exPENsivePhotography

Ishida Bungu’s Old School Brown is at first glance a very flat smoky brown ink.  It doesn’t have any special colour-shifting properties like Gagome, or any noticeable sheen.  However, it does look like it could be the base colour for Gagome.  A Brown Algae perhaps but with none of the magic?  We shall see…

The ink comes in a very cool box with a picture of a pink colonial-style school building on the front (an old-school school?).

I believe the school is from the Hakodate area.  According to their website, Ishida Bungu were trying to evoke “shady vistas from times past”, as well as “a sense of history and tradition, and work ethic”.  I was relying on Google Translate here, but I think I know what they were getting at.

On the bottle there is picture of a lovely old wooden staircase, presumably from the school on the box.  I hope one day to own a big old house with a big old wooden staircase just like this…  Aside from the ink, it makes for a lovely ornament.  Here it is…

And here is the cap…

Here is wet sample on Original Crown Mill…

Here is a dry sample on Hobonichi TR paper.  As you can see quite dark…

Shot in better light, here is a full page on Hobonichi paper.  You can pick up the true colour much better here…

Nice isn’t it?  I like this kind of cool brown.  It tends to the green/grey end of the scale vs. the reddish brown, which most browns lean towards.  I think this School Brown is the coolest (colour-wise) brown I own.

Here is a sample on Original Crown Mill laid paper…

Here is a useful comparison with some other browns in my ink collection and sample stash…

As you can see even Nagasawa Kobe’s #40 Sumiyoshi Brown and #3 Old Foreigner Ward Sepia, both of which I thought would be a close match, are in reality much redder.  Of the two, I think Sumiyoshi Brown is closest.  It’s a shame I only have a tiny sample of this.

As mentioned, School Brown can have a smoky look to it- as you can see from this blurry swatch.  I think the cotton bud probably accentuated the dusky, smoky look, but the ink does have this quality.  It’s a nice vintage look.  I’d imagine it would probably look very classy on some think, cream paper.

I thought Omas Sepia, another smoky brown, would be a close match, but as you can see, it’s again a lot redder…

Verdict:

I really like this ink.  Apart from being a semi-unicorn Sailor store-exclusive, i.e. relatively hard to obtain, I think the ink itself is really nice.  I like browns generally, but this has an additional soothing quality, whilst also being very classic.  The texture of the ink is also good, and I would consider this a “safe” ink to use in my more expensive and/or more finicky piston-fillers.  I love the quirky box, label and concept, and how it relates to the Hakodate, Hokkaido area.  Of course the rare Sailor vase-shaped bottles are also a win.  The only inks I left in the Ishida Bungu line were the black (something to do with a black- roofed building in Hakodate), the very light aqua (that many describe as “ikky”), and the red (which has something to do with a sea creature local to the area).  I was tempted by the red, by I always have trouble cleaning out red inks from my piston fillers and as a consequence now find them annoying.  I love Sailor Irori, however, mainly for it’s wicked gold sheen.  All in all, I’m glad I picked this  ‘Old School’, School Brown up.