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Dominant Industry Earl Grey Tea

Julian

Ink Review #35

*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.

Overview

The color/properties:

Dominant Industry Earl Grey Tea is a vibrant reddish orange. It exhibits some light shading, but it shows with a softer gradient and less tone variation than expected. There’s still enough shading to give this ink some character, but it has a creamier appearance, rather than a hard and crisp cut between lighter and darker tones.

Ink Splat

Droplets

Rhodia

Leuchtturm1917

Performance on paper:

Earl Grey Tea had good performance on paper. I didn’t get any bleed-through or feathering, and dry times were just slightly above average: the finer nibs dried faster than usual, but the larger nibs stuck around the 20-second mark. Unfortunately, water resistance was poor and anything left over would most likely be difficult to read.

Midori MD

Maruman

Tomoe River

Kokuyo

Water resistance

Chromatography

Performance in the pen:

Overall, Earl Grey Tea had excellent performance. The ink had a medium but consistent and well-lubricated wetness across all of the test nibs. I didn’t experience any hard starts, skips, or stops during my writing tests. Cleaning took slightly longer than usual, but nothing was needed outside of a few soaks and flushes.

  • Performance in a pen: 10/10

  • Performance on paper: 10/10

  • Color saturation: 5.5/10

  • Sheening: 0/10

  • Shading: 3/10

  • Dry time: 8/10

  • Water resistance: 1/10

  • Ease of cleaning: 7.5/10

  • Shimmer: None

My personal thoughts…

I was overjoyed when I spotted this ink at the DC Pen Show. Could it be? Was there finally a tea-themed ink that looked like Earl Grey? I’m happier about this than I should willingly admit, but Dominant Industry Earl Grey Tea does, in fact, look like Earl Grey tea. What more can you really ask for here? We did it, lads.

And I even got to brew a cup of tea

Written on 68 gsm Tomoe River paper with a Kaweco Liliput (medium)

Other tea-themed inks:

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More images/info:

Tools and materials used in the writing samples:

  • A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 7 nib units including a Needlepoint grind, EF, F, M, B, 1.1mm stub, and an Architect grind. All nibs are tuned to perform at the same medium wetness.

  • A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad

  • A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook

  • A Midori MD A5 Notebook

  • A 68gsm A5 Tomoe River Notebook

  • A Maruman Mnemosyne A5 Spiral Notebook

  • A Kokuyo Campus A5 Notebook

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