Recreating Persian Rose

[eharriett]

My latest obsession is recreating Persian Rose. I did some searching and I found someone who had a recipe for it and it wasn't on this site yet. So I thought I would recreate it myself. I do not own an original of the ink, and even if I did, it seems to have broken down to where no one knows what the original is anymore, but I wanted to try this nonetheless. I also posted a comparison between this and Private Reserve Arabian Rose, an ink supposedly based off the untainted original. Feel free to ask any questions. I'll try and answer.

 

 

 

 

[JonSzanto]

Well, here's the deal: as you said, various bottles/batches change or age differently. I've owned either 3 or 4 bottles of this, currently have two of them. I'm not entirely certain they all looked the same. You get used to one bottle and if the next is a little lighter or darker you might notice and... you get used to it.

 

Beyond that, any comparisons with uploaded photos is suspect because everyone has a different way of photographing or scanning and everyone viewing has different monitors and setups, etc. It's all a (bleep) shoot. FWIW, what I see in your photos, compared to my use, seems darker and more purple. With all the caveats aside, here's a photo from a couple years ago. In a couple weeks I might have some time to do some more writing and swabs for a new photo/scan.

 

Oh, wait, I forgot another image sitting around:

 

Edited February 13, 2018 by JonSzanto

[eharriett]

Thanks for showing the pic. Definitely closer to the Private Reserve Arabian Rose than the mix I made. What I had been spending so much of my time trying to find, was an old ad that included a sample of the ink. Those tend to be true to what the original color was for obvious reasons.

[Chrissy]

My latest obsession is recreating Persian Rose. I did some searching and I found someone who had a recipe for it and it wasn't on this site yet. So I thought I would recreate it myself. I do not own an original of the ink, and even if I did, it seems to have broken down to where no one knows what the original is anymore, but I wanted to try this nonetheless. I also posted a comparison between this and Private Reserve Arabian Rose, an ink supposedly based off the untainted original. Feel free to ask any questions. I'll try and answer.

 

I think your mix is too purple (or you have added too much blue) Sheaffer Persian Rose is pink. Sometimes the ink in the bottles has degraded to dark purple. My bottles of Sheaffer Persian Rose and Private Reserve Arabian Rose aren't similar.

 

[eharriett]

Thank you for that comparison, Chrissy. Yeah, that Arabian Rose is darker than mine. But my Arabian Rose is darker than your Persian Rose.

 

Do not know what is drawing me to this mystery, but here I am.

[inkstainedruth]

Thank you for that comparison, Chrissy. Yeah, that Arabian Rose is darker than mine. But my Arabian Rose is darker than your Persian Rose.

 

Do not know what is drawing me to this mystery, but here I am.

 

Because it's rarer than Parker Penman Sapphire?

If you can get your hands on an actual sample and can reverse engineer something close, that would be exceedingly interesting.

A couple of years ago, FPN member Kestrel sent me a couple of cartridges of PPS just so I could experience it. I found a 3/4 pint bottle of Skrip Peacock in an antiques mall up in the boonies of NW PA, and so I now know why people speak of it in hushed and reverent tones (and also what a major league PITA it is to get off one's fingers... ).

But Skrip Persian Rose? I've just heard whispered tales of Persian Rose....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

edited for typos

Edited February 14, 2018 by inkstainedruth

[eharriett]

 

Because it's rarer than Parker Penman Sapphire?

If you can get your hands on an actual sample and can reverse engineer something close, that would be exceedingly interesting.

A couple of years ago, FPN member Kestrel sent me a couple of cartridges of PPS just so I could experience it. I found a 3/4 pint bottle of Skrip Peacock in an antiques mall up in the boonies of NW PA, and so I now know why people speak of it in hushed and reverent tones (and also what a major league PITA it is to get off one's fingers... ).

But Skrip Persian Rose? I've just heard whispered tales of Persian Rose....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

edited for typos

 

I've seen those Penman inks before, and yeah, I see the hype. There is an interesting opportunity to reverse engineer that color. Unfortunately, even with a sample, you don't know WHICH Persian Rose you are going to get: one that's turned or the original color. The Arabian looks like some samples I've seen. The mix I made looks like other samples. Chrissy's looks different still. Heck, even Iroshizuku Yama-Budo is close to a dead wringer for yet another version of it (Google it, you'll find it in an image search).

 

My only real hope is to find ads with samples of it. I was thinking of reaching out to guy ...... I'm blanking on his name, but he's curator of the Sheaffer Museum and I met him last year at both the D.C. Pen Show and the Ohio Pen Show. I have his card somewhere around here with his email, I just haven't looked through my stack yet. I'm sure a guy that is in charge of a "Sheaffer Museum" will be able to shed some definitive light on this subject.

[eharriett]

I found a 3/4 pint bottle of Skrip Peacock in an antiques mall up in the boonies of NW PA, and so I now know why people speak of it in hushed and reverent tones (and also what a major league PITA it is to get off one's fingers... ).

 

Oh, almost forgot: I had a bunch of bottles of Peacock Blue., I've traded all but one away for other vintage inks. I have not yet tried it out. You have convinced me that tonight is the night I should see what all the fuss is about with that color. My light blue Snorkel is just screaming out to be filled with it.

[JonSzanto]

I have both a large and small bottle of Peacock but I have to say... it's a very nice ink and other than the issue of staining your hands, it is a very well behaved ink. That said, there are an awful lot of the light blue/turquoise inks out there today that come very, very close in hue and tone, and there aren't any 'interesting behaviors' in Peacock that they have to mimic. Of the fabled OOP inks still in existence, I think this is one of those that are fun to find but not an ink experience that can't be found elsewhere.

[inkstainedruth]

 

Oh, almost forgot: I had a bunch of bottles of Peacock Blue., I've traded all but one away for other vintage inks. I have not yet tried it out. You have convinced me that tonight is the night I should see what all the fuss is about with that color. My light blue Snorkel is just screaming out to be filled with it.

 

Depends on what the nib is. It didn't work well in the Snorkel with the EF nib -- I had clogging issues (modern Skrip Purple did work, though, with that nib).

OTOH, Skrip Peacock might be THE go-to ink for the semi-flex stub -- looks just GORGEOUS coming out of that pen.

Ruth Morrisson aka inktainedruth

[eharriett]

 

Depends on what the nib is. It didn't work well in the Snorkel with the EF nib -- I had clogging issues (modern Skrip Purple did work, though, with that nib).

OTOH, Skrip Peacock might be THE go-to ink for the semi-flex stub -- looks just GORGEOUS coming out of that pen.

Ruth Morrisson aka inktainedruth

I had Snorkel problems. For some reason, the sac isn't compressing/expanding (when I pull the plunger I hear the short hiss, but when I push the plunger back down I don't hear the long hiss). This just happened, so I have to figure it out. So the Peacock Blue is now in my Sailor 1911 Turquoise, which is a phenomenal color match! But there's no flex there.

[Chrissy]

 

I've seen those Penman inks before, and yeah, I see the hype. There is an interesting opportunity to reverse engineer that color. Unfortunately, even with a sample, you don't know WHICH Persian Rose you are going to get: one that's turned or the original color. The Arabian looks like some samples I've seen. The mix I made looks like other samples. Chrissy's looks different still. Heck, even Iroshizuku Yama-Budo is close to a dead wringer for yet another version of it (Google it, you'll find it in an image search).

 

My only real hope is to find ads with samples of it. I was thinking of reaching out to guy ...... I'm blanking on his name, but he's curator of the Sheaffer Museum and I met him last year at both the D.C. Pen Show and the Ohio Pen Show. I have his card somewhere around here with his email, I just haven't looked through my stack yet. I'm sure a guy that is in charge of a "Sheaffer Museum" will be able to shed some definitive light on this subject.

 

When I first got my bottle of Persian Rose, I tested it next to P.I. Yama budo, and IMHO that's a decent match next to it, just darker.

[Chrissy]

I'm just about to visit the US, and because I've been looking on ebay.com I spotted some packs of Sheaffer Rose Pink cartridges for sale. I've ordered a pack, and wonder how close they might be to Persian Rose. Would Sheaffer have made two different shades of rose pink ink? Probably not. In any case I thought they were worth a try. A couple of sellers have them listed. Just in case they might be of interest to anyone else.

[goodpens]

Pilot Iroshizuku Kosumosu also seems very similar to the original Persian Rose images that JonSzanto posted and the swab posted in Chrissy's comparison.

[eharriett]

Coming back around to this topic again,

 

When I was at the Ohio Pen Show today, I saw a Noodler’s bottle of Shah’s Rose. Any idea if this the Noodler’s attempt to recreate Persian Rose a la Private Reserve’s Arabian Rose? I didn’t pick up the bottle I saw because it didn’t click in my head at the time that this might be another Noodler’s recreation of an extinct ink. But in hindsight I got to thinking about it. True?

[inkstainedruth]

No clue. But my bottle of Shah's Rose doesn't look anything like PR Arabian Rose -- it's a lot pinker and less violet leaning. OTOH, Shah's Rose looks a lot like what JonSzanto's photos are showing.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[eharriett]

Well that's what's interesting about this.

 

Using Skrip Permenant Red as an example, some bottles are turning from red to a dark brown over time. All my bottles have. However, I picked up some bottles at the pen show this past weekend that retain their redness. I'm not great on judging boxes based on years, and I think Sheaffer changed their labelling so infrequently anyway that it wouldn't matter. But it is possible some of the red dye that, for a time just did not last and turned. Now, it is possible that this same dye was used in Persian Rose, which, since it was not sold for very long, also turned.

 

And usually someone posts the story of a particular Noodlers color. So I'd expect there is something somewhere about whether this is another homage ink or not.

 

There's a genuine mystery here. I asked the Sheaffer Gurus at the Ohio show and no one has a true example or knows where to get one of the Skrip color. The difference between Persian Rose and Permenant Red is if the color does change, Red turns ugly brown, but Persian Rose turns a beautiful violet so people aren't outraged. And I am motivated to investigate after my busy season ends mid-December. I think it is time this answer is definitively investigated and reported on.

[JungleJim]

Yep-Yep! That's something I've been researching actively over the past month. My 'hypothesis' is that Persian Rose is indeed a lovely pink with undertones of purple. FPN member Univer posted in March 2008 a picture and swab and noted that his bottle had an air tight seal due to the paper liner sticking. FPN member Chrissy also posted a sample picture that was a dusty pink color, as did Jon Szanto in August 2015. An article posted December 2011 by FPN member ToasterPastry shows a picture of a swab of Persian Rose vs the original Sheaffer Skrip Permanent Red of the time (circa 1953). Also a pink color with purple undertones.

 

However, the major evidence is from an actual eyewitness who had used the original Persian Rose when she was a young girl back in the early 1950's.

 

" Guess I'm the anomaly here- I remember Persian Rose- the original thing- in its era. I was quite focussed upon my older sibling's Persian Rose... forbidden to play with it... so I played with original Peacock Blue instead but I sure 'longed' to play with that Persian Rose. I'm an old chick, so I guess my 40+ year old memory could be faulty... but I recall- not a bright magenta pink... but a truer rose, which was soft... closer to a mix of shell pink (in my monitor's picture of the sample), with the cited darker greyish rose above. Instability of an ingredient is the only possibility I can suggest, other than memory issues. By the way, we were very focussed on roses in our household... my dad cultivated 100 plantings in the back garden alone... Don't know if any of this lends to my credibility- was a fairly detail-oriented brat." ---FPN member pen2paper

 

She goes on to say in a later post of how she would sneak into her older sister's room to get a fill of Persian Rose for her fountain pen, even though it was forbidden.

 

I copied these paragraphs from pen2paper and showed it to my neighbor, who is a long-time credentialed School Psychologist for the School District we live in. The question was-- Can a child that was obsessed with a particular color of ink remember that shade accurately 40+ years later?

