Cult Pens Coronation Ink Review
Cult Pens Coronation ink is a surprising choice of colour. You will be familiar with Royal Blue and Imperial Purple, but Coronation Red? That’s a new one, especially with a blue shimmer. What is one to make of that?
Perhaps it is not so surprising after all. The colours of red and blue are taken from the Coronation Emblem. Historically, red was a colour associated with strength, power and success. We no longer have an Empire and purple was used for the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee last year. Royal Blue would be a bit unimaginative, whilst greens and browns are more peasant earthy than regal, so I’m all on board with Coronation Red.
First impressions
The overall effect of Cult Pen Coronation’s red with blue shimmer is more a berry red, rather than post box or London bus red. Not quite raspberry, more of a strawberry with added blueberry hints. I think the shimmer is supposed to be more blue, but mostly it just looks pinky purple to me, as does the residue in the bottom of the bottle.
Sadly, red does not lend itself particularly to farcical aquatic ceremonies in which a watery tart throws a sword at the new king. I am quite looking forward to the pomp and ceremony of the coronation, but can’t help feeling that a moistened bint lobbing a scimitar at Charlie would have been far more entertaining. Come to think of it, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords does seem like a more attractive basis for a government these days. But enough frivolous Pythonesque politicking, we are here for the ink!
Writing Experience
Shaking the bottle like crazy to distribute the shimmer particles, did cause a very pretty effect in the bottle. It wasn’t easy to get a really obvious shimmer on paper in normal writing though. This is often an issue for me as I tend to use Fine nibs, which aren’t the best for showing off shimmer inks. Certainly, I got nothing on Rhodia paper, though it did work slightly better on Tomoe River, but still wasn’t great.
Moving on, I tried my 1.5mm Pilot Parallel pen. Sadly, my initial efforts did not yield much better results. I suspect the shimmer particles just sink in the bottle too rapidly to be effective.
Not to be thwarted, cue some more furious shaking of the bottle (and pen) and finally I managed to get some shimmer, though mostly only where the ink had been heavily applied.
Splashing Cult Pens Coronation ink around in much greater abundance was a different story. Initially, it just looked red, but as it dried the shimmer really came through. Unable to resist aforementioned farcical aquatic ceremony, I applied it liberally on watercolour paper with my Kakimori nib. Here’s what happened…
As you can see, the shimmer is very evident with the right angle of view. However, it does require that you lay a lot of ink down.
In Summary
Cult Pens Coronation ink is an attempt to echo the colours of the Coronation Emblem, but overall it is mostly just an ordinary red ink unless you are splashing it about in abundance. To be honest, I like the colour but I’m a little disappointed that Cult Pens Coronation doesn’t perform better.
Who is it for
- Royalists (obviously)
- Shimmer ink fans
- Users of really fat nibs
- Artists
- Jerry Lee Lewis
The lowdown
Obviously, this is a Cult Pens exclusive ink. It weighs in at £12 and comes in the fancy square bottle they use for their Inkvent range.
