Calligraphy Dip Pen & Ink Starter Gift Set with Wood Pen: Brown Marble Pen with Sepia Ink

A marbled wood dip pen, a jar of sepia ink and spare nibs, in a hardcover gift box. This is the set for someone who has been meaning to start and has not yet worked out what to buy.

Sepia is the right first ink. Black looks severe on cream paper and blue looks like a bank form, but sepia settles into a warm brown as it dries and makes ordinary handwriting look considered. It is also the ink that photographs well, if what you are writing is going somewhere other than a drawer.

What You Are Getting

A marbled wood pen with a removable nib, a jar of sepia ink, and spare nibs. It comes boxed with a hard cover, so it does not need wrapping.

A dip pen is not a fountain pen. There is no cartridge and no reservoir. You dip, you write four or five words, you dip again. That rhythm is the whole appeal for some people and the whole problem for others, so it is worth knowing which you are before you buy.

Use It For

Grimoire pages, letters, sigil work, spell petitions, and anything you want to still be legible in twenty years. Dip pen ink bonds into the paper fibers rather than resting on them, which is why documents written this way are still readable centuries later and why the writing cannot be lifted back off.

Pair It With

A book to fill: the Embossed Pink Pentacle Leather Journal. To close what you write, Wicca Sealing Wax. If you want the look without the inkwell, the Quill Ballpoint Pen and Stand is a feather with a ballpoint tip. More in journals and pens.