Birmingham Pen Co.'s Billy Eckstine Blues For Sale

[finnegans]

These inks continue to integrate themselves into my regular use. I'm not sure anyone in my family would have suggested I should grab a few more blue-blacks, but there's a few Birmingham inks that lean that way that are different enough from what's out there that I've found uses for them. Billy Eckstine Blues for Sale is one. This is a wet ink that I've wed to a couple of dry writers and hard-starters to good effect. Pardon the misspelling of the name in the images below...

 

On Tomoe River it is highly variable depending on nib width, going from an all-but-black to a silvery blue-gray:

 

 

It takes some time to dry on TRP and coated papers like Rhodia:

 

 

And although shading is not its marquee feature, it does a little; on TRP:

 

 

and on Rhodia:

 

 

At the end of the day, this adds something to a fairly vast world of blue-black/dark-dark-blue inks, and the variability available with different nib widths makes it like two or three inks in one bottle; I'll be picking up a full bottle when my sample runs out.

[inkstainedruth]

Interesting. It's darker than I expected after having seen the swabs on their website, but it was already kinda on my short list (now it's even more likely to be on that list).

Thanks for the review. And, well, not....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[chromantic]

​Well, this is a really interesting one! I especially like how it looks in the F and M/B samples (the silver-y XF is a way too light). This one's up there with the Boiler Steam. Thanks for the work you put into these reviews.