review: organics studio masters of writing foggy bottom yellow sepia

All work and no play makes me a dull boy, so a break was very necessary this last week. Let's hop right back into the reviews with one about Organics Studio!

If you've never heard of Organics Studio, it's a smaller brand that's essentially a one-man operation. The founder took a break for graduate school, but is back with some interesting colors and inks. You're probably familiar with super-sheeners like Organics Studio Henry David Thoreau Walden Pond Blue, which I've reviewed here before, but I was interested in the rest of their catalog as well.

First, I should mention that when I got to writing this review, my bottle of Foggy Bottom Yellow Sepia had turned into this:

I didn't notice this, uh, phenomenon when I first got the sample. The flecks weren't gooey, nor did they seem like slime. It was more like the ink had condensed into these little globs that loved to cling to the sides of the vial.

It's possible that the ink had gotten contaminated along the way. It'd certainly explain the change in color. And speaking of—

The Pen Chalet website suggests a deep brown red in their swatch, but that was not the case for my sample. I have something that's a dusty ash brown kind of color.

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The ink stayed on the page pretty well. It had a decent amount of water resistance that would make me feel okay with accidentally spilling water on it.

It did take quite a while to dry, however. It wasn't there by the 60 second mark, and I don't think I've had an ink that took that long yet!

On Kokuyo MIO paper, there was some shading in the broad nib.

On Tomoe River, there's about as much shading. It has no sheen at all.

I compare this ink to some of the other browns I have in my collection. Unsurprisingly, there isn't anything quite like it. SKB Chapo is much more khaki. Diamine Sepia is more orange. KWZ Ink Honey and Cappuccino are both deeper. Honey leans orange, while Cappuccino leans brown.

I had this ink in my Lamy Safari with a broad nib. It had an average flow and didn't have any issues with hard starts.

This is probably not the most accurate review considering the particulate that was in my sample. I will say that this ink performed surprisingly well. It had decent flow in my Lamy Safari, and flushed out very easily. I haven't noticed any particulate build-up either, so at least that's a good sign.

Where to buy

I purchased my sample from Pen Chalet.

• Pen Chalet: bottle / sample