Scribo inks are fairly new to the fountain pen scene and have started to get some attention. While Scribo makes some amazing pens, I was a bit hesitant to try these inks. I mean, who really needs 90mL of one ink?
I purchased samples of a few colors from Vanness, but only a few. The line-up wasn’t particularly impressive – black, gray, burgundy, red, turquoise, blue-black… No sheen, no amazing shading qualities. Boring, safe colors. However, when I received the samples, I was in for a treat.
Verde Prato and Nero Nero were two of the samples I had purchased (along with Rosso Chianti and Verde Mediterraneo) and the two I decided to purchase first (yes, I said first). I purchased a bottle of each from Pen Chalet.
Verde Prato (forgive the spelling error above) turned out to be a vivid late-spring green. Inks that try for this color often suffer from illegibility and eye-searing brightness. Verde Prato flirts with that line but never crosses it. The ink is bright but not distractingly so. It is also dark enough to be quite legible.
Swatching the cards, I found rich colors that behaved beautifully, as if they were made only to compliment fountain pens. Huh. Of course they were. It says so right on the box. Fountain Pen Ink.
As a warning, if you purchase more than one or two bottles at a time, you may earn a mean look from your mail carrier. These bottles are HEAVY.
Nero Nero is a rich and wonderfully dark black. Shouldn’t black ink always be dark? Yes. But not all are. Is it waterproof? You can see a few of my water drops on the card. Don’t worry! They were not tears. Thank you for being so concerned, though! Even after my non-tears test, the ink is still legible although loses the dark color. I would call the ink slightly water resistant. I appreciate non-waterproof black inks since they are typically easy to clean out.
The swatch card of Platinum Carbon Black here is a bit misleading. My swatch of PCB photographs terribly – the ink is actually very dark and rich. I’ve wondered if the carbon particles (lampblack) interfere with the photography.
Nurebairo is another of my favorite black inks, but is actually an extremely dark blue as you can see from the swatch above. This is another impressive point with Nero Nero – black dye (non-waterproof, no particulates) is made of a mixture of very dark primary colors. Many black inks lean towards one color or another but Nero Nero is a neutral black.
Aurora Black is known for its extreme wetness in flow – it can get even extremely dry-flowing pens to write smoothly. The Scribo ink is the same in color but the flow is just a touch on the wet side of average.
When I first swatched Verde Prato, my thought was that Ana (the owner of this blog) would love this color. Bright green is one color (along with almost neon pink) that follows her in life.
I recently purchased my first Benu pen. It sparkles, has tinsel, glows in the dark, looks like an ordinary pen turned inside-out. You know, a pen that makes me feel 10 years old. Well, Verde Prato is the perfect ink for this pen. Verde Prato and the Benu pen have been inseparable since the beginning. With a standard Schmidt nib, I have yet to see a dry nib (it’s a fine nib).
A review of the Scribo inks cannot be complete without talking about these bottles. 90mL of ink alone is 90 grams (3.2 ounces) of ink. But the bottle surrounding the ink is solid glass and brings the overall weight to a full pound before counting in the packaging weight. Luckily, this packaging is designed to support the weight, but don’t drop this bottle on a toe. However, if you do drop the bottle on anything other than concrete, it will most likely survive. Not that I would know.
The stacking feature of these bottles is my favorite part. The base of each bottle contains a notch perfectly sized to fit over the neck of another bottle without touching the cap of the bottle bottle. This creates a stable stack that not even my cats have been able to topple and looks great sitting on my desk. Now the top of the Verde Prato is calling to me to add another bottle…
These two inks will not be my last Scribo inks. I have been thoroughly impressed by the quality of the ink and the attention to the bottle design. The only problem I have so far is the inks selling out!
DISCLAIMER: All of the items in this review were purchased by me. Please see the About page for more details.
Tina Koyama is an urban sketcher in Seattle. Her blog is Fueled by Clouds & Coffee, and you can follow her on Instagram as Miatagrrl.
