Anderillium Potomac
Ink Review #5
*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.
This is Anderillium’s 2023 Washington DC Fountain Pen Supershow Exclusive ink.
Overview
The color/properties:
Anderillium Potomac is a soft medium blue. There’s some light shading: The ink lays down a soft gradient between medium and dark blue tones where the ink pools. The shading was crisper on both the Kokuyo and Tomoe River papers, and especially noticeable with the larger nibs, but overall there’s not a dramatic change in tone where the ink shades and the result is a deep and velvety appearance.
I wouldn’t call this a sheening ink by any means, but where the ink pools I did notice a dull sheen. It wasn’t easy to see – I had to examine it quite closely in good lighting, and I almost didn’t notice it at all – but if you lay the ink down with a wet enough pen you may start to bring more of the sheen out. Otherwise, you probably won’t notice any.
Ink Splat
Performance on paper:
Anderillium Potomac performs well. I didn’t experience any feathering or bleed-through during my tests. The dry times were mixed, but just slightly below average. The finer nibs took just a hair longer to dry than usual, but as the sizes went up, the dry times suffered more than I would normally expect to see. Despite that, none of the test nibs failed to dry within 30 seconds. Still, the inconsistencies make it uncomfortable for me to suggest on which papers the dry times appeared the best or worst.
Water resistance was okay. There was some color retention, and it was readable, but where the ink was heavier, it was cloudy and could be difficult to read.
A closer look at the performance issues with the needlepoint
Water resistance
Chromatography
Performance in the pen:
Potomac generally performed well. Most of the test nibs worked fine. It flowed well enough, and the ink felt especially silky and smooth, but not so much that it took away the tactility of writing by making it too slick. The issue that I had was the flow itself was inconsistent. Both the stub and the architect nibs felt especially dry, but they never failed to write. Almost all of the nibs didn’t have any issues with starts and stops. It was the needlepoint that gave me the most trouble because it ran into consistent hard starts and generally didn’t give me any confidence that it would continue to write. With that said, needlepoint nibs can be temperamental, and if an ink does have an issue flowing through it, that doesn’t necessarily reflect the ink’s performance as a whole.
Cleaning took just a tad longer than usual, but the water ran clear with a routine flush.
Value/cost per ml:
Because this ink is a 2023 DC Pen show exclusive, this ink isn’t readily available for sale. However, at the time of writing, this ink is available for sale from Pen Boutique for the standard Anderillium price of $14.50 for a 45ml bottle in the US making this ink at $0.32 per ml.
The bottle/packaging:
Anderillium Potomac comes in a great hexagonal jam jar-style bottle with a gold cap that not only looks good but is very functional as well. The bottle has a nice wide opening that will fit just about any pen (and syringe or pipette when the ink level gets too low), and the bottle feels very stable for filling.
The outer packaging is a basic white box with the same artwork from the bottle depicting the monuments of Washington DC with the Potomac River flowing beneath what looks like the Arlington Memorial Bridge.
Score: 64/70
Price per ml: 7/10
Performance in a pen: 7/10
Performance on paper: 10/10
Color saturation: 8/10
Sheening: 2/10
Shading: 5/10
Dry time: 6.5/10
Water resistance: 2.5/10
Ease of cleaning: 8/10
Bottle form: 4/5
Bottle function: 4/5
*Only 70 of the 100 available points are required for an outstanding score.My personal thoughts...
I’ll start by addressing the elephant in the room because I’m sure other DMV natives are thinking it:
The Potomac River isn’t blue. It can be anywhere between a greenish grey and a milky brown after a storm stirs up sediments at the bottom. It’s just not a clearwater river. To me at least, that doesn’t take away from the sentiment behind the concept. Would we really have been happy if our river was depicted as a muddy brown in an ink color? (I’ll admit I would have chuckled)
With that out of the way, what we have is a nice dusty blue. For the most part, it’s great. When the conditions are right, it’s genuinely a nice ink to write with. It does seem to be a tad touchy with some nibs, and honestly, I suggest just using it with a wetter nib. I personally don’t think that the minimal performance issues or dry times matter here. It’s a limited-edition ink, and my suggestion is to just enjoy it while it lasts.
Written in a Profolio Oasis notebook with a Pilot Custom 74 (Equipped with a Medium Selvedge Nib ground by Nib Tailor)
More images/info:
Tools and materials used in the writing samples:
A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 7 nib units including a Needlepoint grind, EF, F, M, B, 1.1mm stub, and an Architect grind. All nibs are tuned to perform at the same medium wetness.
A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad
A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook
A 68gsm A5 Tomoe River Notebook
A Maruman Mnemosyne A5 Spiral Notebook
A Kokuyo Campus A5 Notebook