 

The answer was "Absolutely, if the child is intelligent and especially if she was exposed to all of the various pinks, whites, and red shades of color from the roses her parents grew. Her sense of color perception would be much above average."

 

I did some research on red dyes used during the late 1940's to early 1950's for inks and the primary one was eosin Y, which is still used today in many ink formulations. This dye has an interesting decolorization breakdown profile. At a pH of less than 5 (acidic) or pH above 8 (caustic) the dye remains stable. Between a pH of 6 to 8, the presence of oxygen causes oxidation breakdown of the red color. (To be continued...)

[JungleJim]

(Part 2)

 

Was Persian Rose bottled under slightly acidic or caustic conditions? Currently unknown, but I am aware of the fiasco when Parker developed Superchrome ink that was so acidic it destroyed the pump mechanisms of their pens. Today's inks run the gamut from low to high pH's, depending on the type of dye(s) and amount used.

 

In the case of Persian Rose, when an ink container is brand new, it can develop a hermetic (airtight) seal where the meeting of paper liner meets the glass due to ink exposure. When a customer gets a new bottle of ink, the first thing they do is open the bottle, to look in, try a nib test or fill. At that point, you have introduced fresh air and bacteria/yeast/fungi into the bottle. Yes, there are antimicrobial chemicals added to slow/prevent growth, but it's the oxygen you can't compensate for. Over the decades, the pH of the ink changes, and decolorization of the red dye begins. What's left are the other dyes, the purple (and other colors?) that are in so many of the posted ink samples of Persian Rose that we see today on the net. Butch (penmanila) has a beautiful example of the strong purplish red that developed in his bottle.

 

Chrissy had posted that the chroma of one of her Persian Rose samples were red, pink, and purples and blue towards the top. On a different sample she later posted that her chroma was predominately reds. (No pictures, unfortunately.) I would bet that the very few bottles of Persian Rose that exhibits the Pink with purple undertones were pristine NOS, never exposed to air and stored under ideal conditions, such as long forgotten in the dark bottom of a drawer or inside closet shelf.

 

Dusty looking was another description of the Pink color in Persian Rose. To me (and maybe some of the ink experts who post here might be able to correct me if I am mistaken) dusty means an ink that is under-saturated. Inks that are popular today have lots of color saturation, indicating very high dye loads. A highly color saturated ink also exhibits low shading, which is because of the heavy dye load. The reverse is also mostly true, under-saturated inks can show excellent shading, and under-saturated inks appear dusty looking. (I'm looking at a lot of the J. Herbin ink products.)

 

Finally, I put myself into the mind-set of a customer in the early 1950's. There are black inks, green inks, blue and blue-black and reds, from Sheaffer, Carter, long-time rivals Parker and Watermans. Sheaffer decides to make a special new color, a pink with very light undertones of purple, to appeal to the ladies who buy ink. A color no one else has yet (remember, we are using 1950's mindset, not 2018! ) Would a woman who has dollars to spend buy a dusty purple ink back then, or a pretty pink ink? [And I again remind you, using a 1950's mindset!! ]

 

Can we recreate this color? Lots of companies have tried, such as Noodler's (Shah Rose and Ottoman Rose), Private Reserve (Arabian Rose), but without an idea of what the actual color 'should' be, it's pretty hard.

 

I leave you with this final thought from FPN member white_lotus. " Grail inks are a chimera. A false thing to chase after. You might as well chase after unicorns and pixie dust. It's the oldest desire in human nature, to want something said to possess amazing qualities and what you can't get."

 

And of course my personal answer is, "So I like to tilt at windmills. Come along, Pancho," as he whistles the tune of 'The Impossible Dream' whilst riding off into the sunset.

 

All the Best.

Edited November 7, 2018 by JungleJim

[bobje]

I seem to remember that Nathan Tardif owned two samples of Persian, an older and younger, and Ottoman and Shah’s matched these. Don’t remember which was which.