Taccia - Ebi

It has been awhile since I have reviewed as life just caught up with me but I knew I had to get back here especially now I’m half way through #30inks30days and I have swatched so many interesting colours.  I bought two Taccia inks recently and used them for days 12 and 14 of the challenge.  This review is for Ebi – red/purple.
Before I start though, contrary to some reviewers these are NOT Taiwanese inks.  Taccia pens are American, the inks are made in japan but state very clearly on the bottles they were born in California.

The inks come in 40ml bottles and are available from many online retailers.  I got mine from pen classics at NZ$24.99, which works out at about 62cents/ml so these are not particularly cheap inks.  I wasn’t sure how these would perform but they are made in Japan…..
 Ebi is Japanese for (depending on where you look) shrimp, prawn or lobster, though shrimp was the most common definition I found.   The box features a drawing of a shrimp.

Shrimp is a term that is used quite broadly and the exact animal to which it applies can vary depending on where you are.  The term is usually used to cover any of the groups of crustaceans with elongated bodies that use swimming as their mode of locomotion.  For many the term shrimp is synonymous with prawn but they are different.  There are over 1000 species of shrimp but I suspect none that match the colour of this ink.

Above are the more common shrimp colours, some are even transluscent.  It is described as a red-purple ink so I am not sure why shrimp.  I would call this a burgundy ink that has lovely shading on all the papers I tried it on.  Even burgundy doesn’t make me think of shrimp.
 The colouring on the box is an excellent representation of what this ink is like.  The bottle inside is a plain and reminds me of the squat Sailor ink bottles.

I started with my usual cheap chromatography.  I will admit I have realised I may not have given some inks their due as I just let the ink do its thing but have realised I need to add a little water to draw all the colours out.

The ink  was originally quite dark until I added a little water in the centre which allowed more display of the colours.  I then dropped water at the bottom of the paper (you may just be able to see the water line)  and this allowed even more spread / dispersal of the colours and blue/purple as well as the red shades became more obvious.

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Swatches on my col-o-ring and on Tomoe river paper were somewhat different.  The colo-o-ring did it no favours just demonstrating a pinky-burgundy ink.  The Tomoe river as one would expect from paper of this quality confirmed it was a red-purple ink.

Col-o-ring

Tomoe river

On the top left of the swatch on Tomoe river, with the eye of faith you can almost see that there is some sheen in this ink.  Macro lens are great for this because yes there is some sheen.

I mentioned before this ink had nice shading on all the paper I used it on but I have to qualify that by it does depend a little on quality even with the cheap papers.  I was using this at work and wrote on paper equivalent to copy paper and there was very nice shading coming out, no feathering and no show through.  I then tried it on cheap paper in a note book and it was very dull colour.  I suspect it’s a factor re-paper quality rather than the ink as this time there was  feathering and some show through.

Cheap paper almost copy paper quality - some shading

Notebook

The other papers I tried were Tomoe river and I was surprised to see some show through.  The ink also looked pinker.

Lastly Rhodia upon which it looked more purple.

You can see from both the Tomoe and rhodia tests this is not a very quick drying ink. However, it did hold up reasonably well to my water testing, I realise holding the paper with ink on it under a running tap is not the usual way to test but I feel its give more information than a few drops of water being splattered on a test sheet.

In summary a lovely shading ink in the red-purple (I say burgundy) range, saturated with good flow characteristics.
Pricey, at least in this part of the world but I don’t regret for one minute buying it.