Van Dieman's Tassie Seasons Pack - Winter

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.

Black Truffle

Australia is the world's largest producer of truffles outside of Europe, and Tasmania was the birthplace of Australian truffles, when Tim Terry unearthed the first Tasmanian truffle in the winter of 1999, the result of 8 years work. Along with fine wine, south seas salmon, an array of stone fruits, berries and exotic herbs, truffles make up a part of Tasmania's extraordinarily high quality culinary produce. This ink is the second black in the Van Dieman's Range, and has a noticeably brown hue when shading, with an oily black sheen on certain papers.

Huon Midwinter Festival

We created this particular colour to resemble and sum up the feeling of a time in your youth, at a festival at night in the cold midwinter. Your senses are tingling at the taste of hot chocolate that warms you up, the chorus of music echoing in the dark, the smell of hot food cooking at stalls, and the shimmering colours and bright luminescence of fairy lights, tea lights and bonfire.

Launceston Fog

Every winter, the city of Launceston, nestled in the valleys between the North Esk and South, becomes enshrouded in a fog so thick in regularly stops traffic and puts the city in a standstill. This ink, with its incredible shading variation between near black and the lightest grey in the Van Dieman Range, mimics the same variations in light and dark that Launceston experiences during the winter months of fog. This ink has an extremely slight brownish hue, and is an excellent ink for drawing, sketching and ink washing where a wide range of depth and texture is desired, but flows smoothly with great effect from any medium or broad nibbed pen.

Morning Frost

Winters in Tasmania are cold, bitter and moist and, although snowfall is regular in the high country, much of the state wakes each morning to a thick blanket of crisp, crunching ice on every blade of grass, fallen leaf and car windscreen. This ink starts with a bitter cold blue grey, and dries to a shining shimmering silver, which blends with the underlying ink colour to become almost metallic, resembling the dewy sheen on blades of grass in early winter mornings that crunch under your feet.