturating the page with Tulip Purple, hardly any feathering, if at all, is seen. The same applies to Mountain Violet (reviewed separately).

 

Color: The color of this ink is very intense, reminiscent of Baystate Blue or Baystate Concord Grape. These inks fluoresce in fluorescent lighting. I do not have Concord Grape to compare, but the Carter’s inks appear less red. When I first sampled Tulip Purple several months ago, the color was very familiar. It’s a color that was common in the banking industry at the turn of the 20th century. But I now recognize it as the purple color that’s printed on Sunkist oranges.

 

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn130/ToasterPastryphoto/Carters_purple_remastered_1.jpg

http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn130/ToasterPastryphoto/Carters_purple_remastered_2.jpg

 

Waterproof: These inks are resistant to water. But can be removed with detergents and bleach (not as easily as I was expecting).

 

Conclusion: Carter’s Tulip Purple is an intensely brilliant purple ink produced from 1943 to 1945. It seems to glow under fluorescent lighting. The color is a blue-violet common in the banking industry in the early 20th century, or most notably the violet ink stamp on a Sunkist orange. This ink exhibit little feathering or bleeding as compared to modern inks, and behave remarkably well. Unfortunately, a filled-bottle of this ink is very difficult to find on the vintage market. But dried contents can be reconstituted.

[arz]

These reviews are great and I especially like the incorporation of the ads. Just makes me want to find some Carter's ink as soon as possible!

 

After reading your comparison yesterday and marveling at the color, I found myself wondering how it compares to one of my favorite purples, Diamine's Imperial Purple. Are you familiar with that color, ToasterPastry?

[pen2paper]

TP.. Always thoroughly enjoy your reviews!

 

This one has Everything!

 

Carters well before I began to notice inks as a child.. (Sheaffer Peackock Blue, Persian Rose, Blue, Blue-Black, and Parker).

 

But from the moment I saw, drat, Greg McKinney's (sorry if errors inc sp here), collection of Carter's bottles, boxes, was charmed.

Carter's advertising colorful, charmingly of the era... obviously with product quality..

 

My Q is" what is the ink-feel in use?

Thank you TP!

 

 

[Rena]

ToasterPastry,

 

This is really an interesting review, beautifully done! Thank you.

[ToasterPastry]

Questions? Answers. This is a very common ink color that's been around since the early 20th century. I have bottles dating back to the 1920s with this exact color ink. Therefore, I wouldn't doubt that Diamine Imperial Purple would probably match this blue-violet color. We forget that only recently, thanks to Private Reserve, Noodlers and Diamine, that we now have to choose from 15 shades of violet.

 

P2P asked me about the ink-performance. With Noodler's Periwinkle being the worst ink I've ever used, and Aurora Black being the best, I would rate this about 8 out of 10. It doesn't feather. It has a bright color. I love that. It stained my ink window in a pen, and I can't remove it. That part, I don't like.

[pen2paper]

have Aurora Black, so can gauge this very well.

also have, enjoy Luxury Blue.. which having read reviews, might be akin to Perriwinkle with chalky quality.

 

edited to add, was just looking at the Noodlers color chart, how close is the Carters to African Violet?

Edited December 2, 2010 by pen2paper

[opus7600]

I received ToasterPastry's sample yesterday and did a comparison between Noodler's Bay State Blue, Noodler's Bay State Concord Grape, Carter's Tulip Purple, Noodler's North African Violet, and Rohrer & Klingner Solferino. I wrote a quick line with each using a glass dip pen on Staples bagasse and Rhodia top-wirebound.

 

First off, I'm not going to say anything about BSB or Solferino except to say they aren't the same at all. BSB is just plain blue, and Solferino is much redder than CTP.

 

The BSCG was the one I really wanted to compare, but the color is not the same. BSCG is a much deeper purple. My wife, who actually uses the purple inks, used "serious" versus "playful" to describe them. BSCG has a feathering problem sometimes, and it did show in my tests.

 

NAV is closer in plain old color to CTP, but Carter's Tulip Purple has a luminance that is difficult to describe. It only shows up under bluish lighting (think fluorescent versus incandescent), but it's not so simple as a UV glow, which I checked with a black light. It seems to be reflecting some wavelength that the others aren't, and it makes it look brighter on the page.

 

(I would have loved to include a scan, but as I tried to scan it, the motor assembly inside made an... interesting noise. So, you'll have to take my word for it.)

[omicron]

Looks like waterman blue/black almost.

 

Dear god, it's so saturated.

 

Is there anything close to it in modern production? ( Or a warehouse of it somewhere?)

Dennison must stand trial at Nuremberg.

Edited December 17, 2010 by omicron

[AD64]

I am falling in love with these Carter's Inks and accessories as I peruse all the forums here. Thank you so much, TP, for posting these reviews. Thank you also Pen2Paper for offering these links.

