Ink Review: TWSBI 1791 Royal Purple

[Chrissy]

Today I'm reviewing TWSBI 1791 Royal Purple 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 1791 Royal Purple is a slightly red leaning, unsaturated, purple dye based ink, that flowed very well and didn’t feel at all dry through my pens. Lubrication across the paper was very smooth and this ink felt really nice to write with in my pens. I experienced no start-up problems after leaving the cap off while I was doing dry times and comparison ink tests. I saw some shading but no sheen.

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 easily and it washed off of my hands easily. Only a very slight trace of purple was left on the feed inside the barrel after flushing water through the pen once.

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

• Flow Rate: Very good. Not dry.
• Lubrication: Very smooth.
• Nib Dry-out: Not noticed.
• Start-up: Immediate.
• Saturation: Unsaturated ink.
• Shading: Some shading seen.
• Show-through/Bleed-through: None seen.
• Spread / Feathering / Woolly Line: Not seen.
• Nib Creep / “Crud”: Not seen.
• Staining (pen): Not seen - very easy clean-up with water.
• Staining (hands): Very easy to wash off hands.
• Clogging: Not seen. Seems unlikely.
• Water resistance: Not sold as waterproof and has no water resistance.
• Availability: Available in 18ml bottles and as a combo pack of 6 bottles from The Writing Desk and other outlets worldwide.

TWSBI Royal Purple.jpg