Who actually made the best vintage ink?

[arcfide]

So, back in the fountain pen heyday, we know that Parker and Sheaffer had a lot of brand recognition, and Waterman, Herbin, Pelikan, Montblanc, Platinum, Pilot, and Sailor, at least, all had their own lines of ink. I find myself wondering, has anyone ever sat down and evaluated these vintage inks for which one was actually "best" in the marketplace based on what might be considered the then prevailing desires for ink? I imagine that if we were setting up a set of properties that people would have wanted for business/personal (non-school) settings, it might go like this:

 

• Non-clogging/free flowing
• Well-behaved on paper (no feathering or bleeding)
• Quick drying
• Permanent (should not become illegible after water bath, nor fade in sunlight rapidly)
• Very low maintenance (should be able to just refill and go, or just flush with its own ink to clean)
• Shelf stable (not get mold, clumpy, or sediment)
• Bright, rich colors (legibility and clarity of the written line)

 

This is a different list than what we would consider today for the best inks, I think, as we might be much more willing today to tolerate misbehavior, clogginess, less permanence, and high-maintenance in order to get various other features like bright colors, shading, sheen, or shimmer. However, if we judge traditional fountain pen inks by what might be considered traditional standards, who do you think comes out on top? I'm thinking here of technical superiority, and not just who managed to market a sufficiently good product best. Just as an example, Herbin and Pelikan inks were probably mostly unknown to many Americans at the time, and so too the Japanese inks, and likewise many Germans probably only knew of Parker, Montblanc, and Pelikan inks for a long time (though I think Lamy did in fact market inks that they had made for them by someone else, so that might also count). 

 

I'm thinking here of inks maybe before the ballpoint pen really started to dominate and fountain pens began shifting to luxury markets. 

[OCArt]

   I am a person old enough to remember when the only inks available in. the U.S. were made by Sheaffer, Parker and Carter and you could find those brands at the corner drug store. Waterman and Pelikan might have been available but not so common.

   I don't think that feathering or bleeding was considered when buying inks as papers were better back then. I'd also remove bright rich colors from your list as most inks weren't highly saturated nor was it a major marketing point. You can look at old ink advertisements to see what their selling points were-- most of the time it was easy flow, cleaning, and protecting your pen.

  As to what was considered the "best" ink that wouldn't have popped into the mind set of my working-class family. If you had a Sheaffer pen and the corner store sold Sheaffer ink that's what you used. If they only sold Parker ink you'd buy that; to my mind most people weren't picky and would buy the cheapest. I remember we normally used blue-black ink but also had a small bottled Carter's red for some special purpose.  Oh, mom had a bottle of indelible ink with  a matching crow-quill pen that she used to write our name on scout uniforms and the like.

[arcfide]

6 minutes ago, OCArt said:

   I am a person old enough to remember when the only inks available in. the U.S. were made by Sheaffer, Parker and Carter and you could find those brands at the corner drug store. Waterman and Pelikan might have been available but not so common.

   I don't think that feathering or bleeding was considered when buying inks as papers were better back then. I'd also remove bright rich colors from your list as most inks weren't highly saturated nor was it a major marketing point. You can look at old ink advertisements to see what their selling points were-- most of the time it was easy flow, cleaning, and protecting your pen.

  As to what was considered the "best" ink that wouldn't have popped into the mind set of my working-class family. If you had a Sheaffer pen and the corner store sold Sheaffer ink that's what you used. If they only sold Parker ink you'd buy that; to my mind most people weren't picky and would buy the cheapest. I remember we normally used blue-black ink but also had a small bottled Carter's red for some special purpose.  Oh, mom had a bottle of indelible ink with  a matching crow-quill pen that she used to write our name on scout uniforms and the like.

 

Thanks for your insights! I included feathering and bleeding because I found old Sheaffer advertisements that specifically made a point about feathering, bleed, quick drying, and permanence. I would also agree that "vividness" of the colors seems to have been a lesser selling point, but I do find advertisements from Parker and Sheaffer that both point to the superior vividness of their inks relative to the competition. One Sheaffer ad specifically highlights it as a distinction between their black "Skrip" and "ink", saying that their "successor to ink" is not only more permanent, but that their black is also blacker than "ink." 

