Three heritage formulations, each mixed in batches of ninety. One acidic and archival, one foraged and warm, one carbon and forever.
Deep blue-black that browns toward purple as it ages. Tannin from green Aleppo galls (Quercus infectoria) reacts with iron to write grey and darken on the page within a minute. Mildly acidic; archival. The ink of contracts and old Bibles.
Warm sepia, the color of letters left in a desk drawer. Black walnut hulls (Juglans nigra) gathered each October from partner trees in the Piedmont, simmered and reduced. Gentle on any nib; shading varies batch to batch — that's the season showing.
A true, opaque black — no shading, no shimmer, no apology. Carbon pigment from Kremer Pigmente in Bavaria, dispersed in gum arabic and filtered fine. The ink of four millennia of Asian calligraphy, and for anything you want still legible in 2125.
Once a year, a single small-format edition — hand-numbered to one hundred, boxed, with a printed broadside on the history behind the color. The first, Imperial, is cochineal carried on a thread of iron gall: a deep, dusky red-purple in the register of the most formal ecclesiastical documents. The crimson comes from Dactylopius coccus; the history comes from Amy Butler Greenfield's A Perfect Red.
The first Library Edition follows once the core three are bottled and proven.
We don't sell ink that doesn't exist yet. The formulas are set and the bench is stocked; Oak Gall is first into the bottle. Leave an address and we'll write the day it's sealed and ready — sample first, if you'd rather try before the full 30 ml.
$17 a bottle · $5 a sample · shipped USPS first-class from near Wake Forest, NC.