Anderillium Tolype Moth Warm
Ink Review #7
*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.
Overview
The color/properties:
Tolype Moth Warm is a soft pastel that offers some subtle shading between a light, earthy, greyish-brown, and a slightly deeper, dusty brown. I can’t help but notice that there are subtle purple undertones as well. Overall, there’s not a lot of variation in the shading, but it’s just enough to achieve what Anderillium was going for.
Ink splat
Ink droplets
Performance on paper:
Tolype Moth Warm performed well. I didn’t encounter any bleeding or feathering on most of the test papers, with just a single spot of bleed-through on the Kokuyo paper. The ink is overall very well-behaved, and I don’t expect that there would be many issues with most fountain pen friendly papers. Dry times are average, with a noticeably linear increase in dry times as the nib sizes go up, and there were few discrepancies across all of the test papers.
There’s some degree of water resistance, and pink traces of what was written are left behind. They’re pale and cloudy, however, and the readability will vary.
Water resistance
Chromatography
Performance in the pen:
Tolype Moth Warm has a medium-wet flow that was consistent throughout all the test nibs. The ink feels nicely lubricated, offering a particularly silky writing experience, but retaining enough tactility to ensure control while writing. There were no hard starts, skips, or stops, and cleaning was easy, with only a minor lingering of color after the initial flush. Overall the ink is very well-behaved.
Value/cost per ml:
At the time of writing, Anderillium Tolype Moth Warm is available for $14.50 for a 45ml bottle from select US retailers, making this ink $0.32 per ml.
The bottle/packaging:
Anderillium Tolype Moth Warm 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 a Tolype Moth.
Score: 61/70
Price per ml: 7/10
Performance in a pen: 10/10
Performance on paper: 9.5/10
Color saturation: 4.5/10
Sheening: 0/10
Shading: 7.5/10
Dry time: 6.5/10
Water resistance: 0/10
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...
Anderillium once again did an exceptional job replicating the color they were aiming for, and overall, I really like Tolype Moth Warm. It was the first ink to catch my eye at the Anderillium table at the DC Pen show, and I’ve been making frequent use of it ever since. I think its slightly pastel appearance helps set it apart from other brown inks, and the subtle purple undertones are just pronounced enough to keep your attention. If you’re looking for brown ink that genuinely stands for its distinctive character, this one comes highly recommended by me.
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
Other inks in the Lepidopteran Series:
