In Praise Of Brown Inks

[visvamitra]

My top three easily available brown inks are:

 

Rohrer & Klingner Sepia

J. Herbin Lie de The

Sailor Rikyu-cha (although this one can be called many names, not necessarily brown)

[lgsoltek]

My top three easily available brown inks are:

 

Rohrer & Klingner Sepia

J. Herbin Lie de The

Sailor Rikyu-cha (although this one can be called many names, not necessarily brown)

 

What about your top three NOT available browns?

[Charles Skinner]

I really like J. Herbin CAFE DES ILES, and a couple of ink mixtures I have made that turn out to be brown. My favorite mixture that turned out to be brown, I call Three Ink Brown, It is 1/3 Papier Plume Grey, 1/3 Mandarin Orange, and 1/3 Macassar. It is a nice "calm" brown, a "restful brown." I must be quick to say that I am new to "ink mixing," and have come up with more than a few "pour out mixtures!" C. S.

[Old_Inkyhand]

Kaweco Caramel Brown is also a decent choice, especially when used in a wet pen.

[Bluey]

My favourite brown ink is Diamine Saddle Brown. So earthy and easy on the eye, and with great shading. Diamine Chocolate Brown and Macassar are near faves.

Edited July 23, 2017 by Bluey

[tgoto]

I like Diamine Sepia.

I can use it to take notes, and also use it to mark up drawings as it stands out in black prints.

I also use it for sketching.

[Pentode]

I didn't think I liked brown inks but I ended up with a bottle of Noodler's Golden Brown as part of a trade and I have to admit I like it!

Enough, in fact, that I got a bottle of Smokey Quartz soon after and have been considering adding a couple of others to the stable.

[contaxrts2]

I dislike reddish browns, so my favorite is R & K Sepia. A distant second is Waterman Brown. There is no third.

+

J. Herbin Cacao du Bresil

Diamine Chocolate Brown

[ParkerDuofold]

Hi all,

 

WOW! And here I thought you guys would be saying, "poor Anthony is going around the bend again." I'm pleasantly surprised to see how much love there is for these wonderful inks.

 

 

- Hi BobR: Yes. I have the 74 with a S.M. nib... and yes... "stunning" is a fitting way to describe it.

 

- Hi JeffreyS: Thank you for chiming in... I don't hear from you often enough. While Rustic and Beaver are a bit too "bright" for office use; I really like the look of Macassar... thank you.

 

- Hi Barkingpig: Good deal. I'm glad they are usually found on your order list. You raised a real interesting point that piqued my interest... "vintage"... yes, I think you touched on something there. There is a definite vintage look or feel to them.

 

- Hi Antidote3: The Rikyu-cha is a bit too green for me, but I really like the others... especially the walnut. (Which was hard to track down a decent pic of since the photobucket catastrophe).

 

- Hi Garden Weasel: Still enjoying the Doyou?

 

- Hi Octo: Those are all nice, rich deep browns that would look great coming out of your teal True Writer shown in your avatar.

 

- Hi Runnin Ute: Thank you. I'm always interested in learning matches for the Penman colors.

 

I'll catch up with the rest of you in a bit... thank you for all the responses.

 

 

- Anthony

Edited July 23, 2017 by ParkerDuofold

[ParkerDuofold]

Hi Ada,

 

Waterman Brown was my first brown ink... and I still use it from time to time.

 

 

Hi Pensei,

 

I think you can get away with calling R&K Sepia brown... kind of a "what is it brown?"... like Cacao du Bresil, but still definitely in the family.

 

 

Hi David,

 

You have expensive tastes. . Unfortunately, I don't think the Omas inks are available anymore. Regrettably, most of your faves are too "bright" for business use... but I do think Yama-guri is an excellent contender.

 

 

Hi Praxim,

 

I'm surprised you had feathering problems with Herbin's "Tea Brown"; I found it to have frustratingly slow flow. (That said, I've only tried it in a couple of pens).

