Lennon Tool Bar - Pineapple

Lennon Tool Bar - Pineapple - Ink drop

Pineapple is from Taiwanese maker Lennon Tool Bar. Launched in 2014, the company initially focused on indigo dyeing, but shifted to fountain pen inks. Pineapple is part of their 2020 spring limited series. In many parts of Asia, pineapples symbolize good luck and fortune, as the pronunciation of the words are very similar.

I anticipated a darker yellow with hints of orange. I’ve seen it described this way and have seen swatches that showed a slightly dirty, orange yellow, but that’s not what I found. In swatch and in writing, my Pineapple is a pale to mid-canary yellow. It’s brighter on some papers, than it is on others. Only in areas of pooling does it produce a hint of orange. There’s no doubt that this is a very pretty canary yellow, it just isn’t what I was expecting. My disappointment is that canary yellow is a difficult color to get right. The dirtier orange yellow that I expected would have been a good writing color, but this just isn’t. It’s far too light to be practical for writing. It is, however, a nice yellow for art projects.

Lennon Tool Bar - Pineapple - Ink Swatch Card

As a writing ink, I found lots of problems. Of my five testing papers, it was unusable on two (Mnemosyne and Apica), and poor on two (Kokuyo and office copy). However, on Rhodia it was a different story. While the others suffered from heavy feather and bleed, Rhodia strokes were sharp and clear. Rhodia showed a tiny amount of shading and halo, but the others none. Drying time on Rhodia was 30 seconds.

Despite performing well on Rhodia, I’m not able to recommend Pineapple for writing purposes. The sample I bought is a beautiful canary yellow. I think it’s best suited to art projects or for use as an accent color, but not for regular writing. I’m looking forward to trying more from Lennon Tool Bar, but I won’t be buying a bottle of Pineapple.