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What Makes a Good Ink Bottle?

Posted in Ink

This post is a response to UK Fountain Pens’ post, What Makes a Good Ink Bottle? Reading Anthony’s post got me thinking about what I think makes a good ink bottle. After all, I know I’m a bit odd with how I fill my pens.

From the original

While I highly suggest you take a couple of minutes to read Anthony’s post, as a recap, or if you don’t have time, he posits there are four main factors to a “good” ink bottle:

  • Stability
  • Filling Convenience, including, “what pens can go past the bottle rim to fill and how easy is it to scoop up every drop in the bottle without resorting to a syringe.”
  • Construction Quality
  • Aesthetic Beauty

At first read, those seem like good factors for judging how “good” an ink bottle is. But, as I thought about it more, I realized that while there is some overlap in our requirements, we don’t completely agree.

My preferences: overlap

Let’s start with where Anthony and I overlap.

Stability

I 100% agree on stability. If the bottle is prone to falling over, I’m never going to use it. Likewise, a bottle that feels unstable is equally likely to get ignored, or used much less frequently.

Filling Convenience

I also agree on filling convenience, to a point. Yes, the bottle opening needs to be big enough to accommodate a pen, but I don’t mind needing to syringe the last bit of ink out of a bottle. I usually syringe fill pens anyway.

BUT, for the 2 pens I own that cannot be syringe-filled, I want the bottle to be tall enough to fit the nib in it. Obviously, I don’t expect this from mini bottles, but a standard size bottle should be tall enough to fill a pen properly.

My preferences: divergence

And here is where our preferences begin to diverge.

Construction and aesthetic beauty

Neither of these factor into my considerations.

I’ve owned a few hundred ink bottles, and not one of them has had a construction (read: structural integrity) issue, so I don’t think there’s a reason to consider it. It seems more likely, in my experience, that a bottle with construction issues is an anomaly.

I store all of my ink in a closed cabinet, so I only see them when I’m inking a pen. Because of that, I don’t really care about the beauty of the bottle. For me, form is far more important than beauty. If a bottle is particularly pretty, it’s a cool plus, but doesn’t make it a “better” bottle than one that isn’t.

Footprint

I’ve mentioned this a few times in past posts, but I dislike bottles that have unnecessarily large footprints. Specifically, ink bottles that have a base larger than the main bottle. Prime examples include the Diamine Inkvent bottles and the Colorverse bottles with their “tails.” This really only takes up extra space and makes storage harder. While I haven’t rebottled my Colorverse inks, I have rebottled all of my Inkvent inks into standard Diamine bottles.

Leak protection

This one is specific to the cap and how any given bottle provides some extra leak protection. I’ve seen paper inserts — like Pilot Iroshizuku, Taccia, Diamine, etc.— plastic inserts — I can’t remember which brand has these — and attached plastic stoppers — like Pennonia and Birmingham Pen Co.

My preference is the plastic stoppers. They don’t stick to the rim of the bottle, and they are excellent leak protection. I can’t count how many times a paper insert has gotten stuck to a bottle leaving me trying to pry it off. If a company absolutely must use a paper insert, then it would be nice if they used the high-quality inserts like Pelikan for their Edelstein bottles. I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those get stuck. I’ve only come across the plastic inserts once — I wish I could remember which brand — and I had all sorts of problems with it because it wasn’t the right size for the cap, it was a bit too big.

Recap

As a quick recap, my requirements for a good ink bottle are:

  • Stability: does not tip over and doesn’t feel like it’s going to tip over
  • Filling convenience: an opening big enough to fit a pen, and a bottle tall enough to fit a nib
  • Footprint: no bigger than the main size of the bottle
  • Leak protection: plastic stoppers, or at the bare minimum, high-quality paper insert that doesn’t stick

Good bottles

So, with those requirements, what ink bottles do I think are “good?” Top of my list are Pennonia and Birmingham Pen Co. bottles.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Diamine Inkvent and Troublemaker have some of the worst bottles.


Did you read Anthony’s post? Do you agree with his requirements, mine, or do you have completely different ones? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed my post. Make sure to subscribe to my blog or follow me on Instagram so you don’t miss any posts. I generally post at least once a week.

3 Comments

  1. Hans Christian
    Hans Christian

    Thanks for a good read. I also think the full size Invent bottles are the worst. Impossible to stack and uses paper cap inserts that sticks to the rim of the bottle or halfway in the cap threads.

    January 29, 2025
    |Reply
  2. Derek
    Derek

    I also keep my bottles in my desk drawer, so I don’t really care about aesthetic beauty either. The footprint is important, but I think so is the construction, I’ve had some bottles with faulty caps (Sheaffer, Montegrappa) and I think poor construction also often affects leak protection.

    Waterman still produces the best bottles overall IMO, the worst ones I’ve seen or used are FWP and I’m not too keen on Robert Oster either.

    Btw: Anthony no longer owns or posts on UK fountain pens, the new owner is Bryan.

    January 26, 2025
    |Reply
    • I’ve never actually had a FWP bottle, and everyone egreeing that they’re terrible bottles doesn’t give me much interest in getting one.

      Thanks for letting me know, I went off of the about page.

      January 26, 2025
      |Reply

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