 

I can completely believe that most people weren't too particular about their choice of inks and just picked up whatever was available. However, while that is probably abundantly true over the course of evaluating these inks, I'm interested not only in the psychological behaviors of the buying public at the time, but also in how well each ink manufacturer did at actually meeting underlying technical requirements and delivering on that promise. I guess I should add "low cost" to my list, but I'm more interested in how well each maker met the underlying technical demands, such as how well the inks avoided clogging up in the pen or molding or gumming up. These might not have been at the tip of mind for most users, but I imagine that not meeting a minimum standard for this would get you out of the market compared to others. 

[bunnspecial]

2 hours ago, arcfide said:

Thanks for your insights! I included feathering and bleeding because I found old Sheaffer advertisements that specifically made a point about feathering, bleed, quick drying, and permanence. I would also agree that "vividness" of the colors seems to have been a lesser selling point, but I do find advertisements from Parker and Sheaffer that both point to the superior vividness of their inks relative to the competition. One Sheaffer ad specifically highlights it as a distinction between their black "Skrip" and "ink", saying that their "successor to ink" is not only more permanent, but that their black is also blacker than "ink." 

 

So, first of all, I wasn't alive in the 50s so take this for what it's worth, but I have collected vintage inks quite a bit and use them relatively often, so maybe have some frame of reference.

 

With that said, the VAST majority of my collection is Quink, Skrip, and Waterman. Carter's is the other big name(which was mentioned) but unfortunately all I have is a bottle of "Washable Blue" I bought with some blue powder in the bottom of it and rehydrated, so I can't draw any meaningful conclusions. Unless otherwise noted, for Skrip I'm looking specifically at what I think are 1950s bottles(the ones with 29ç printed onto the box for 2 oz. bottles), with Quink I'm sampling from the "Art Deco" bottles, although not all labeled as having Solv-X(but I don't see a huge difference in the inks regardless), and with Waterman I'm mostly drawing also from the 29¢ bottles, which are newer than what I've taken to calling the "full picture" bottles.

 

As far as general performance, I find they all behave similarly. Feather resistance is decent-about on par with what you'd get from a modern basic ink-and that's testing it on paper my work no longer stocks but that I quite literally could NEVER find something that didn't feather a bit. I do find feather resistance and bleed-through characteristics better than modern high saturation inks.

 

All flow well and most colors are relatively low maintenance, although of course red is the odd one out. I do find American reds to be better than some of the alternatives I've tried. My bottle of 70s Pelikan Brilliant Red(not really the time frame I know we're talking about here) is effectively identical to my modern one, and I've taken to calling it an evil ink that goes everywhere, makes a big crusty mess, and seems to stain anything that crosses its path. I have a vintage bottle of Platinum Red(no idea of the age) that seems not much different from Pelikan in both color and general behavior.

 

Most brands were good about designating water resistance by calling inks "Washable" or "Permanent." Generally Black, Blue-Black, and Red would get the permanent designation and most others would be "Washable." Of course the one odd stand out for me in that is Super Quink Turquoise, which is labeled Permanent, while Skrip Peacock Blue is labeled washable. South Seas Blue doesn't carry any designation. I've been meaning to test all of them. I've found Permanent in more general terms to refer to its resistance to washing off paper under water(and out of clothes) and not being erasable with an eradicator rather than being "everything proof" like is often associated with the term now. Like many Noodlers inks, though, "Permanent" can just mean that it will remain legible on the paper and not necessarily be totally undisturbed by water(some Noodlers inks have bulletproof and non-bulletproof components that give this).

