No. 0001 The Sign of Four on Four Papers: A Swatching Study

October 8, 2026

Wearingeul The Sign of Four ink swatched on four papers: MARK'S EDiT notebook, Tomoe River card, Col-o-ring card and Hobonichi Techo page, showing silver shimmer with green, teal and violet tones.

Notes from the Archivist, No. 0001

In The Sign of the Four (1890), Arthur Conan Doyle's second Sherlock Holmes narrative, Holmes insists that once the impossible has been eliminated, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. It is a fitting creed for the swatching table. A dark ink that looks black in the bottle can turn out to be almost anything on paper, and the only reliable method is to eliminate the possibilities one page at a time.

The Ink

Wearingeul's The Sign of Four was not a new release when I opened it, but I had been curious about it for some time. It proved more interesting than I expected: a dark, saturated ink carrying a fine silver shimmer, and a good deal less simple than its darkness suggests. Its name asked for a method, so I gave it four papers.

Method

One ink, four papers, one sitting. The papers, clockwise from the upper left in the lead photograph, were a MARK'S Inc. EDiT B7 notebook, a cut sheet of Tomoe River 68 gsm, a Col-o-ring swatch card, and a page from the Hobonichi Techo Cousin 2026, which also uses Tomoe River paper. The ink was applied with a cotton swab, and the photographs were taken in office lighting, unretouched.

Observations

MARK'S EDiT. This notebook exceeded my expectations, and it has quietly become my favorite lately. Its paper behaves much like Tomoe River 52 gsm: thin, smooth, and generous to shimmer. But one can tell the two apart. Here the ink read as a dark green body with a silvery teal shimmer, and a violet fringe gathered at the edge of the stroke.

Close-up of Wearingeul The Sign of Four on a grid page of a MARK'S EDiT B7 notebook: a dark green stroke with silver-teal shimmer and a violet fringe at its left edge. — *Fig. 1. MARK'S Inc. EDiT B7 notebook, grid page. Silvery teal shimmer over a dark green body; violet gathers at the edge of the stroke.*

Tomoe River 68 gsm. The darkest and most composed of the four. The color deepens toward blue-violet, the shimmer settles to a fine silver, and violet edges appear where the ink thins.

Wearingeul The Sign of Four on a MARK'S EDiT grid page, left, and on a Tomoe River 68 gsm card with a stamped decorative frame, right, held in a hand. — *Fig. 2. MARK'S EDiT (left) beside a Tomoe River 68 gsm cut sheet (right). On Tomoe River the ink reads darker and more composed, with violet edges where it thins.*

Hobonichi Techo Cousin. Tomoe River paper again, with a similar character. In the wetter areas a teal-green shimmer shows through, while the thinner passages turn a deep navy-violet.

Col-o-ring. An absorbent card is a different instrument. It draws the dye into its fibers and holds less on the surface, so the same ink settles into an olive-green with a finer, quieter shimmer. Such a card will always read differently from thinner papers, and it should be compared with itself, not against them.

Wearingeul The Sign of Four on a Col-o-ring card, an olive-green stroke with fine silver shimmer, held over a Hobonichi Techo Cousin page where the same ink looks deep navy-violet. — Fig. 3. Col-o-ring card (foreground) and Hobonichi Techo Cousin 2026 page (behind). The absorbent card settles to olive green; on the Hobonichi page the same ink turns deep navy-violet, with teal where it is wetter.

On Drying

The most instructive moment was not the finished swatch but the drying. The stroke arrives looking nearly black. Then, as it dries, green, teal and violet begin to surface. Everyone who watches it happen is surprised in the same way. I offer this as an observation, not a mechanism.