Bung Box Inks: Hard-to-Find Liquid Treasures
There’s a small, boutique stationery shop in Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan called Bungubox that opened it’s doors in 2012. They were pretty much a mom-and-pop type of place, catering to local residents looking for nice pens and other writing supplies. Bungubox started commissioning various manufacturers to create exclusive items for their store.
One of these partnerships was with the company Sailor, who they commissioned to make a line of inks for them under the name Bung Box. Sailor’s Jentle inks are widely regarded as beautiful, high-quality inks, so it’s no surprise that the Bung Box colors were also very popular.
Sailor is one of the “Big 3” Japanese pen & ink manufacturers…with Pilot and Platinum being the other two.
Sometime last year (2015), word got out about the Bung Box inks, and all hell broke loose. People from all over the world began ordering the inks, making the shop proprietors scramble to fulfill orders and cleaning the inks off the shelves. The availability of Bung Box inks goes in and out as supplies run out and the inks need to be reordered & made. At this moment, at least some of them are available, so I ordered a pile of samples to check them out (at $42 for a 50 ml bottle, they’re extremely expensive inks…so I just stuck with samples).
Holy Gosh! I see why they’re so popular.
Below are images and descriptions for six of the Bung Box inks. There’s not a dud in the bunch.