 

There is also a Quink Permanent Blue...well for that matter there's still Quink Permanent Blue. The modern version of Permanent Blue won't wash off if you breath on it like Quink Washable Blue and will disappear with an ink eraser, but it does hold up okay to water washing paper. The vintage version is a bit of a different beast-every bottle I have is kind of a steel blue color(not sure if they were that way new or not) and is very water resistant. I don't remember if I've checked vintage with an ink eraser or not. I THINK there was also a Skrip Permanent Blue, but that's the only vintage Skrip color I'm aware of that I haven't used, so I can't comment directly on it.

 

Among the blue-blacks, I find Skrip to be both the blackest and also the most water resistant. Waterman is the most blue(in my 1950s bottle of it-I have a probably 1930s bottle with iron gall that's not present in the 50s one) and also seems the least water resistant. Quink is somewhere in-between. The Sheaffer is really an interesting ink to use, and if you "wash" a page(under running water or with a kitchen sprayer) you'll actually see blue ink rolling out from under the writing but no real perceptible change in line color. Also, since you ask about stability, I'll mention that Quink Blue-Black is the one that gave me the most headaches over actually getting a good bottle that hadn't turned to sludge.

 

I've noticed that some brands have what I'd consider a "stand out" color, and that's actually why I quoted this particular snippet of your post. I find Skrip Black to be the blackest of the three, where Waterman and Quink seem about the same to me. Quink, IMO, has the best red if you want a true brick red, but Waterman Carnation Red gets the nod for a pleasant not-as-intense red. I've often sung the praises of Slovenian-made Skrip Red, but I find my bottles of USA-made of a couple of different ages to be too pink for my liking. I like Aztec Brown more than Skrip Brown, and haven't used Quink to compare it. I only have purple in Skrip(and finding a bottle of Waterman Patrician Purple is kind of at the top of my mind now as it's bugging me that it's the only color I'm missing!). My favorite green is Skrip Emerald Green, with Waterman Tropic Green close behind. Quink green is more teal, and also not as saturated as either of the others. South Seas Blue, Super Quink Turquoise, and Peacock Blue are all subtly different but I think I like them all 3 equally(Quink wins for the diamond-shaped cobalt-colored bottle).

 

Let's not forget too though that even in those days Parker had kind of an over-the-top ink in Superchrome. The one bottle I have-Turquoise-is very bright and saturated. The high pH that's often cited as damaging Parker 51 Aero breather tubes also gives it both great feather resistance and a very lubricated feeling(I've read an article published by Parker in the 40s that addresses both of these in more general terms). Of course its high isopropyl alcohol content makes it dry fast. I actually tried/sampled my bottle in a Chinese 51 clone, as it dries fast enough to be difficult to use in a dip pen or even a cheap regular fountain pen.

[arcfide]

Many thanks @bunnspecial for your commentary! It's really fascinating to see both how similar and how different these inks can be. A quick online search showed some ad copy around Sheaffer's Permanent Blue that supposedly demonstrated it against other inks of the time and if that is an authentic test it was indeed quite permanent compared to many others. One interesting thing that caught my eyes while looking through the old ads was what appeared to be a suggestion that there was a period of time in which Skrip only made a single Permanent Blue color and had otherwise designated all of their other colors as washable. It wasn't clear to me whether this was just a matter of a particular ad, or whether there in fact was a time in which this was the case, and if so, whether this was a later development (dropping a permanent black, for instance), or an early beginning with the other permanent colors added later. 

[bunnspecial]

6 hours ago, arcfide said:

Many thanks @bunnspecial for your commentary! It's really fascinating to see both how similar and how different these inks can be. A quick online search showed some ad copy around Sheaffer's Permanent Blue that supposedly demonstrated it against other inks of the time and if that is an authentic test it was indeed quite permanent compared to many others. One interesting thing that caught my eyes while looking through the old ads was what appeared to be a suggestion that there was a period of time in which Skrip only made a single Permanent Blue color and had otherwise designated all of their other colors as washable. It wasn't clear to me whether this was just a matter of a particular ad, or whether there in fact was a time in which this was the case, and if so, whether this was a later development (dropping a permanent black, for instance), or an early beginning with the other permanent colors added later. 