 

 

Hi Chrissy,

 

Thanks for the "heads-up" on Espresso. . I have a bottle of Monteverde Brown Sugar, (not sure if that's the one you got),... gorgeous color, but I had flow issues with that one, too. I really loved the color and shading on it... I really wanted that one to work.

 

I have a bottle of FotoFlo 200... I have to get off the dime and start adding a few drops to the pesky bottles.

 

 

- Anthony

[MrsHobie]

I began using Waterman "Brown/Havane" to take notes more than 25 years ago, as a high school student, because it was really easy to find, and cheap (same price as the other colours). I kept using it because it's a colour easy to photocopy (now I'm a teacher ...) .

But I turned to Iroshizuku Tshukushi a few years ago. My husband gifted me a bottle, and it was a very good idea as Waterman Brown is not so easy to find now (in my town, at least ...). I'm still using the same bottle.

[ParkerDuofold]

Hi Almu,

 

Glad to meet another fan of brown... mind you... I still have plenty of room in my heart for nice blues and greens... but Brown inks have definitely caught my eye.

 

Yes, Ancient Copper is a wild & wooly color that's hard to define... have you had any nib crud issues from it?

 

 

Hi Bongo,

 

Yes. I'm putting Walnut on my short list... it's one I haven't had a chance to sample yet. Btw, black and Brown make a handsome combination.

 

 

Hi Carlos,

 

Thank you! That's one I hadn't thought about it... is it one of those gray-browns like Cacao du Bresil?

 

 

Hi Kel,

 

Yeah, I think that DoYou is a good one for business use as well as personal.

 

Good for you! Pick up some samples and give them a go! I'm waiting for Solar Storm as we speak... can't wait to get it.

 

 

Hi Visvamitra,

 

I love your ink reviews, but my preferences run more towards the classic, rich browns.

 

 

Hi Charles,

 

Good for you mixing your own custom blend! I'm thinking of doing the same by adding a little Macassar to the Chocolate to darken it for a more apropos use in my L2K, (which can dilute some colors for some mysterious reason).

 

 

- Anthony

[kronion]

Every time I ink up a pen with brown ink (not very often), I say to myself that I will always have a pen with brown ink available and use it routinely---but then I don't.

This is a perfect description of my relationship with brown ink

However, I would like to mention Private Reserve Chocolat. I used it some time ago in the office and got very nice feedback from colleagues.

[white_lotus]

I love brown inks. I love my blue inks too, as well as the murky greens.

 

For somewhat readily available brown inks there are:

 

MB Toffee Brown, Stipula Calamo Sepia, Visconti Brown, Iro. tsu-kushi: all about the same hue and value, slightly on the reddish side, very nice inks.

 

Noodler's Beaver falls further towards red, but is still quite brown. Few browns in this range.

Noodler's Brown, more neutral, leaning greyish.

 

Akkerman #23 Bekakt Haags. Lovely dark brown in the best bottle around. Yes, "just" Diamine ink, but I like this better than the Diamine ink. Call be Crazy.

 

KWZ Brown #3 is my favorite of Konrad's generically named browns, falling in the MB Toffee Brown range.

 

KWZ Honey, KWZ Cappuccino are great golden browns.

 

Noodler's Old Dutch Colony Sepia from FPH is great. A faded/muted, neutral brown.

 

My main quibble with brown inks is their distinct tendency to lean red(dish). A lot of inks fall into a range where they are so similar to one another, any difference is lost. Maybe some are a little wetter, others a little drier, but they all look the same. I had a sample of old Parker Penman Mocha, and it was really unique. It didn't lean red at all. There's a whole thread somewhere here where everyone tried to match it. A few close inks, but mo matches. The dye used for PPM probably hasn't been made in 50 years.

 

But I still have more blue inks than brown inks. That probably won't change. But if I don't have a pen inked with a brown ink I feel that something is missing. And I use my brown inks as often as possible.

[Arkanabar]

I love me my browns. My first was Waterman Havana, and it was gorgeous. It also faded to teal after sitting out indoors for a few months.

