Van Dieman's Sacagewea
Sacagawea is part of Van Dieman's Explorers series of inks released in 2024. According to the Van Dieman's website 'a mesmerizing ink that celebrates the life and legacy of one of America's most remarkable explorers. Sacagawea, a Lemhi Shoshone woman, played a crucial role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition, guiding the explorers through the vast and untamed American wilderness. Her knowledge, courage, and resilience were instrumental in the success of their journey, and her story continues to inspire adventurers and dreamers alike.'
Sacagewea captured my imagination as a child, leading the Lewis and Clark expedition through the wilderness. I always could imagine the expedition going through the harsh environments and living off of the land. Sacagewea was brave.
I picked up a sample of this ink from Vanness last October. As of this writing it is still available on the Vanness website, but sold out direct from Van Dieman's. I thought this would pair well in the new TWSBI Eco Amazonite, mine is a medium nib.
The color is a beautiful dusty light blue with pink undertones and nice shading coupled with lots of green, blue, and gold shimmer. Every word on the page was packed with shimmer. It was quite pleasing the way writing jumped off the page when in the right light. This ink, while being a shimmer, gave me no issues whatsoever. It was well behaved and flowed beautifully, never clogging the feed. Even after the pen sitting a few days inbetween uses. A quite agitation and away I went with writing. In my writing I mostly caught glimpses of the green and the gold shimmer depending on how the light hit the page.
The shimmer is so hard to capture via the scans. I also tried to capture the shimmer in photographs. Believe me the shimmer jumps off the page in the right light. The col-o-dex swatch shows light blue with teal under-tones and some gold shimmer.
Chromatography shows a mix of pink, green, and light blue.
Sample writing, swatches and line variation tests on small test notebooks from Mauraman Mnemosyne, Apica, Travelers, Rhodia, and Clariefontaine. I did these swatches with the new Dominiant Industry ink muddler, recently picked up. I’m liking that way more than the cotton swabs.
Longer writing samples were done on two types of Tomoe River paper, 52gsm, 68gsm and Iroful 75gsm paper.
Some up-close photos to show off the shimmer best I could. The first is on Tomoe River 68gsm. The green shimmer is present. The second is on Midori MD paper, lots of blue shimmer. The third is Tomoe River from Yamamoto, green / gold shimmer in there. Lastly, the Iroful shows off the blue, green / gold shimmer. Yes, the above scans are brighter than the photo’s taken under warm white light.
The ink was smooth on all of the papers I used and I got a medium flow paired with the TWSBI Eco Medium nib. Dry time around 20 seconds on most papers, with the Mnemosyne dry time a little longer at 30 seconds from the paper being coated. The color was very readable on all the papers used. I liked this ink very much. This might be the shimmer that just changes my mind.
PS - All ink reviews are my own and have been purchased with my own dollars.