I'm glad that you enjoyed my rambling! I think my key point that hopefully I made is that IMO all brands I've used had their strengths and weakness in particular products, but by and large inks were just expected to work and there weren't really any duds at least among the American makers that competed head to head.

 

Sheaffer did try to go all out on novel bottle design, but honestly I find their bottle most useful for Snorkels. It's also handy for filling a converter directly or for dipping, but the former wouldn't have applied when it was designed.

 

Incidentally, I have a couple of probably 70s or 80s bottles of Sheaffer Blue that I've not sampled because the lids didn't want to readily budge and I haven't bothered, but they are just labeled "Blue." I haven't looked too much into them, though, as they carry the same number as my earlier Washable Blue bottles.

 

I could believe Blue-Black not being permanent at some point(I don't know when) where they removed iron gall...

[Karmachanic]

In my experience 50/60 years ago one bought a pen and a bottle of ink.  When the bottle was low, one purchased another.  A pen was just a pen, and ink was just ink.  We didn't concern ourselves with shelf life, saturation, feathering and so forth.  Where I grew up it was Parker pens and Parker ink; blue, black and green.  Fill and write, then fill it again with the same ink.  Cleaning/flushing was not a thing. Occasional one saw an Esterbrook, or a Shesffer, but they were not readily available.

 

At that time, and in that place, there were no Pelikan, Montblanc, Platinum, Pilot, or Sailor inks.

[IThinkIHaveAProblem]

17 hours ago, OCArt said:

 I'd also remove bright rich colors from your list as most inks weren't highly saturated nor was it a major marketing point. You can look at old ink advertisements to see what their selling points were-- most of the time it was easy flow, cleaning, and protecting your pen.

with the Superchrome line, Parker pushed the vibrant colours pretty hard

 

But during WW2 they really pushed how Quink was going to protect your pen and keep you from having to use up precious war resources to have it repaired

 

not having been around at the time, i can’t speak to how much anyone CARED about those things. I suppose it might be like how gas companies brag about how their gas will keep your engine clean and burn better etc etc. it’s mostly marketing BS. And i suspect most people just say “whatever, you’re full of it. I just want cheap gas that gets the job done “

 

13 hours ago, bunnspecial said:

Among the blue-blacks, I find Skrip to be both the blackest and also the most water resistant. Waterman is the most blue(in my 1950s bottle of it-I have a probably 1930s bottle with iron gall that's not present in the 50s one) and also seems the least water resistant. Quink is somewhere in-between. The Sheaffer is really an interesting ink to use, and if you "wash" a page(under running water or with a kitchen sprayer) you'll actually see blue ink rolling out from under the writing but no real perceptible change in line color. 
 

 

and finding a bottle of Waterman Patrician Purple is kind of at the top of my mind now as it's bugging me that it's the only color I'm missing!). 

 

My favourite blue black is vintage skrip BB. i bought a 32oz bottle of it. But it had gone greenish and pale   So I’m stuck for now with just my 2oz bottle. 

 

if you do the coffee filter chromatography on it, it looks like it is made by mixing peacock blue with black. When i get a new (to me) pen i have started doing tests to see what ink it has/had in it. Skrip BB jumps right out from the coffee filter test. A snorkel i cleaned yesterday had it. 
 

If you are curious about patrician purple, you can see my review here: 

 

As to the OPs question of who made the “best” ink: i think trying to answer that would be like trying to answer “which ink is the best on the market today”.   It’s far too subjective a question to be answered on any level beyond personal preference. 

[Arkanabar]

There used to be a LOT of brand loyalty back in the day, e.g. "In this family, you vote Democrat, drive a Plymouth, and fill it with Union 76 gasoline!"  Consumer Reports was a thing, but most people were not members of Consumer's Union, there was nothing along the lines of the review sections of Amazon and Wal-Mart, and people who paid attention knew that the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval was for sale.  So navigating the marketplace with brand loyalty was quite a bit more common.

