Robert Oster Sydney Lavender ink review

[Mercian]

This ink seems to have a very interesting colour.

 

It reminds me rather of Diamine ‘Amazing Amethyst’ - see e.g. this review.

Or this one (you will need to copy the links and post them in to new tabs on your browser in order to see the images).

 

So, if anyone lives somewhere in which Robert Oster inks are hard to get/expensive, they might wish to look for Diamine ‘Amazing Amethyst’ instead.

 

[RJS]

On 10/2/2021 at 8:01 AM, austollie said:

Having missed out on Lamy Dark Lilac, I bought Diamine Pansy.  That's nice and purple and looks good to me, but I feel self-conscious using it a business setting.  Sydney Lavender seems much more appropriate for office use.

I've been using Diamine Pansy for work all week, and on ivory paper it looks interesting, but perfectly office appropriate.  Perhaps on white paper the purple would be more evident, but it is working very well for me, and I very much like the colour, even if it is monotone.  It is also well behaved, and doesn't dry out on the nib at all quickly, in EF.  The only downside for me is the total lack of water resistance. 

[Mercian]

On 10/1/2021 at 6:22 PM, A Smug Dill said:

My initial reaction upon seeing it on paper up close was one of disappointment; my writing with it (produced with a very fine nib, of course) looked blue-grey without any violet or purple, and so I hadn't been much inclined to fill any of my pens with it.

I can attest to the accuracy of this statement.

That said, I have found that the colour that the ink shows is very dependent on the nature of the paper on which one is writing.

 

I have found that the ‘purple’ component remains visible on papers that have a smooth, hard coating - e.g.s Rhodia, Oxford ‘Optik’.
I have also found it to be affected by any skin-oils that one has left on hard-coated 80gsm Rhodia paper.

 

On the more-porous papers that I have used, the ‘purple’ component often ‘disappears’ (almost as though it is soaking into the paper), leaving only the grey and blue elements on the surface.

I have found that the gsm ‘weight’ of the paper is far less influential on this ink’s final colour than is the nature (coated vs. ‘porous’) of the paper’s ‘finish’.
Even on my ‘heavier’ papers that are uncoated/‘porous’, this ink turns that blue-grey ‘slate’ colour.
I haven’t yet tried it on pure-cotton paper.

 

E.g. here is a photo to illustrate how I have found Robert Oster Signature Ink ‘Sydney Lavender’ to vary in colour on different types of paper.

 

The upper part of this image shows the ink written on a piece of inkjet(?) paper (the back of a letter that I received).
The lower part of the image shows the same ink, from the same pen, written at the same time, on the envelope in which said letter was enclosed.
The lighting is the daylight from an overcast English sky.

 

On both types of paper, the ink has spread. My Lamy 2000 is a fairly ‘wet’-writing pen, and the letter came from a Government body here, so the paper & envelope will both be ‘lowest-bidder’ items; each is uncoated, rather ‘porous’ stock, but the envelope feels more ‘coated’ than does the paper of the letter.

 

On the letter paper, although the ‘purple’ component of the ink is visible while writing, it ‘disappears’ into the paper almost as soon as the ink is laid-down.
The ink dries to a grey colour that reminds me of slate - it is a grey that has a markedly blueish tone, and its ‘purple’ (or ‘lavender’?) aspect is almost entirely absent.

 

On the envelope, although the ink is still a greyish colour, its ‘purple’ component has remained much more visible.

 

Edited June 6, 2024 by Mercian
FFEs, & inconsistent text size.

[Mercian]

On 3/25/2023 at 3:29 PM, Mercian said:

This ink seems to have a very interesting colour.

 

It reminds me rather of Diamine ‘Amazing Amethyst’ - see e.g. this review.

Or this one (you will need to copy the links and post them in to new tabs on your browser in order to see the images).

 

So, if anyone lives somewhere in which Robert Oster inks are hard to get/expensive, they might wish to look for Diamine ‘Amazing Amethyst’ instead.

 

To correct my previous statement ⬆️, the ‘Sydney Lavender’ is a darker, and ‘murkier’ colour than is the ‘Amazing Amethyst’.

The blue component of the Diamine ink is almost cyan in its tone, and there seems to be more of it in the Diamine ink, whereas the blue in the Robert Oster ink ends up appearing to be darker.
And I have not (yet?) encountered the ‘Amazing Amethyst’ drying to a ‘slate-grey’ colour without any ‘purple’ in its tone.

 

Even on Rhodia, if I write with Sydney Lavender next to a piece of writing in Amazing Amethyst, the Sydney Lavender looks very grey.
The Amazing Amethyst is more ‘dusky’ than it is ‘grey’.