Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Brown — 4ml Fountain Pen Ink Sample

Hue: A warm reddish-brown — chestnut to rust, with a distinct brick-red lean. Pelikan and retailers describe it as a warm brown with red-orange tones, and reviewers often mention it lightening towards burnt sienna. My swatches read redder and deeper than that suggests: the written line is closer to chestnut than to a mid-brown, and where the ink pools heavily it gathers to a very dark, almost black-brown edge rather than opening out to orange.

Shading: Moderate. Clear light-to-dark variation across the swab bar and the pooled swatches; more restrained in the writing sample, where it reads as gentle tonal shift rather than dramatic contrast.

Sheen: None.

Shimmer: None.

Flow: Dry.

The interesting bit: The 4001 in the name isn't a colour code or a recipe — it's a nineteenth-century filing decision. In 1898 Pelikan gave its most important writing and copying inks blunt, memorable numbers: 2001, 3001, 4001, 5001 and later 6001. The company's price lists ran to seventeen pages of ink varieties at the time, and numbers were easier to remember than names. 4001 was originally an iron gall document ink that didn't fade, which made it a favourite of state authorities and, within a few years, one of the best-selling inks in the world. It outlived every other number in the series. Today 4001 is an umbrella for a family of long-established formulations rather than a single ink — only the Blue-Black remains iron gall, and Brilliant Brown is not. The inks were formulated with Pelikan's own piston pens in mind, which is worth knowing given the dry flow: it shows at its best in a wet nib.

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.