[inkstainedruth]

Somehow I bypassed this thread before now. It's too bad this isn't available anymore -- it looks like a great color.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[PS104]

Thank you for reviving this thread. A wonderful ink with properties that we can all only hope for. The advertisements were wonderful to look at. Thank you ToasterPastry for all your original research. It makes for fascinating reading of a bygone world.

[thudthwacker]

What a neat ink; which fact makes me even more furious at Avery than I usually would be. I am, in general, not a fan of wantonly destroying information -- even things which aren't of immediate and obvious utility can be of interest to historians.

 

Side-story: My family, along with my wife's parents, were visiting George Washington's last Revolutionary War headquarters, and were reading a posted board which discussed how the rooms in the house were used for different purposes at different times. My wife wondered aloud how they were able to figure that kind of thing out -- at which point (I swear I am not making this up) one of the historians who was responsible for the various exhibits stepped from behind a nearby panel and said "That's a really good question." There is, apparently, a large amount of sleuthwork involved in this kind of thing, and one of the documents that was invaluable to them in figuring this out was a ledger which included (I believe it was) insurance or purchase information that listed the number of chairs they had for the conference table -- and as there was only one room which would have accommodated the chairs in question, they deduced that this was the meeting room at the time, even though it was a kitchen by the time historians were taking an interest in it. So, without the ledger -- which surely could have been of no practical value even 10 years after the end of the war -- historians wouldn't have necessarily been able to piece together how the use of the house changed over the years.

 

In this case, throwing away a century of research is even more infuriating -- clearly, Carter's had developed a formulation that did an excellent job of balancing luminous saturation with exceptional behavior. (Well, aside from the tendency to stain, but like the man sez, you can't have everything.) That information would be really valuable to any number of modern ink manufacturers -- who, based on the images, haven't managed to replicate the feat. Sure, maybe the formula depended on dyes that are no longer available, but still -- besides being of historical interest, there was a trove of practical information there that was unceremoniously consigned to the incinerator. Makes. Me. Crazy.

[AD64]

What a neat ink; which fact makes me even more furious at Avery than I usually would be. I am, in general, not a fan of wantonly destroying information -- even things which aren't of immediate and obvious utility can be of interest to historians.

 

Side-story: My family, along with my wife's parents, were visiting George Washington's last Revolutionary War headquarters, and were reading a posted board which discussed how the rooms in the house were used for different purposes at different times. My wife wondered aloud how they were able to figure that kind of thing out -- at which point (I swear I am not making this up) one of the historians who was responsible for the various exhibits stepped from behind a nearby panel and said "That's a really good question." There is, apparently, a large amount of sleuthwork involved in this kind of thing, and one of the documents that was invaluable to them in figuring this out was a ledger which included (I believe it was) insurance or purchase information that listed the number of chairs they had for the conference table -- and as there was only one room which would have accommodated the chairs in question, they deduced that this was the meeting room at the time, even though it was a kitchen by the time historians were taking an interest in it. So, without the ledger -- which surely could have been of no practical value even 10 years after the end of the war -- historians wouldn't have necessarily been able to piece together how the use of the house changed over the years.

 

In this case, throwing away a century of research is even more infuriating -- clearly, Carter's had developed a formulation that did an excellent job of balancing luminous saturation with exceptional behavior. (Well, aside from the tendency to stain, but like the man sez, you can't have everything.) That information would be really valuable to any number of modern ink manufacturers -- who, based on the images, haven't managed to replicate the feat. Sure, maybe the formula depended on dyes that are no longer available, but still -- besides being of historical interest, there was a trove of practical information there that was unceremoniously consigned to the incinerator. Makes. Me. Crazy.

 

I think of these things too and it does make me crazy. I do, though, try to go back in time (in my mind) and think of what the reasons were that they might destroy such information, reasons beyond carelessness or neglect. We have no idea what else was in those notes and perhaps what was in the recipes. So, I imagine at times, that perhaps the reason they destroyed the information was more compelling than our desire for it all these years later.

 

I could very well be wrong. Yet, I always like to do the mental turnaround of walking at least a mile or two in someone else's shoes before I make up my mind.

 

This is not a critique of you, Thudthwacker, nor a judgment of your feelings or sense of the issue. I just wanted to add my own thoughts as I ponder the destruction of the Carter ink recipes.

[thudthwacker]

This is not a critique of you, Thudthwacker, nor a judgment of your feelings or sense of the issue. I just wanted to add my own thoughts as I ponder the destruction of the Carter ink recipes.

 

Well, in fairness, I could probably do with a critique.

 

The truth is that I really don't know any of the context around the decision to get rid of the research. There's every chance that it made perfect sense at the time, and only from a fairly specialized perspective in the future does it seem blameworthy. I really should limit myself to saying "it's a crying shame that so much meticulous and valuable work was lost," and leave off insisting on finding someone to fault.

[AD64]

Agreed, a crying shame!