Wearingeul White Rabbit
Ink Review #4
*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.
Overview
The color/properties:
Wearingeul White Rabbit is a pale pink that offers high amounts of shading that generally varies between light and dark tones where the ink pools. Depending on the pen and paper, however, you may start to notice a lot of greys in the color, and if the pen is wet enough and pools in just the right way you may also bring out a deep hot pink around the edges of the letters.
Ink Splat
Performance on paper:
White Rabbit’s performance is excellent. During my tests, I didn’t encounter any feathering or bleed-through on the test papers, and there was very little show-through. The dry times were below average. With most of the nibs, the dry times hovered around 20 seconds, with 2 instances of extending past the 30-second mark on both the Tomoe River and Leuchtturm sheets. The finer nibs dried faster, but it was still subpar for what I expected from a drier feeling ink.
For such a light color I was surprised to see that the water resistance turned out to be quite good. There isn’t any color retention, but when the color washes away it leaves light grey shadows behind anything that was written that are both crisp and legible.
One thing that I feel I should mention is that due to the pale color, using a darker ink on a page beneath one written with White Rabbit may make the text difficult to read.
Water resistance
Chromatography
Performance in the pen:
Wearingeul White Rabbit has a medium flow that felt consistent through all my test nibs. Despite having a higher flow than I anticipated, it still has a faint feeling of dryness. Still, the ink is lubricated enough to provide a comfortable enough writing experience. If you do need your inks to feel slicker though, this one may not be the choice for you. Despite the dryness I never experienced any hard starts, skips, or stops and the ink was generally very well-behaved. Cleaning was also easy, washing out of the pen almost instantly.
Value/cost per ml:
At the time of writing, Wearingeul White Rabbit sells for $22 for a 30ml bottle from US retailers, making this ink $0.73 per ml.
The bottle/packaging:
Wearingeul White Rabbit comes in a simple but elegant square glass bottle similar to the ones many Sailor inks come in. The glass has a nice clarity, and the cap is faceted, allowing you to get a good grip on it. This ink is part of Wearingeul’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ink set and features an awesome lenticular label showcasing their artwork of The White Rabbit. There’s a small card inside with an image of the swatch, as well as the colors RGB values and Pantone number (respectively 219/187/187 and 7611 U). Functionally the bottle is fine. It’s small but stable enough to fill from without struggle. The bottle opening is fine and It will allow you to get most pens through to fill from the nib, but I personally think it would be easier to fill from a syringe or pipette (and far safer to do so without causing a spill).
Score: 62/70
Price per ml: 4/10
Performance in a pen: 9/10
Performance on paper: 10/10
Color saturation: 4/10
Sheening: 0/10
Shading: 7/10
Dry time: 7.5/10
Water resistance: 4.5/10
Ease of cleaning: 10/10
Bottle form: 3.5/5
Bottle function: 2.5/5
*Only 70 of the 100 available points are required for an outstanding score.My personal thoughts...
Admittedly, before purchasing this ink, I hadn’t had a lot of opportunity to use many inks in this color range. Still, the ink performed a lot better than I expected it to – I generally find both pink inks and pale colors fall short in performance, albeit for different reasons. It’s a great color, though. I particularly like the way the ink shades, though I’ll admit I was hoping that I would see more of the grey tones come out in more typical conditions.
I’m not entirely sure where the association comes from between The White Rabbit and the dusty pink color comes from though. I would have expected a White Rabbit-themed ink’s color to stem from the color of the clothes in one of the many different adaptions of the character. Still, it’s an imaginative interpretation that’s both elegant and whimsical.
Written in a Leuchtturm1917 notebook with a Parker Urban (Medium)
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 this set:
