The dark fluid that
faintly gleams with a hint of red wouldn't perhaps look so appealing if it wasn't for the elaborate Victorian paper label on the glass bottle that
contains it and the dark red stopper where the iconic script is imprinted:
Stephens’. Henry Charles “Inky” Stephens was the inventor in 1832 of the
blue-black writing fluid which was to become Stephens’ Ink, an English
household name for some 130 years. This
bottle was made in the ink factory in Aldersgate London from where Stephens
moved in 1872. This is a seriously old ink.
It is hard, dear
Readers, to avoid the (admittedly) sentimental analogy with memories: old,
obscure, forgotten, gleaming darkly under their tattered labels yet should they
be allowed to surface their colour is unchanged. Dipping a paintbrush in
Stephens’ Scarlet and spreading the ink on paper the most unexpectedly luminous
red emerges. Scarlet! An astonishing red orange undiminished by age. Scarlet
Writing Fluid No. 451 looks as bright as it was the day it was born.
The ink flows easily
from the tip of the steel pen, and wonderfully saturates the paper. Mr
Stephens, it has been a pleasure.
ink is not dead.
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