Ink Review: Kaweco Sunrise Orange

I have been using Sunrise Orange ink in a Lamy Safari with medium nib and in a Kaweco Sport with both an extra-fine nib and a broad nib ground to an architect’s point. It’s a wet ink, with really nice lubrication and flow, that behaved perfectly in both the wetter Kaweco Sport and the dry Lamy Safari.

Kaweco Sunrise Orange is a quieter, more autumnal orange, as opposed to a bright, summer-feeling orange.

I have Sailor Kin-Mokusei inked as well, and the Sailor orange makes a good contrast to Kaweco Sunrise Orange, because Kin-Mokusei is an eye-searingly bright and summery orange. Here are both inks from pens with medium nibs. Kaweco Sunrise Orange is the first in each pair.

And here are the two inks in pens with finer nibs.

Interestingly, Kin-Mokusei is easy to read from the medium nib, but its brightness makes Kin-Mokusei almost too blinding to be easily legible from the extra-fine nib across a large block of text. The quieter Sunrise Orange surprised me by being very easy to read from an extra-fine nib.

The warmth of Sunrise Orange comes out on cream-colored Tomoe River paper.

Here is Sunrise Orange from all three nibs on Tomoe River, first the Kaweco Sport with broad architect’s nib, then the Kaweco Sport with extra-fine nib, then the Lamy Safari with medium nib.

And here is Sunrise Orange on the bright white background of Rhodia paper, with the broad architect’s nib.

And here with all three nibs.

Kaweco Sunrise Orange is an excellent ink for lower-quality paper. I haven’t seen any bleedthrough or showthrough and no feathering on any paper I’ve tried it on. Here is a closeup of the Lamy Safari with medium nib on my everyday paper Staples Sustainable Earth.

You can see that Sunrise Orange still shades beautifully on Sustainable Earth, which is notable because that paper tends to suppress shading.

Kaweco Sunrise Orange is not water resistant. It completely washed off smooth Rhodia paper. Some dye remained behind on ordinary paper, but not much.

On the other hand, as you’d expect from that, Sunrise Orange was very easy to clean out of a pen with just plain water.

In the orange famiy, Kaweco Sunrise Orange fits in with more subdued orange inks like Diamine Gerbera and J. Herbin Orange Indien.

Because I have noticed some resemblances between some Kaweco inks and some Caran d’Ache inks, I always like to compare these families. Kaweco Sunrise Orange is distinct from both the old and new orange inks from Caran d’Ache, which are brighter, more summery colors.

And just to square the circle, here are swabs of Kaweco Sunrise Orange and Sailor Kin-Mokuseit.

Here is paper towel chromatography of Kaweco Sunrise Orange.

That tiny bit of gray dye explains where Kaweco Sunrise Orange gets its more subdued color. I wonder if it also helps account for Sunrise Orange’s legibility from finer nibs.

Kaweco Sunrise Orange is an excellent ink. Its behavior has been outstanding: it was perfectly lubricated, even in the dry Lamy Safari, and it flowed so well that Sunrise Orange was a pleasure to use. The color is not vivid, but it is warm, and the shading is extremely attractive. At first I was neutral about the color, but Sunrise Orange really grew on me as I used it. It makes a great change of pace from the brighter oranges.

Kaweco Sunrise Orange doesn’t seem to have reached US stores yet, but Kaweco provided me with a box of cartridges to review.