Bungbox - Ink of the Witch

Bungubox is a fountain pen store located in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka (half way between Tokyo and Osaka).  As well as pens Bungubox has established a name for its inks better known as Bungbox inks.  There was a time when you could not purchase these inks outside of Japan unless you used a proxy or a groupbuy.  There used to be an excellent website called Massdrop that enabled people to purchase inks such as these before they became widely available in the USA.  Sadly massdrop is a shadow of its former self for those of us in the writing community, luckily a number of American retailers now sell these inks such as Vanness Pen shop in Little Rock 

This is the first Bungbox ink I bought and though they are made by Sailor so some colours will be similar I do not think Sailor have an ink as dark as this except for black.  This ink is a very adrk purple and lives up to its name ‘ink of the witch’ conjuring up images of witches flying at night through inky blackness that isn’t quite a true black.
The ink packaging is simple, a steel coloured (dark silver) box with gold lettering and the squat  ink bottles that Sailor no longer uses for its named inks.

On opening the bottle it is a dark ink and looks black not purple.  The only purple is a hint you can see at the edges of the pool of ink

Chromatography – no surprises black and purple.

On col-o-ring you can see hints of aubergine and on Tomoe though it is a purple shade it is very black dominant.

col-o-ring

Tomoe

Though this is the first Bungbox ink I bought I hardly use it.  I love purple inks and this just doesn’t do it for me because despite seeing some purple in the swatches the writing is almost black no matter what the paper even Tomoe.
The ink behaved impeccably on copy paper with minimal feathering and very little show through, it dried rapidly but it was black.

On Rhodia the dry time was a little longer but the ink remained black and sadly the same on Tomoe.  I had thought at least on Tomoe I would see some purple but sadly it looks black and took forever to dry.

Rhodia

Tomoe

OK so I don’t really like this ink.  I got it out again after someone I follow on IG recently bought some, thought I would give it another go but I was just reminded about why I don’t use it – too too dark.  The ink behaves pretty well except too a long a dry time on Tomoe.  I have some much nicer Bungbox inks I use regularly.
In summary -
Saturation – high but its so dark its black
Shading – no
Sheen – no
Shimmer - no
Flow –good
Nib dry-out - none
Nib creep - none
Start-up – Excellent 
Feathering – very slight on cheap paper
Drying – the better the quality of paper the slower the dry time
Cleaning - good
Water resistance - not sold as waterproof but held up incredibly well when held under running water