Everything Old Is New Again

Sailor Pens gives itself a colorful makeover for the North American market.

- Michelle Leung

 

Fountain pen lovers have endless choices of ink brands for their pens, yet something I hear at every single pen show is that Sailor makes some of the best inks available—safe to use in nearly any pen and even on lower quality papers that normally have feathering or performance issues. Many pen enthusiasts own multiple bottles of their favorite Sailor colors, and Sailor fans were thrilled when the company re-released six colorful Sailor Jentle Ink bottles—discontinued a few years ago—for North American customers.

Sailor inks are known in the community to be fun, unique, and fairly inexpensive for the color range and high quality. The company produces a wide variety of ink colors among all its lines while running into very few quality control issues even with saturated red and orange colors. You’ll rarely hear about a Sailor ink clogging a nib or staining a clear demonstrator barrel.

Brian Anderson, of Anderson Pens, is one of three bespoke Sailor retailers in the United States. He says that Sailor ink is one of his best-sellers: “Sailor Yama-Dori [teal] is one of our top selling inks in the store, as are several other in the line, and we have about 1,000 different inks to choose from.”

The iconic Sailor ink bottle is short and wide with an integrated inkwell and can be found at retailers worldwide. Its famous Kiwa Guro Nano Carbon Black is well known for its deep, rich, waterproof line. Don Takemura is president of Itoya of America, which is the exclusive North American distributor of Sailor Pens and owner of Taccia Pens. He says Sailor is subscribing to the “everything old is new again” ethos.