Pennonia - Dungó

Pennonia - Dungó - Ink drop

Today’s ink, Dungó, is from Pennonia. Started in 2018, Pennonia is a boutique ink maker based in Carei, Romania. From their website, the inks are “inspired by personal life events & preferences, Hungarian language, tradition, and even popular culture.”

Pennonia - Dungó - Shades of yellow and orange

Dungó (Wasp) was inspired by the colorful, sometimes painful wasp. After several childhood stings, Pennonia’s owner, Máté Binfalvi has a respect for these “badass” insects. This is a beautiful yellow-orange that changes color based on your nib size, feed, and paper. In the splatter (and my higher-quality test papers), strokes are a rich, Mandarin orange, but on the swatch card, strokes are an orange juice orange. On office copy paper, it was somewhere in between. This is a lovely shading ink. The various lights and darks can be seen on the splatter, as well as a tomato red edge that becomes stroke halo.

Pennonia - Dungó - Ink swatch card

As a writing ink, Dungó shows crisp, well-defined stroke profiles, with no feathering on high-quality papers. I rated it a ‘great’ on Rhodia & Mnemosyne due to strong shading and dark halo, with drying times of 20-30 seconds. Kokuyo & Apica were ‘very good’, as well. Office copy paper rated an ‘OK’. There wasn’t a problem with feather, but the beautiful shading & halo were lost. This is a very versatile, usable ink.

Pennonia - Dungó - Light shading areas

I’m very impressed with Dungó! I highly recommend this interesting & visually exciting ink. It’s difficult to get these colors right, but Pennonia hit the target. From yellow to orange, this is a lovely ink!

I want to mention another Pennonia product, that I hope to someday try. Csillám is a line of liquid shimmer, in 19 colors that that can be mixed to create your own shimmer ink! They come with a caution, but are designed for fountain pens. I couldn’t be more excited by the possibilities!