Tono & Lims Earth Contact Opal — 4ml Fountain Pen Ink Sample

Hue: A pale champagne-yellow that deepens to olive-gold and warm brown where the ink pools. Retailer copy generally describes it simply as a gold ink; my swatches on Tomoe River show it lighter and cooler than "gold" suggests in normal writing, and considerably more complex in heavy application — the muddler swabs break into distinct olive-green and warm brown-mauve zones rather than staying a single tone. Worth knowing this is a genuinely pale ink on the page.

Shading: Strong, with a wide range from near-transparent pale yellow to deep olive-brown, and a darker halo at the edges of strokes on premium papers. The light areas are light enough that legibility depends on nib and paper.

Sheen: None.

Shimmer: Yes — a fine, densely suspended shimmer. It reads gold in writing, but the particles are actually a mix of green, pink and silver, which is what gives it the opalescent flicker. Shake the vial before filling, and it does better in a broader nib.

Flow: Medium.

The interesting bit: Opal is number 003 in Tono & Lims' Earth Contact series, a run of shimmer inks each built around a gem or mineral. Opals aren't usually thought of as yellow, but the name isn't really about hue — it's about opalescence, the play of rainbow colour that appears when light moves across the stone. That's what the multi-coloured shimmer is doing here, and why the particles are green, pink and silver rather than plain gold. Tono & Lims itself is a collaboration between Japanese fountain pen enthusiast Takashi Ono and the South Korean ink maker Lim's Lab, which is why the brand's inks tend to sit somewhere between Japanese restraint and Korean colour experimentation.

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.