Lennon Tool Bar Pretty Volume #2 Ghost Plant — 4ml Fountain Pen Ink Sample

Hue: A muted, cool-toned green. Lennon Tool Bar describe it simply as a cool green; my swatches are more specific than that — at writing weight it reads as a dusty sage-grey-green, soft and slightly desaturated, while pooled areas drop to a deep pine that edges towards black-green. 

Shading: Strong. The tonal range is wide — pale sage in thin strokes through to dark pine where the ink gathers. The swab and drops show clear light-to-dark banding rather than a flat wash. No second colour separates out.

Sheen: None visible on Tomoe River Paper.

Shimmer: None.

Flow: Wet.

The interesting bit: 石蓮花 is Graptopetalum paraguayense, the ghost plant — a succulent so at home in Taiwan that it's grown as much for the kitchen as the windowsill, juiced or eaten raw as a health food. Its rosettes are coated in a chalky, powdery bloom that gives the leaves a pale, spectral grey-green cast, which is more or less where this ink sits on the page. It comes from Lennon Tool Bar's 2024 spring collection, Pretty Vol. 2, whose name borrows the Taiwanese Hokkien word for beautiful, and which pairs the ghost plant with calendula, platycodon and ixora. The brand's own note on it is about slowness — the plant builds its rosette ring by ring, in no hurry at all. Lennon Tool Bar started life in Tamsui in 2014 making indigo dye goods, and moved into inks to keep those traditional colours in circulation.

This is a hand-decanted 4ml sample vial from my own bottle.

Photos are my own swatches on Tomoe River Paper.

I'm a collector and I'm always happy to talk ink, so please message me if you have any questions.