What Happened To Chesterfield Ink?

[fitz123]

Since XFountainpens closed, I haven't been able to locate Chesterfield ink anymore. Does anyone know if its still produced?

[Jerome Tarshis]

Well, ha ha, yes and no. "Chesterfield" was a house label created by xfountainpens. If xfountainpens does not exist, its house labels do not exist, unless part of the business continues.

 

On the other hand, the ink was made by an actual ink manufacturer. It's widely believed that the manufacturer of the ink was Diamine. Since Diamine still exists, it might be said that the ink still exists even if the Chesterfield label doesn't.

 

For more information, consider doing a Web search on "Chesterfield ink."

[OCArt]

If you do a Google search for xfountainpens you'll find a result for The Birmingham Pen Company. Xfountainpens was located in Pittsburg and that's where the Birmingham Pen Co. is housed--- are they the same business under a new name?? They are selling ink under the Birmingham name and I assume they're made by the same manufacturer (likely Diamine) as the old Chesterfield inks.

 

Chesterfield inks were very good and a tremendous bargain to boot.

[PaganArcher]

At the start of I believe 2016, xFountainpens closed and reopened as Birmingham Pen Company. I have one of the Birmingham inks and several Chesterfield inks, and I find them comparable in quality, though the colors are not the same.

Edited January 9, 2018 by theLorekeeper

[crahptacular]

I'm sure someone better-informed can come in and clarify, but to my knowledge, the xfountainpens business (which sold the Chesterfield inks) became Birmingham Pen Co. However, while Chesterfield inks were produced by/re-bottled Diamine, Birmingham inks are mixed in-house. So there may be Diamine counterparts to any of the Chesterfield inks you were looking for, but the Chesterfield label is discontinued, and its "successor" is an entirely different line of inks.

[ENewton]

Yes, the Birmingham inks are mixed in-house from ingredients imported from Germany.

[inkstainedruth]

There were some old threads where people tried to figure out which Chesterfield inks were really relabeled Diamine. I kept meaning to ask Nick at Birmingham Pens what the actual equivalents were but the store is closed at the moment -- I think they're trying to find new digs (fingers crossed on that!).

I have a friend on the West Coast who really liked some of the Chesterfield colors -- and that they came in smaller sized bottles. I have written samples of all the colors she had but kept misplacing it in my house. I want to be able to tell her "When you run out of X, you'll want to get Diamine Y as a replacement for it." (Hey, it's a step up from 4 years ago, when she kept complaining about the limited range colors that you could get for Waterman pens in cartridges, and wouldn't listen to me when I told her that she didn't need to stick to Waterman inks if she didn't like them, and to just get a converter and use bottled inks; now, she uses Chesterfield inks in her Levenger pens, because she didn't like the Levenger colors as well....)

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth