Dryden Designs Ink Bottle for Fountain Pen | Luxury Edition, Smooth Flow, Compact Designed 50ml Sunset Orange

Excellent ink, smooth and rich flow, leaving good vivid color after drying.

I have a fountain pen that has needed ink for years. I finally got around to buying some, which was this. I love red.Its a good color, heavy bottle and Im very happy with it. I need to learn to fill the pen more neatly because I got red ink all over my fingertips which looks like I just cleaned a deer. The ink is hard to get off, which is a good thing to me. Good flow and priced right!!

I got this ink when I got my Dryden Designs fountain pen at the beginning of December and I just got around to testing it out. I hadn't even opened it. I was testing out the two colors of ink cartridges the pen came and now I've used up on of each, I was able to try this out.It comes in a squat heavy glass bottle which is very stable and resists spilling. It has a silicone rubber stopper in the top so it absolutely can't spill when the lid is screwed on tight. It is a very nice looking bottle that looks good alongside my other more stylish bottles of ink.The ink itself is a nice black ink. It isn't quite as black as some of my other favorite black inks, but this is black enough for my uses. It is not a waterproof ink so it will run and smear if it gets wet and you won't want to use it for anything that requires permanence. It is a fairly fast drying ink. It does bleed through paper that my other inks don't bleed through, leaving some big spots on the other side. However it doesn't feather significantly with a more dry writing pen, but it does feather where pens put down a lot of ink.The ink is a bit more expensive than other fountain pen inks, but not quite as bad as the more expensive brands. You are paying for the custom bottle a bit, but the bottle is good and stable highly reducing the chances that you will knock it over, making it more worth it. Some of their colors are cheaper than others, I'm guessing because they aren't as popular and they are trying to reduce inventory on those. It is a nice ink but I think it could be a little lower in price. They also unfortunately have a very low color selection. I've researched some of their other colors and I'm probably going to get some when they come back in stock.

Great flow. Very dark ink, refills easy and works way better than the little single use pen capsules.

Thus far, I've only used this in a Waterman pen with a medium nib. The pen sat idle for some time because I'd made the mistake of putting a junky disposable cartridge in it and it gummed up the works pretty badly. I rinsed the pen out and used a "universal" converter cartridge to put in my Unforgiving Black.The ink dries fast and soaks in quite well. I tested a patch with a drop of water and it didn't smear much at all.I read in the reviews that I should shake the jar before using it. I didn't do that, and honestly the ink does look a little lighter than I expected with a title like "Unforgiving Black," but I suspect that part of the issue here is the old ink and water hasn't yet cleared out of the mechanism.I guess I'm an ink junkie. I'll never use all that I have, and yet... I feel like I need to try a few more of Dryden's colors.

Smooth, bright, dries quickly.

I received the ink very quickly (Amazon Prime, 2 days, even in Covid19), opened and used the Emerald color that day. I used it in a Moonman M800 Emerald pen, and it performed incredibly well. I liked the color, not imbued with so much black (true of many greens) that you could not see the green. Th flow was excellent. It PASSED MY BRIEF WATER TEST related to water resistance (I could still read “quick brown fox” after 15 seconds on cheap legal pad paper even; after 20 seconds not so much). The best part to me was the bottle, as I thought for its the price these bottles might be the best I have ever received, fit for a desk or other display.

It's a wonderful strong red.But my bottle, at four years old, began to form mucus-like strings.It had to be discarded.