Cupboard, not the sill
Ink in bottles, caps wiped.
The bottles stay in a closed cupboard. The glass on Clinton faces west. A July afternoon warms anything left on the front shelf, and warm dye ink writes wetter than the same bottle at room temperature. We do not sell from the sill.
| Ink | Size | On our cotton |
|---|---|---|
| Blue-black dye | 30 ml and 50 ml | Water-soluble. Behaves on the gelatin-sized 118 gsm. Can feather on a sheet that has taken on March damp. |
| Black dye | 30 ml and 50 ml | Water-soluble. It looks black in the bottle. It is not a carbon pigment, and it is not waterproof. |
| Carbon pigment | 30 ml | Roll the bottle to lift the pigment. Do not shake it. Waterproof when dry on sized cotton. Test on a scrap of the same sheet. |
| Iron gall | 30 ml only | Acid. Unbuffered 100% cotton only. We refuse it on the buffered 25% bond. |
A sample is a few drops, not your pen in our bottle
We keep a glass dip and a scrap of each paper we sell. We do not dip a customer’s pen into the shop bottle. If you want the trial in your own pen, we put a few drops in a sample vial. The vial is yours. Leftover ink does not go back in the bottle.
Wipe the cap threads before it goes away. Dye climbs the neck and glues the cap, especially in July, when the room is humid even with the bottles in the cupboard. We check the threads once a day in that month. The note from that window is West light and a cockled quire.
Cold, damp, and dry
Iowa City in January will freeze a bottle left in a car. Dye, pigment, and iron gall all freeze near water’s point. The glass usually survives if the bottle was not filled to the brim. The ink that thaws is not automatically the ink that was mixed. We do not open a bottle while the outside is sweating. Sweat is shop air. If the cap comes off then, water runs into the threads and thins the fill. A diluted iron gall writes pale and then blotches, and the paper is blamed.
Leave a cold bottle upright, cap on, away from the radiator, until the glass is dry and the core is liquid. Invert a dye ink slowly twice. Do not shake it; you pull air in and the fill foams. Roll a pigment ink. The longer account is A cap that stays on.
In March the sheets themselves go damp if they sit out while wet coats come through the door. Dye ink feathers on that cotton even when the bottle is unchanged. Read A damp sheet in March before you decide the ink has gone off. In the furnace weeks the same dye draws a tighter line, because the paper is drier. That is the furnace note.
What the bottle will not include
Iron gall is corrosive to a steel nib left full for months. We say so at every sale of that bottle, including to people who have heard it. We do not repair pens. We will look at a nib and say whether the slit has sprung. That is the end of what we can tell you. Flushing a frozen feed is the owner’s work, with water, not with our ink.
We do not sell a wall of cartridges. A short international cartridge in blue-black is in the drawer for someone whose bottle is at home. We count them. We do not match every converter on the market.
Paper pairings are on the cotton page. An opened bottle is not a return; the rule is on the terms.