Ink Review #158: Robert Oster African Gold

Robert Oster African Gold is another recent addition to the Robert Oster ink line. I purchased my sample of ink from Vanness Pens. 

The color...

African Gold is a dark yellow, it almost reminds me of a mustard yellow. 

I'm not crazy about the color of this ink when it's pooled. It's a little too brown for me, when the ink is named African Gold.

In ink drops, the ink starts to look fuzzy black. I've seen this happen with a few other inks. It's not bad, just different. Let's look at how the ink behaves on fountain pen friendly paper: Rhodia, Tomoe River, and Leuchtturm. 

Dry time: 30 seconds

Water resistance: Low

Feathering: None

Show through: Medium

Bleeding: Low-there is just a little bit of bleeding in the flex nib.

Other properties: Medium shading, no sheen

On Sustainable Earth 20lb copy paper, the ink behaved well, and only bled on the large swab. 

Ink swabs for comparison, left to right (top to bottom for mobile RSS): Robert Oster Yellow Sunset, Robert Oster African Gold, and Robert Oster Gold Antiqua. Click here to see the Robert Oster inks together, and click here to see the yellow inks together. African Gold is a lot more mustard than Gold Antiqua. If I wanted a gold ink, I would reach for Gold Antiqua before African Gold. 

Longer writing:

I used a medium Pelikan M800 Renaissance Brown on Tomoe River paper. 

Here's the thing about this ink: I don't like the color of the ink when used in a flex pen. It's too brown for me when I was anticipating a gold, just based off of the name of the ink. I do like the color of the ink when used in this medium Pelikan nib-it's nice and has some interesting shading.

Overall, the ink is well behaved, but just based off of the color, I prefer this ink in a medium nib. Because I don't love this ink in all nib sizes, I wouldn't buy a full bottle of this ink. 

Disclaimer: I purchased this ink myself, and all photos and opinions are my own. There are no affiliate links on this page.