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Retrospective: Friday June 18

June 19, 2021

🄼🄸🄽🄸 🅁🄴🅅🄸🄴🅆🅂 On Instagram!

Bungubox Omaezaki Sunset 🌅
Diamine Autumn Oak 🍂
Pelikan Edelstein Amber
More coming (somewhat periodically)…

I’m expanding this Retrospectives to include recently inked pens, new acquisitions, music I am listening to and photos I’ve taken. This is in addition to a short reading list, links to minireviews, and what’s new with with my sponsors. Hopefully this means there is more value in these posts! :)

🗞 Articles I’ve read:

Tomoe River: The Full Story (Jacob/fudefan) ✑ There have been a lot of discussion around Tomoe River Paper lately but this is the article I find the most trustworthy (with direct contact with Tomoegawa). This also matches what I have heard (locally to me).
The joys of the returning pen meetup (JP/mnmlscholar) ✑ Good to see some pen meets happening again! We’ve been very privileged in the state where I am in Australia (WA). So far we’ve been covid free for the vast majority of the pandemic and so we only missed four of our monthly pen meets last year (and could have gone back earlier) and none this year. I need to write an article about pen meets, what to expect, what to bring etc,!
Ink Review #567: Rohrer & Klingner Leipziger Schwartz (Fountain Pen Pharmacist) ✑ I notices that this is an interesting black ink which I did my black ink comparison. It still feels black even though it has some colour and shading.
Ink Is Everywhere (From the Pen Cup) ✑ Short and sweet but I love this. Definitely do see ink everywhere!

🛍 Check out my Sponsors* and help out the blog:

La Couronne do Comte (10% off with MACCHIATOMAN10) ✒︎ They have sales on some old LE Montblanc inks and the 2019 Lamy AL-Star LE!
Pen Classics ✒︎ The newer Kawecos look great and the Papier Plume inks are always interesting.
Goldspot ✒︎ They have a sale on the Lamy Safari Mango and Turmaline gift sets, and the Pelikan M120 has a great price (and is a lovely pen!). Check our their exclusives as well!
Pen Chalet (10% off with MACCHIATOMAN) ✒︎ Always new sales going on. A great price on a Stipula!
Esterbrook Pens ✒︎ The recently released Aqua Estie looks great. Can’t wait to get my hands on it! The Gold Rush is also nice and sparkly!
Desk Bandit ✒︎ Troublemaker inks! These inks have always been difficult to get but Desk Bandit found a way! That alone is worth checking them out!
Bookbinders Design Australia (15% off code: BBDMACCHIATO) ✒︎ Sale on a lot of Pilot and Platinum pens with a great price on the Custom 823 and the Platinum Century #3776!
Pen Savings (12% off with MACCHIATOMAN) ✒︎ Excellent selection of Private Reserve, Monteverde and Noodler’s. My go-to for these brands!
ink’d Pens (10% off with LOVE MACCHIATO MAN) ✒︎ A newish pen shop to Australia! A new Diamine provider is great (surprisingly few in Australia) and the Ferris Wheel Press fountain pens which look interesting!

*Due to COVID-19 I have extended all sponsorships throughout the pandemic.

🖋 Recently Inked

Two of the new inks from below are inked up. Both are rather pale but Ferris Wheel Press ink is extremely pale (which I expected); I can’t imagine putting this in a fine or extra fine!

Ferris Wheel Press Sweet Honeydew in a Montblanc 22 (Broad)

(Sailor) Hachimonjiya Jellyfish Aquarium in a Retro51 Tornado (Extra-Fine)

🛒 Recently Acquired

I recently picked up three Sailor inks including Central Daimaru Ishikiriyama (dark blue-grey), Hachimonjiya Jellyfish Aquarium (light blue), and D's Stationery Gifu Iro Nagaragawa Kawasemi no Seiryuu (black/tall bottle). I also picked up Kyo-no-oto Moegiiro and Ferris Wheel Press Sweet Honeydew from Deskbandit (as well as 500 loose pages of original 52gsm Tomoe River). Finally I have three Esterbrook pens on the way (various degrees of on the way) and a Galen Leather 40 pen case! I’ll be posting photos of these or reviewing them shortly!

🎼What I’m listening to

Debussy’s La mer est plus belle que les cathédrales from Trois Mélodies sur des poèmes de Paul Verlaine.

I don’t talk about it much but I’m actually completing my Masters in Musicology/Composition. The topic is octatonicism and an early work with octatonic elements is this first song. Lovely ode to the sea with a really beautiful closing cadence.

Something a little more rich is Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings Op. 48 which has some memorable melodies and luscious string timbres.

I forgot about this piece for a while but just remembered it recently! A lovely work.

📷 Photography

I’ve been really enjoying photography for the past few years, especially (but not limited to) landscape/nature photography. These are some recent shots!

