Intrigue, ink and drama grip the fountain pen community

Lamy, a German pen manufacturer, recently made waves with the reissue of Dark Lilac, a much-praised ink color. A lush purple with a golden sheen, Dark Lilac, despite its popularity, had only been produced once before – as a limited edition in 2016.

Are reappeared a few weeks ago was so unexpected that the fountain pen community, which is a small but passionate corner of the office supplies market, panicked.

There was just one problem: it wasn’t the same color.

“There is drama in the fountain pen community,” Aidan Bernal, a 23-year-old fountain pen enthusiast, said at the start of a recent TikTok in which he did his best to explain the saga – one that involved conflicting corporate statements, amateur sleuthing and an elusive shade of purple.

“An absolutely beautiful ink,” Mr. Bernal said in a telephone interview.

Long overshadowed by its ballpoint, gel and felt-tip rivals, the regal fountain pen has seen a modest revival in recent years. Brian Goulet of Goulet pinsan online retailer in Richmond, Virginia, suggested the resurgence follows a trend of consumers returning to analog goods such as vinyl records, mechanical watches and single-blade safety razors.

“The fountain pen really ties into that,” he said.

As a teenager, Mr. Bernal was so enchanted by his grandfather’s fountain pens that he searched the Internet to learn more about them. There, he said, he found a huge community of fellow hobbyists. He now has an online audience of over 550,000 subscribers on Youtube.

“I’ve been interested in stationery all my life,” said Mr. Bernal, who works as an engineer in Seattle. “I always had to be the kid in class with the coolest pencils and erasers.”

Given the community’s passion, neither Mr. Bernal nor Mr. Goulet were surprised that Lamy’s reintroduction of Dark Lilac caused such a stir. Mr. Goulet recalled that the color was released in limited numbers in 2016.

“It crashed our website because so many people wanted it,” he said.

More recently, Mr. Goulet said, small bottles of the 2016 version were selling for $300 or more on the secondary market, a significant increase from the original retail price of about $12.

But no one expected Lamy to re-release Dark Lilac — that is, until last month, when a few European retailers started selling an ink called, wait for it, Dark Lilac.

“Everyone panicked,” Mr. Bernal said.

Adding to the confusion, Lamy had already unveiled a new ink for 2024 called Violet Blackberry, which many assumed was an homage to Dark Lilac.

However, something wasn’t right. The lucky few who got their hands on the new Dark Lilac were dismayed that once they put pen to paper, the ink wasn’t quite the same as the original. The base color, according to an early YouTube review, was neither as blue nor as rich. The shine was green instead of gold. And it certainly wasn’t Violet Blackberry.

“Was it a translation error? A new-old stash that someone found in a back room? A reproduction? A mistake?” Mike Matteson, a philosophy instructor from Greensboro, NC, passing by Ink dependence on his social media channels, said in an interview. “There was no press release or any teasing about the product, and so no one really knew what was going on.”

Enthusiasts have opened investigations. Among them was a man who runs an Instagram account called Fountain pen memes. The man, who declined to be identified, citing a government job in Brazil, posted an interaction he claimed to have had a conversation with a Lamy executive last week in which the executive said the new Dark Lilac was identical to the old ink. In a subsequent post, the account shared an interaction with another Lamy official in which the company operated retracted that statementrecognizing that the ink was different.

The man behind Fountain Pen Memes said he believed the company was unaware of the ink’s immense popularity.

On Wednesday, Lamy confirmed to The New York Times that the inks were slightly different. Some ingredients from the original version were no longer available when the company formulated the new one.

“So you could say that the 2024 Dark Lilac is the old special edition with today’s technical capabilities,” Lamy said, adding that he regretted the confusion. “We should have renamed our revised Lilac release.”

Mr. Goulet had a few bottles of the original Dark Lilac stashed away so he could make a side by side comparison when he received a sample of the new one this week.

“Hardcore pen fans can point out the differences like night and day,” he said. “But it’s also a very solid attempt by Lamy to bring back a beloved ink.”

The ink was barely dry on that fiasco back then on Wednesday more news came: Lamy, a family business since 1930, was taken over by the Mitsubishi Pencil Company from Japan.

“That,” Mr. Matteson said, “was not something I saw coming.”