Ivory

Ivory is the most common ground in this catalogue and the hardest one to mix. Pure white goes grey under fluorescent light and yellow in a photograph, which is why almost every white phone case looks slightly dirty in an office and slightly wrong on a phone camera.

Ours is pushed about two points toward oat. That is enough to hold its colour under strip lighting, enough to sit warm against both the natural and the gold titanium frame, and not enough to read as cream.

What ivory does to a print

It makes a print read as stationery rather than as decoration. The same floral on black is an evening object; on ivory it is a notebook. That is why the quietest things in the range — Pressed, Almond Blossom, Windowpane, Hairline — are all on ivory, and why the loudest ones are not.

It also gives a drawn line somewhere to be. A hatched toile or an engraved bookplate needs an unbusy ground to be legible at fifteen centimetres, and ivory is the only ground in the range that is genuinely empty.

Living with a pale case

It picks up marks from denim and from the inside of a leather bag, in exactly the way a pale bag does. The print sits under the shell surface rather than on top of it, so nothing rubs off, and a damp cloth takes off what transfers. No cleaning product is needed and none is recommended.

If that sounds like maintenance, Oat is the same warmth with more tolerance, and it is two shades away.

The one thing worth knowing before choosing it: an ivory case looks its best next to the natural titanium frame and slightly warmer next to the gold one. Neither is wrong, and it is the sort of thing nobody mentions until the parcel is open.