Shaded water with the hillside illuminated by the mid-afternoon sun produced a somewhat abstract painterly water with cool rocks.

Taken the same day as above. I’ve been to this location before but I really wanted a beautiful sunset and I definitely got luck this day! Was pretty difficult to handle the extreme dynamic range in this photo so it’s an HDR blend and a time blend (to better handle the sun).

Not too long ago I visited Rottnest Island off the coast of Fremantle, Western Australia where I live. It’s a lovely relaxing, natural and refreshing place. So lucky to have such an untouched island right on our doorstep! Also home to quokkas (see below). You can see the silhouette of Perth city in the sunrise.

Curious and very friendly Western Grey Kangaroo with its somewhat older joey from the location of the first photo.

Sleepy quokkas from Rottnest Islands (the ‘rats’ or ‘Rott’ of ‘Rottnest’).Super friendly and all over the place. When they are sleepy they just stop and sleep wherever they are it seems (middle of the road, path or outside a shop).

⏳Coming soon!

I have a review of KWZ Aztec gold IGL up next. Then I have La Couronne du Comte’s Diamine collaboration inks lined up as well as two Esterbrook reviews coming as well. I will be mixing these up with some other stuff as well (such as a pen meet related article)!

Ink Review: Van Dieman's Eucalyptus Regnans

June 06, 2021 in Ink Review

Van Dieman’s are an Australian company run by a two-person team based in Tasmania. They have broadened their ink making a lot recently and now have five different series of inks: The Original Colours of Australia (the inks they first made), The Hollywood Series, The Midnight Series, The Wilderness Series (where this ink is from), Tassie Seasons, and Harvest. 70 inks in total! I reviewed Bonfire Night in 2019.

Anthony van Diemen, a Explorer, in an effort to explore the "Great South Land” - subsequently named "Nieuw Holland” and eventually Australia - sent Abel Tasman on an exploration mission. When Abel Tasman discovered the large island below the mainland of Australia he, thinking it was a large territory, named it Van Dieman’s Land after his patron. Eventually it would be renamed Tasmania.

Ink Review: Berlin Noterbook No. 5 New Red

May 17, 2021 in Ink Review

A little over a year ago I bought and reviewed Berlin Notebook No. 1 Blue. It was a deep and rich blue ink with a lot of copper sheen on certain papers. It was a beautiful blue and different from the more common super sheening inks. I mentioned in the review that Berlin Notebook also have a Black Label reformulation of the ink to achieve the same ink colour with much less sheen. Recently Berlin Notebook sent me a bottle of both the Black Label of No. 1 Blue and their most recent ink No. 5 New Red. While the two Blue inks were created in collaboration with artist Viktor Walter, No. 5 New Red has been created in collaboration with Caroline Corleone. Both artists use pinks or blues in their recent works Berlin Notebook also sell artwork made with the inks. A green ink is on the way as well!

This review is the first of my refreshed review design that I mentioned on my last ink review. I’m only using Lamy Safari’s moving forward because it is easier to change nibs, I have a more consistent feel for the use of an ink, and there will be more nib options. The comparison writing will still be written with a James Finniss Serendipity (from Pensive Pens). A flex would be nice and I’ll look into a good option for that at some point. This design is derived from my ink overview paper designs and with a bit from my Instagram minireviews. If you have any suggestions please let me know!

Ink Review: Shosaikan Syosaikan Seiran Blue

May 06, 2021 in Ink Review

Shosaikan-Syosaikan Seiran Blue is one of two Sailor-made inks from the Shosaikan pen shop based in Tokyo with the other being a green-yellow. They are both in the lovely Sailor Tall or Vase bottles. I visited the store in 2018 on my trip to Japan; it’s a beautiful and spacious store with lots to offer (and lots of high end pens!). Before visiting the store, I acquired this ink via a forwarding service.

Pen Review: Esterbrook Estie with Journaler nib and Vintage nib (+ Nook giveaway)

April 09, 2021 in Stationery Review, Pen Review

Esterbrook is a company with a lot of renowned early history until 1971 and a bit of a hiccuped relaunch of the brand since 2014. The 2018 relaunch by the folks at Kenro Industries, Inc. has been a much more confidence inspiring relaunch with the company releasing multiple pens and cases as well as integrating with vintage nibs and custom ground nibs. There’s a bit going on and it’s all quite interesting!

Esterbrook, wanting to expand into the Australian market organised a virtual pen meet of sorts for the Australian fountain pen community where they discussed the brand, its early history, and what they are doing with it now. Afterwards we got in contact with each other and they organised a care package with a Honeycomb Etsie, some accessories and a 6 pen Nook case to give away (see the bottom of this review for details)!

I was surprised by how much I liked the pen so after receiving the review pen I bought the Cobalt Blue Etsie from Desk Bandit who just recently started stocking Esterbrook.