Kingdom Note - Stopharia aeruginosa

​To celebrate Kingdom Notes 5th anniversary in 2014 Sailor produced some bespoke inks for them.  There were three series of five inks each.  Birds of Japan, insects of Japan and Mushrooms of Japan.  Unfortunately Kingdom note do not ship overseas, they can occasionally be found at exorbitant prices on ebay or you can buy using a proxy.  If you can buy the ink in Japan it retails for $US18.50.  I was lucky enough to be generously gifted some samples of some Kingdom Notes inks that I had coveted for some time.

The ink today is from the Fungi (mushroom) series,  the colours of the series are red, light blue, pink, dark blue and this ink Stropharia aeruginosa = green.
Stropharia aeruginosa are also commonly known as Verdigris agaric.  They are a green woodland mushroom found on lawns and mulch.  They are very common and the jury is still out as to whether they are poisonous or not.  People disagree and despite some sating they are poisonous little is known about what the effects of eating them are.

The original packaging for the ink was the traditional squat Sailor bottle the latest releases has the ink in bottles similar to Sailors Manyo range.  

The ink looks dark in the bottle however from chromatography there is such a mix of colours it suggest it might not be as dark when dry especially as it has some bright lime green in it.

Both the col-o-ring and Tomoe swatches were washed out / insipid looking but you can see how much darker the ink really is with the writing on the col-o-ring.

Col-o-ring

Tomoe

I started the writing on Rhodia – this is clearly a wet ink, it was slow drying and I was very surprised to see feathering and show through.

On copy paper it behaved better than on Rhodia. I thought it was very similar to a Mont Blanc ink I have but when I put the writing together they are different as you can see in the photo.  The difference however, is not huge

It was slow to dry on Tomoe just like the rhodia but at least no feathering etc.

I went through my green inks and came up with the following as being similar.

I am grateful for the sample I received, I like green inks but I won’t buy this.  It just doesn’t appeal to me, it is very wet and unless I go to Japan its too expensive to make the effort to purchase through a proxy or on ebay.
In summary -
Saturation – moderate
Shading – some
Sheen – no
Shimmer - no
Flow – good
Nib dry-out - none
Nib creep - none
Start-up – immediate
Feathering – yes and on good paper!!
Drying – slow
Cleaning – easy
Water resistance – I think the ink is so pale you can’t see it washing out it just faded away when held under a tap