Ink Review: TWSBI 1791 Sky Blue

[Chrissy]

Today I'm reviewing TWSBI 1791 Sky Blue ink. This is one of the TWSBI special edition inks that is available either in single 18ml bottles or as a set of 6 x 18ml bottles of different coloured inks.

"The 1791 series comes from a book written in China in the year 1791 called “Dream of Red Chambers”. It’s one of China’s 4 great classical novels and TWSBI picked colours out of the buildings and descriptions within this book for this series of inks."

TWSBI Sky Blue is an unsaturated cerulean blue or turquoise dye based ink that flowed nicely and felt fairly wet through my pens. Lubrication across the paper was smooth. I experienced no start-up problems even after leaving the cap off while I was doing dry times and comparison ink tests. I saw some shading but no sheen.

I found this ink slightly thin and as a result it showed through and bled through slightly more than other inks I’ve used recently on a couple of the papers I wrote on.

The main pen used for this review is a TWSBI Eco with 1.1mm stub nib as I wanted to check how well the ink would clean out of TWSBI piston filling pens. I found that the ink cleaned out very easily and it washed off of my hands very easily.

Thanks to The Writing Desk for supplying this sample for review purposes.

• Flow Rate: Very good. Felt quite wet
• Lubrication: Good. Smooth across the page.
• Nib Dry-out: Not noticed.
• Start-up: Immediate.
• Saturation: Unsaturated ink.
• Shading: Some shading seen.
• Sheen: None seen.
• Show-Through/Bleed-Through: Seen on Clairefontaine Triomphe, Rhodia Bloc, Rhodia Dot Pad and Whitelines
• Spread / Feathering / Woolly Line: Seen occasionally.
• Nib Creep / “Crud”: Not seen, even after several days in the pen.
• Staining (pen): Not seen - easy clean-up with water.
• Staining (hands): Easy to wash off hands.
• Clogging: Not seen. Seems unlikely.
• Water resistance: Not sold as waterproof and has low water resistance.
• Availability: Available in 18ml bottles and as a combo pack of 6 bottles from The Writing Desk.

TWSBI Sky Blue.jpg