Sailor Kingdom Note "jellyfish Series" Chrysaora Helvola

[white_lotus]

Some time last year Kingdom Note came out with two new lineups of bespoke inks from Sailor. They were the "Jellyfish" and "Crustaceans" lines and these pretty much replaced their previous collections of "Wild Birds," "Mushrooms," and "Insects". This was at a time when obtaining these Sailor inks became difficult for even those living in Japan. Some stores discontinued selling online, or even began limiting purchasers to just one or two bottles of ink, and another chose to raise prices over 100%.

 

Kingdom Note is not one of those stores, but availability of their inks has been quite limited, and some have simply remained "SOLD OUT", perhaps seemingly forever. That's the way the sushi roll falls apart.

 

The five inks in the "Jellyfish" series were/are:

 

Chrysaora helvola "Yanagikurage" — an orange ink

Porpita porpita — a blue ink

Thysanostoma thysanura "Purple jellyfish" — a purple/red-violet ink

Mastigias papua "Kite jellyfish"— a pink ink

Aequorea victoria — a light green ink

 

Recently I decided to check the Kingdom Note site, and found a few of these inks and their Crustacean cousins available. The writing samples shown there are decidedly unimpressive, seemingly using a XF nib. This would probably be fine if you were going to write Japanese characters, but many chasers of ink seem to want to use it in medium to broad to stub nibs and go to town with it. So there were few takers here when they came out.

 

But I decided to take the plunge. The orange, blue, and purple inks were available. This is a review of the orange ink, my first orange! Just fyi, the stash of this ink KN had is sold out, but it is listed as "in negotiations". Perhaps that means they're trying to have Sailor make more. One can always hope so.

 

The ink now comes in a standard Sailor Jentle box with a custom sticker pasted on the front. The bottle is standard Sailor Jentle with the dumb insert. The images of the box and bottle taken with iPhone4.

 

 

As always, I test inks on papers I use and these are Mohawk via Linen=MvL, Hammermill 28 lb inkjet paper=Hij, and Tomoe River=TR. The images of the reviews taken with a Nikon Coolpix P50, so a bit dated, but it seems to do better than the iPhone in representing the ink color.

 

My basic view is I liked this ink. I'd stayed away from orange inks fearing they would be overly bright or too light. This ink definitely was neither. This ink didn't seem to be "less saturated" per se than other Sailor inks. It's certainly a very reasonable good ink with very good flow and lubrication, some shading from light to darker orange. A bit slow drying on the MvL, but quite fast on the inkjet paper. I didn't notice any problems with hard starts, and the like, and it cleaned out of the syringe-filler pen I used quite easily. So I'm glad I got this ink and am not disappointed.

 

ps I forgot to do a waterfastness test on this ink. Sorry.

 

 

 

The poem here is from Robert Burns.

 

From the ink drop on a paper towel it appears that the ink is made up of an orange and either a yellow, or a very light yellow-green. It's quite hard to tell. I think a yellow even though in the picture you could imagine it's yellow-green.

 

[visvamitra]

This one looks nice. Thank you for the review

[saskia_madding]

I like this one! I'm glad I managed to snag it. Thanks for the sneak peek!

[gylyf]

Interesting color, thanks for the review!

[lgsoltek]

Not bad.

[inkstainedruth]

Thanks for the review. Not a color for me, but that's okay. Knowing what I won't be wanting to buy is often as useful (and sometimes more so) as the reviews that make me go "Oooh... shiny....."

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[mmg122]

White_Lotus...thanks for reviewing this ink. I think it's an orange ink I could appreciate. Now to go about the business of finding some...always a road littered with land mines.

[Ghost Plane]

Like it! Thanks for reviewing.

[white_lotus]

White_Lotus...thanks for reviewing this ink. I think it's an orange ink I could appreciate. Now to go about the business of finding some...always a road littered with land mines.

 

I ordered mine through WRE. The disadvantage is that when ordering just one or two bottles of ink the fees, and shipping, drive up the cost and you can't amortize that across many bottles.

 

If you're willing to be patient, in a couple months or less, Sailor's Kin-Mokusei will be available again as part of the re-issue of Four Seasons inks.

[ethernautrix]

Oo, that's very pretty -- and dark enough to use for more than underlining or adding to other colors to add a bit of oompf.

[amberleadavis]

Great review. I wonder how it compares to the other Sailor oranges.... does it sheen?

[white_lotus]

This is my first orange, so I don't know how it compares. My J. Herbin Orange Indien arrives tomorrow so I can do that comparison. I typically don't get sheen with the nibs and papers I use, but it might with wetter pens on the right paper.

[Barkingpig]

Thank you for a lovely review, as always, of an ink I wouldn't have ever seen otherwise. I am a fan of oranges & this would be a most welcome addition. I respect it's drying to a still "orange color," unlike many of the oranges that become quite rather brown. I hope you enjoy your Indien.