TACCIA Ukiyo-e Utamaro Ume Murasaki — 4ml Fountain Pen Ink Sample

Hue: Sold as a plum purple. On my swatches it reads as a dusty old rose leaning towards brown-plum, noticeably less purple than the name suggests. In writing it goes down darker, closer to a muted burgundy-plum.

Shading: Strong. Clear light-to-dark variation in the swab and pooling at the ends of strokes in writing, with a darker halo around the edges.

Sheen: None. Where the ink pools very heavily, a dark olive-green edge forms at the rim. You won't see this from a pen line.

Shimmer: None.

Flow: Medium.

The interesting bit: Part of Taccia's Ukiyo-e series, where each ink takes a colour from an Edo-period woodblock print. This one comes from the Utamaro set and is drawn from the clothing of Okita, a waitress at the Naniwaya teahouse near Asakusa, as painted by Kitagawa Utamaro. Ume murasaki means "plum purple" and is a traditional Japanese colour name. The label on the bottle reads 歌麿梅紫, Utamaro's plum purple.

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.