Van Dieman's Tassie Seasons Pack - Autumn

About Tassie Seasons

Tassie Seasons is the fifth series in Van Dieman's expanding collection of Tasmanian Fountain Pen Inks. These sixteen inks encapsulate the changing colours of Tasmania, with four inks dedicated to each season. Tassie Seasons is a mix of dark and light, warm and cool, every-day writing worthy and artistically minded colours, including two shimmer inks.

Tasmania is the only state in Australia with a truly temperate climate. Winter exhibits colourful festivals in the south, generous snowfalls in the central highlands, and foggy days in Launceston from July through to September. Cool and breezy spring days unveil a kaleidoscope of native flowers, vibrantly plumed birds and stunning butterflies. An abundance of local produce arrives in the summer, to be enjoyed with a day at the many beaches, and followed by the ominous summer storm. In Autumn enjoy late seasons figs and pepperberries and marvel at Australia's only native deciduous tree at the turning of the fagus.

Deciduous Beech

The Deciduous beech (Nothofagus gunnii), or fagus, is found only in Tasmania, and is Australia's only native deciduous tree. Every year in late April and May, the slopes of Cradle Mountain, Mnt Field and large swathes of wilderness are coated with the gorgeous rust red, golden yellow and fiery orange of the fagus leaves at a time locally dubbed "the turning of the fagus".

This ink is a bright and light orange, much more so than the others in the Van Dieman's Range, with excellent shading quality and ideal for artistic brush or line work, but also beautiful in medium to broad nibbed pens.

Pepperberry

Tassie Seasons' Pepperberry is a deeply dark black-blue ink, with a slight violet hue, named and based on the native Tasmannia lanceolata, commonly known as the Tasmanian Pepperberry. Used as a traditional medicine and as a pepper substitute by early colonials, it is now sought after as an Australian bushfood condiment.

Pepperberry is Van Dieman's darkest blue ink to date, bordering on jet black with broad and wet-writing pens, but exhibiting blue and violet hues under light and a dark red sheen.

Pixie Parasols

Mycena Interrupta are tiny, fragile, translucent mushrooms, growing in clusters on rotting wet wood in the Autumn months of Tasmania. They earn their cute, catchy name from their diminutive size and their white gills, which show through their translucent caps, giving the illusion of parasol structures, while their colour is a bright, brilliant cyan. These beautiful and delicate little mushrooms lend their name and colour to this ink, which is easily the lightest blue in the Van Dieman's Range. This inks shades very well, and is perfectly suited for artistic brushwork and inkwashing, but also beautiful in medium to broad nibbed pens.

Sweet Fig