[Kalessin]

Another commonly found ink brand before 1960 was Sanford, who branded their fountain pen ink as "Pen-It".  They sold lots of little half-ounce bottles at drugstores, news stands, and even hotel lobbies, as well as the more normal 2-ounce size.

 

[Taenarian]

Sanford is the ink I recall seeing in my maternal grandmother's home. She was an elementary school teacher and Sanford was almost certainly the ink issued at work. 

[welch]

On 8/30/2022 at 8:04 PM, OCArt said:

   I am a person old enough to remember when the only inks available in. the U.S. were made by Sheaffer, Parker and Carter and you could find those brands at the corner drug store. Waterman and Pelikan might have been available but not so common.

   I don't think that feathering or bleeding was considered when buying inks as papers were better back then. I'd also remove bright rich colors from your list as most inks weren't highly saturated nor was it a major marketing point. You can look at old ink advertisements to see what their selling points were-- most of the time it was easy flow, cleaning, and protecting your pen.

  As to what was considered the "best" ink that wouldn't have popped into the mind set of my working-class family. If you had a Sheaffer pen and the corner store sold Sheaffer ink that's what you used. If they only sold Parker ink you'd buy that; to my mind most people weren't picky and would buy the cheapest. I remember we normally used blue-black ink but also had a small bottled Carter's red for some special purpose.  Oh, mom had a bottle of indelible ink with  a matching crow-quill pen that she used to write our name on scout uniforms and the like.

 

I think OCArt is right...fits with my memory. I started using a fountain pen about 1958, with a Sheaffer school pen and Sheaffer Skrip blue cartridges. My local drugstore, People's Drugs in the Washington, DC area, sold Skrip and Parker Quink in both washable and permanent. Never saw Carter's or Sanford Pen-it or Waterman. By 1960, Waterman had gone bankrupt, leaving a French subsidiary that might not had exported ink to the US. 

 

The permanent Sheaffer and Parker inks were tough...stuck to paper, but also clothing and hands. That's why I used Sheaffer Washable Black and Washable Blue-Black. (Dad said, once, "I knew a guy who forgot to leave his pen on the ground when he went for a ride-along in a dive-bomber to build his flight pay. Poor guy had a shirt full of ink.")

 

We bought ink to be legible, and not to express our inner-selves. Teachers used red inks, of course, but I don't remember anyone using brown, purple, or green. 

 

We expected an ink to flow freely. We wrote with our fountain pen (singular...one pen) every day, we worried more about never running out of ink. I filled my Parker 45 every morning, and carried a couple of cartridge as backup. Never knew of a pen getting clogged.

 

 

[inkstainedruth]

Not sure how I missed this thread before now.

I have some vintage ink (mostly Parker and Sheaffer) but somewhere along the line acquired a bottle that had vintage Carter ink in it, and just recently picked up five little bottles of Sanford Pen-It in different colors (all partly to mostly full) in different colors, although haven't had a chance to try any of them yet.  But one of my FAVORITE inks is vintage Skrip Peacock -- I found a roughly 3/4 large bottle of it a number of years ago in an antiques mall and the color is just GORGEOUS (the closest I've find as a possible replacement is modern Diamine Turquoise, because you get the "haloing" effect as well as the color being pretty close.

And I have some prints and old ads for Carters inks (the ones with the white mother cat and her ink colored kittens), including one where the kittens are playing baseball (with "Mom" as the umpire) and one of the kittens is sliding into home base and the umpire is going "SAFE!") -- I presume that the ad was referring to the inks being easy to wash out of clothing. 

I did have one vintage ink (an IG ink I'm presuming, since it was a blue-black) destroy the sac on a Pilot Con-B converter  -- but most of the vintage inks I've tried have been pretty well behaved, and have not gone bad.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[welch]

21 hours ago, inkstainedruth said:

Not sure how I missed this thread before now.

