Spotlight: Wearingeul
King Lear. The Secret Garden. Pride and Prejudice. These belong on a shelf of classics, but if you’re a fountain pen lover, they belong on your desk, too. They are all ink colors by Wearingeul, a Korean stationery brand that’s one of our favorite ink makers and among the most popular in our shop.
When we first learned about Wearingeul inks, their literary theme and gorgeous colors captured our staff’s imaginations. They’ve become a top pick for our customers since we started carrying them at the shop in 2022. Wearingeul’s inks are high quality, with a great flow and a beautiful variety of colors and ink properties, and readers and writers love to connect with their favorite books in a new way.
The Wearingeul brand was started in 2016 by a calligrapher named Ahn Dong Hyuk, who began designing products with the idea of interpreting works of literature in a synesthetic way, exploring how stories could be interpreted through the senses. Wearingeul’s first creation was a product called Book Perfume that answered the question “If a work of literature was interpreted as a scent, what would the fragrance be like?”
From there, the idea of interpreting literature through synesthesia grew to encompass inks, swatch cards, and papers, born from the question “What if literature could be interpreted through color?” Their inks are inspired by the belief that every story possesses its own atmosphere and color palette, which usually remains hidden behind the black-and-white of printed text on paper.
Their team reads and re-reads works of literature to try to sense and capture the colors they evoke. They keep lists of hundreds of books, and when they feel inspired by a particular story, they begin the creative process for that book’s inky interpretation, aiming to convey the essence of each work of literature through the colors that emerge as the ink dries and the feeling you get while writing with it. They want their inks to let people connect with books in a new and different way, knowing that every reader experiences a story through the lens of their own life and ideas.
When Wearingeul first began making literature-inspired inks, they focused on classics that have been beloved for generations, but over the years they’ve gradually expanded to include contemporary literature and other media like movies and music. These days Wearingeul is a team of ten people, making all kinds of products from ink swatch cards to pen cases to notebooks with wonderful ink-friendly papers. They plan to introduce more stationery in future, like more ink swatches and notebooks where fans of their inks can preserve their favorite colors. We look forward to seeing what they bring us next!
Check out our Wearingeul collection to see some of their wonderful inks and accessories! Do you have a favorite Wearingeul ink?
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