After it ran out, I was without a brown ink for a few years. Eventually, I started getting more inks again, especially via PIFs. The closest I got to a brown was Noodler's Red-Black. It was smudgy, and after I diluted it enough to remedy that, it wound up clearly a burgundy rather than a brown.

After I wound up with around 15 bottles of ink, I decided I wanted to refine my ink collection to Six Essential Inks (link in my signature), one each of black, blue-black, purple, blue, green, and brown. I first selected the black, the blue, and the green. I next chose the purple (to be confirmed by purchasing a sample), and eliminated IG inks from consideration for blue-black.

Then I got a few samples of brown ink -- first Iro Yama-Guri and Noodler's Walnut in an exchange, and then cartridges of Namiki Sepia, and vials of J. Herbin Lie de Thé and Diamine Chocolate (both contenders for the Essential Brown) in a PIF.

Yama-guri disappointed me. It reminded me of frozen mud and dead sticks, though later I came to notice a slight golden tone that I now have some appreciation for. Noodler's Walnut, for whatever reason, just did not appeal to me. I tried the Namiki Sepia cartridge first (too red for my taste, even if that's authentic when we're talking about cephalopod inks) and then the J. Herbin Lie de Thé (too green, and rightly compared to baby poop).

Then we went to Origami Ink, which according to Glenn's Pens is one of the finest pen stores in the world, and spent a couple of hours browsing wares. I bought a bottle of another candidate, Noodler's original Brown, because I want the owner to stay in the pen business.

Then I tried the Diamine Chocolate. I loooove that ink. It deserves to be the Essential Brown. I love the color, the behavior, and the price.

So I figured I had to try Noodler's original Brown to see what I thought. And it's too close to Lie de Thé, at least on the paper I use at home. Maybe it all has too much brightening for me to get the lovely color we saw using glass pens on a Lamy scratch pad. Maybe my pens were contaminated with Lie de Thé and Diamine Sherwood. It's still a perfectly good brown, and I'm still going to use it (eventually). For a Noodler's ink, it gets pretty good shading coming out of my Nemosine Singularity 0.8mm stub onto Walmart's Cheapest Copy Paper. But going forward, I'm buying Diamine Chocolate.

Tsukushi was almost considered; I love the color, but it apparently lacks the sort of fade resistance I'm looking for.

[Chrissy]

I wish I had found Diamine Chocolate earlier in my pen writing life.

[wallylynn]

I bought a bottle of Noodler's Rome is Burning. Is that brown? It's a weird color. But after using it for a month, when my pen is empty I need to go back to a "normal" blue or black color. Brown is so rare it's hard for me to look at.

[Almu]

Hi Almu,

 

Glad to meet another fan of brown... mind you... I still have plenty of room in my heart for nice blues and greens... but Brown inks have definitely caught my eye.

 

Yes, Ancient Copper is a wild & wooly color that's hard to define... have you had any nib crud issues from it?

 

 

Fortunately, no . I've had the ink for over two years and most of the time I've had at least one pen inked with it, zero problems so far. I've tested it in Pilot MR/Parallel Pens, Lamy 2000/Safari/Al-Star and TWSBI ECO.

[The Good Captain]

Diamine Macassar, Diamine Espresso, Diamine Warm Brown; Pelikan Edelstein Smoky Quartz, Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Brown; Montblanc Toffee Brown; Noodler's #41 Brown.

All these used at some time or another but the Macassar is almost permanently in my 800 Burnt Orange; Smoky Quartz in the 400 Brown Tortoise, and the others flit from pen to pen.

[Chrissy]

Hi Almu,

 

Glad to meet another fan of brown... mind you... I still have plenty of room in my heart for nice blues and greens... but Brown inks have definitely caught my eye.

 

Yes, Ancient Copper is a wild & wooly color that's hard to define... have you had any nib crud issues from it?

 

 

- Anthony

 

I've never had any nib crud issues while using Diamine Ancient Copper. I believe it happens when a cap isn't a tightly fitting one.