I have some vintage ink (mostly Parker and Sheaffer) but somewhere along the line acquired a bottle that had vintage Carter ink in it, and just recently picked up five little bottles of Sanford Pen-It in different colors (all partly to mostly full) in different colors, although haven't had a chance to try any of them yet.  But one of my FAVORITE inks is vintage Skrip Peacock -- I found a roughly 3/4 large bottle of it a number of years ago in an antiques mall and the color is just GORGEOUS (the closest I've find as a possible replacement is modern Diamine Turquoise, because you get the "haloing" effect as well as the color being pretty close.

And I have some prints and old ads for Carters inks (the ones with the white mother cat and her ink colored kittens), including one where the kittens are playing baseball (with "Mom" as the umpire) and one of the kittens is sliding into home base and the umpire is going "SAFE!") -- I presume that the ad was referring to the inks being easy to wash out of clothing. 

I did have one vintage ink (an IG ink I'm presuming, since it was a blue-black) destroy the sac on a Pilot Con-B converter  -- but most of the vintage inks I've tried have been pretty well behaved, and have not gone bad.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

Carter had some delightfully whimsical labels, and some gorgeous bottles. I once got a bottle of American Blue, a thick-ribbed bottle in a patriotic red-white-and-blue box. The ink, though, was nothing special...sadly. I use the bottle, now, to keep my Private Reserve American Blue.

[inkstainedruth]

And they had GREAT ads.  Apparently the guy who did the artwork for the Carter ads (forget his name) is collectible in his OWN right -- he also did a bunch of covers for IIRC The Saturday Evening Post with some spaniel in the artwork, and I once saw a picture of an ad for some other product that had geese flying in formation across the sky.  But the Carter's ads are just delightful....

Of course this is why, when I'm warning new folks to FPN about "enablers" I include ephemera in the list -- all those adorable Carter Ink ads....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

[welch]

5 minutes ago, inkstainedruth said:

And they had GREAT ads.  Apparently the guy who did the artwork for the Carter ads (forget his name) is collectible in his OWN right -- he also did a bunch of covers for IIRC The Saturday Evening Post with some spaniel in the artwork, and I once saw a picture of an ad for some other product that had geese flying in formation across the sky.  But the Carter's ads are just delightful....

Of course this is why, when I'm warning new folks to FPN about "enablers" I include ephemera in the list -- all those adorable Carter Ink ads....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

 

...and maybe the advertisements, the labels, and the bottle shapes are not even ephemera. Maybe they are all part of the fountain pen industry. I often wish we could learn more about the entire world of which fountain pens were part. We can find details of any sort of pen, but miss how they were used, what they meant, who bought them, what the pen companies tried during the ups and downs of the 20th Century economy. 

 

The one article I could find about Carters -- from a footnote to the Wikipedia article -- mentions that "Carter's packaging, advertising and products were on the cutting edge of technology at the time."

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20040810064341/http://www.pencollectors.com/pennant/fall99/carter.html

 

And here is an article about Francis Honn, who became Carter's Vice President of Technology in 1959, and who later created the yellow Hi-Liter.

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20161026163826/http://sites.jcu.edu/magazine/2016/03/07/hi-lite-of-a-lifetime/

 

So Carter's had a technology department! 

[inkstainedruth]

Thanks for posting the links!  Very interesting reading -- especially the second one (Mellon Institute is now part of Carnegie-Mellon University, my husband's alma mater).

I also vaguely remember "Marks-a-Lot" markers from when I was a little kid....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[txomsy]

My recollections are, living in Europe, that one would not think too much, just get the cheapest ink available as long as it worked.

 

 

I remember I wouldn't even flush when changing colors, just write until the new color took over. Writing was the thing, color was an accident. Most often I would use black, blue or blue-black for legibility. Typically Pelikan, Parker, Montblanc, Cross or Sheaffer.

 

Permanent ink was my preferred. Sheaffer green and red were too brilliant, green I could take but was light for my preference, red was eye-shearing and tiresome (but great for grading/underscoring). I preferred a burgundy or dark red for legibility.

 

It was writing that mattered. And with the odd exception pretty much all inks were well behaved. Perhaps Pelikan was a bit drier, can't be sure. One certainly was because it might clog if dried in the pen, but cannot remember which it was.