The many faces of colours made in Japan
Taking a deep breath,
I look out of the window
and see a world of colour.
Suddenly
the half-written letter in front of me
fades to grey
Next to the overflowing palette of colour
that fills my heart and the world around us.
Our encounter with Turner Colour Works came at a time when we were feeling uninspired by ready-made ink colours.
Turner Colour Works is a Japanese paint manufacturer, founded in 1946 and based in Osaka. Painters and artists may be familiar with names such as Poster Colour and Acryl Gouache.
“Let’s work together.”
The company invited us to work with them to develop a new ink product. At the time, they did not have an existing range of inks for writing.
While most writing inks are dye-based to produce vibrant, fast-drying colours, dye inks have the disadvantages of low water resistance and fading.
Pigment inks, on the other hand, offer vibrant colours, water resistance and superior colourfastness compared to dye inks.
Despite this, few manufacturers had ventured into the development of pigment inks for writing because the larger pigment particles make the ink more prone to clogging and require more maintenance.
Hiroshi Jihira, Chair of Turner Colour Works
“We’re not here to make products that are commonplace. With our expertise in pigment inks, we can show what makes Japanese pigment inks special.”
It was with the encouragement of Hiroshi Jihira, then director and now chair of Turner Colour Works, that we began to develop our original pigment ink.
“It has been a long journey to bring the vision to life,” says Yoshiharu Nakajima.
Yoshiharu Nakajima, Head of R&D
Nakajima is responsible for research, development and production at Turner Colour Works. Although the company has a history of developing artists' colours, producing writing inks was a first for them.
While paint needs to set, writing ink must not dry too quickly or too slowly. It must also not clog nibs, so finer pigments with nano-sized particles had to be specially developed.
Following extensive development, our new pigment ink was born.
This is the ink you see in Inkstand order-made inks and in Kakimori’s original ink collection.
Kohei Kanai from the production team makes the “base inks” for Kakimori and Inkstand.
The base inks are the basic colours used to mix unique order-made colours. These colours must be consistent in order to produce the desired colours and allow for reorders.
Kohei Kanai, Production
Kanai tells us that the raw materials for writing inks have a low viscosity compared to those for paints and are more prone to foaming. The ingredients must be slowly added to the mixer, carefully monitoring and adjusting the mixing speed.
As writing inks are also produced in smaller volumes than paints, batches are more susceptible to variations in production factors, requiring a high level of technical skill to fine-tune production beyond data points.
Aiko Yoneyama is a quality controller responsible for inspecting the finished inks.
The ink is dropped onto the test paper, which is specially designed for writing ink,
and then rolled.
“As well as digital colour proofing, we also check each colour by eye and by hand. Manual checks are essential for producing superior colour and smoothness of writing,” says Yoneyama.
Aiko Yoneyama, Quality Control
Yoneyama is a graduate in Oil Painting from Osaka University of Arts. She tells us that her own artistic practice helps her to capture subtle details with the end user in mind.
The idea.
Concept development.
Inspection.
Production.
Behind the creation of our colours are many faces.
To colour our world
and our thoughts.
People and passion come together
to bring the world of colour to life.
