Bookbinders Snake Inks - A Quick Peak At Three Inks

[webgeckos]

Through an ad on FPN, I stumbled onto Bookbinders Snake Inks.

 

Bookbinders is a small stationary store in Melbourne, Australia, established in 2013. They are very active on Instagram. And as their name suggests, they come at stationary and inks from a book binder's approach. Many of their notebooks are hand made, and feature beautiful letterpress work.

 

I have been busy on another intense project, so this is only the briefest of peaks at three inks.

 

The Snake range of inks are all named and color sampled from various snakes from around the world. The bottles are heavy glass, with a tin cap which is rather tall and sturdy. And each bottle comes snuggled inside a brown hessian bag. (images from Bookbinder's site.)

http://i.imgur.com/te8cI6C.png?1

http://i.imgur.com/rmUlnWs.png?1

 

 

This is the quick peak at Everglades Ratsnake, a pleasing solid orange. It was neither murky nor too bright and retina searing. It is a wet ink, with medium shading, no sheen. It is well-lubricated and glided beautifully across the page. On Tomoe River and a Med. Italic stub it still dried in under 10 seconds.

http://i.imgur.com/epxs4qS.png

 

The next quick peak was with Emerald Boa. I am not a big lover of green inks, but I found this rather charming, and very much it reminded me of spring sweet pea vines curling away.

 

This is a light ink, rather wet. It is highly shaded. If you are a lover of green and have the winter blues, this is the ink for you.

http://i.imgur.com/at5ZjuQ.png

 

Lastly, the Blue Coral. This ink has a light red sheen. Be warned it is very wet. Very, very wet. At my elevation it bleed in shipping but that sometimes happens with ink coming from sea level to 5,500' where I live. I have heard from some friends that they actually had this ink feather and bleed on Tomoe River. So use caution.

 

Blue Coral is a lovely deep blue, with hints of red sheen. The lighter shades are turquoise and the deeper shades a stout Cerulean. It is highly saturated, well lubricated and an extremely wet ink. Although I had no issues with feathering on Tomoe River, I was using a Shaeffer Javelin Artified Stub, which can handle wet inks just fine.I really wouldn't want to put this into a wet writer that was a broad stub.

 

http://i.imgur.com/rCiPV1K.png

 

 

I enjoyed playing with these three. I haven't had a chance to ink up the Red-belly Black or Eastern Brown, but I will add them to this when I get a chance.

 

I did order a set of all five, as well as a dozen of their wire-bound Tomoe River notebooks as a group buy for the (P)inksters. Ink samples and notebooks have been sent out, and I am sure you will soon see proper reviews posted. My integrity requires I inform you the that we received a discount on the inks and tablets so everyone is aware of this fact upfront; however, I passed out the samples to other (P)inksters at no cost to them but shipping. I was pleased to see Bookbinders has initiated a Group Buy program, wherein they will ship orders of AUS $100 worldwide for no shipping costs, which makes ordering their products affordable for non-Aussies.

[visvamitra]

I find the bottle really nice, the colors though look rather generic.

[migo984]

I'm fairly sure these inks are made by Tintex but could be wrong. I enjoy using the Snake inks for pen and wash work.

 

I've bought Tomoegawa products from Bookbinders in the past. They're beautifully presented.

[webgeckos]

There is the artist's eye about everything they do. Beauty for the sake of beauty.

[migo984]

There is the artist's eye about everything they do. Beauty for the sake of beauty.

I completely agree.

[Cyber6]

There is s silver sheen on the orange and a red sheen on the black. The Blue one did feather on Tomoe River, but I have a extremely wet flex nib, I will recommend finer nibs with that one.

 

Overall, I do like them... The black surprised me, is really nice and the red sheen is very pretty.

 

 

 

C.

[dcwaites]

I may have to get some, after I see how the Oster inks work.

[webgeckos]

Opps Update: They aren't in Melbourne but Brisbane

[dcwaites]

There is a Bookbinders in Melbourne, but it is Bookbinders Design, "Melbourne's home of Swedish minimal and functional stationär (stationery)."

It looks like Kikki-k for rich people.

They have also registered the word Bookbinders, but the guys in Brisbane have trademarked it.