Ink Vial started with a £20 mistake, a fountain pen, and a bottle of beautiful ink that just wasn't quite right. We're based in the UK, and we think you shouldn't have to gamble on a full bottle to find your perfect colour.
A small selection from our collection
Like a lot of ink lovers, I started buying bottles of ink on a whim - beautiful colours, gorgeous packaging, glowing online reviews. Then the bottle arrived and it wasn't quite right. Wrong for my pen, wrong for my paper, wrong vibe entirely. Stunning in the bottle. Wrong on the page.
That's an expensive hobby to maintain at £15–35 a bottle. I started looking for sample services and found them patchy, US-based, or focused on a tiny range. So I decided to build the thing I wanted to use myself.
"Every ink we stock has been written with, tested across nibs and papers, and genuinely loved. We only carry inks we'd buy ourselves."
We launched Ink Vial in June 2026. Every vial is hand-filled, hand-labelled, and packed with care. We're small by choice - and we think that's a good thing.
They sound simple. We mean them.
We write our own notes for every ink we carry. We'll tell you when an ink skips in dry conditions, when the sheen only shows on specific papers, and when it's simply not that interesting.
A 2ml sample fills most fountain pens at least once. That's enough to genuinely know whether an ink works for you - not just a single line on a swatch card.
The ink-loving community is warm, geeky, and generous. We want Ink Vial to feel part of that - not a faceless shop. We reply to every email, and we genuinely care which ink you end up loving.
"Ink is one of the few things in life where spending more time choosing is actually the point. We just want to make sure you fall in love with the right one."- Ink Vial, United Kingdom
Browse 300+ ink samples - hand-filled, honestly described, and shipped from the UK.
