Troublemaker Golden Orchid - 4ml Fountain Pen Ink Sample

Hue: A dusty, slightly greyed purple that leans periwinkle-blue where it pools, with a distinct rusty gold-brown that separates out along the edges and drying lines. Troublemaker and their retailers describe it as a dusky purple that shades from dusty grey to purplish-blue — that undersells the gold. In my swatches the tan-bronze separation is one of the most obvious things about the ink, not a subtle undertone, and it's clearly where the "Golden" in the name comes from. Written out with a fine nib it's much paler and greyer than the swab suggests: a soft dusty mauve rather than a saturated violet.

Shading: Strong. Wide range between the pale mauve of light strokes and the deep blue-violet of heavy pooling, with the gold appearing wherever the ink gathers and dries.

Sheen: None seen in my swatches. The gold is chromatic separation — the ink splitting into its component dyes on the paper — not a metallic sheen sitting on the surface. Troublemaker's own listing records no sheen for this one. 

Shimmer: None. No particles, no settling in the bottle.

Flow: Dry.

The interesting bit: Troublemaker Inks is a small studio in Cebu, Philippines, founded in 2018 by two teenagers, and was the first Philippine-made fountain pen ink to reach the market. Their debut colours drew on Filipino and Cebuano culture — Hanging Rice, Luneta Twilight Pink, Sinulog Black — and every bottle carries the word ᜆᜒᜈ᜔ᜆ (tinta, "ink") in the pre-colonial Baybayin script. Golden Orchid arrived alongside Sepia Hour and Rodeo, a trio built around blends of rusty orange and dusty purple — the effect the ink community calls chromashading, where the dye components pull apart as the ink dries rather than simply going lighter and darker. On absorbent paper the gold barely shows; on coated paper like Tomoe River it does exactly what you see in my photos. 

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.