New Favorite Ink?
Vinta Aegean Armada 1944 Fountain Pen Ink Review
You’re making use of a fantastic door-buster sale at Atlas Stationers to pick up a couple of pens that have been on your wish list for a while: the Faber-Castell Hexo in Bronze with a broad nib and in Black Matte with a medium nib. Garry Eves has raved about the pen model and you’re already a fan of Faber-Castell. Though you still won’t reach the free shipping threshold, you might as well throw in a bottle of ink, right?
That’s what happened. That’s how I discovered what very well could be my new favorite ink. In any color family. From any brand. New. Favorite. Ink. Shall I spell it out?
Being a sucker for grey inks and wanting to explore the Vinta brand more than the one bottle in my collection, I scrolled through the brand on the Atlas website and landed on what looked like a promising grey ink. Add to cart. Checkout.
What I received blew me away. Not at first, mind you.
They were all right there in front of me so of course I decided to ink up Aegean Armada 1944 in both Hexo pens. It will be interesting to see how the ink looks coming out of two different nib sizes, I reasoned.
The line widths were surprisingly similar, and the medium nib was a bit smoother than the broad. Go figure. In both cases, what was revealed was a strong shader from light to dark grey with a blue tone. Winner. I love it.
But it wasn’t until I laid down the ink swatch using my Mont Marte Calligraphy Dip Pen Set on the Midori MD Notebook A5 Page a Day that I nearly cried out with glee. The magic of the ink is not captured in either my photos or those of Atlas. You just have to see it in person.
If you’re at all familiar with the magical ink line Sailor Yurameku, you know exactly what kind of magic happened on the glorious Midori paper. Colors shifted and separated and took on a life of their own. The result was a swatch that was undoubtedly grey… but so much more. There’s black. There’s pinkish brown. There’s blue-black. And there is the expected medium-to-light cool grey. Swatching Vinta Aegean Armada 1944 turns anyone into an artist.
Yes. It’s that good.
Paper will matter, of course, as it does with all chroma-shading inks. On cheap notebook paper proven to not be fountain pen friendly, it only offers subtle shading and no chroma-shading. The overall tone is a medium, cool grey. The warmth of Midori paper gives the colors a boost not seen in white paper. But any fountain pen friendly paper will unleash the potential of this ink.
At less than 50¢ per ml, this is one of the greatest deals in the world of fountain pen ink, especially compared to the $1 per ml of the Sailor Yurameku inks. The latter I have declared as my favorite line of inks. Vinta has a way to go to prove itself, but I’m sure in my future explorations, Aegean Armada 1944 will not turn out to be a one-off success.
I can’t wait to make my next great discovery with Vinta!
What do you think of this ink? What other Vinta inks do you recommend? Drop a comment below to share your thoughts.
Resource: Compare Vinta Aegean Armada 1944 with similar inks at inkswatch.com.
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