diamine

Diamine Ancient Copper Diamine Ancient Copper is one of an elite group of inks that seems to be universally respected. It is artistically interesting – in broad nibs it shades dramatically. It is easy to read, providing sufficient contrast on white and cream colored paper without being hard on the eyes. It is also a very lovely color that one does not often see in ink formulated for fountain pens. Acrylics, oils, metallic markers, yes - but not fountain pen ink.

Blaze orange is well known to Americans as the color of construction barrels, traffic cones, and hunting caps. It’s a color designed to provide significant contrast to the environment – critical when dodging traffic during rush hour on a busy highway or when creeping through the woods with dozens of other hunters, all of whom have high-powered rifles in hand. In those contexts, the color is aggressively monotone, obnoxious, and prosaic, but when embodied in ink form by Diamine, it becomes delightfully dynamic, engaging, and lyrical.

I’m not a connoisseur of green ink. I’ve reviewed J. Herbin’s Vert Olive and Vert Empire, and I have Iroshizuku Shinryoku sitting on my shelf, but none of them have spent much time in my pens. Over the years, I’ve reviewed plenty of red and blue ink, and I love a good purple, but green isn’t a color that captured my imagination – until I tried Diamine Meadow. There’s no mystery in the inspiration behind the name of the ink – no foreign (to English speakers) language to parse or obscure tidbit to research – only the verdant, vibrant, green of an English meadow.

Diamine Damson is the color a ninja fruit would wear when trying to sneak into an orchard under the cover of darkness. Named for fruit it resembles, Damson is a dark, dusky plum that turns nearly black when used in a wet-writing pen. In a dry-writing pen, it produces a washed-out gray-purple line. It’s a moderately saturated ink - neither as rich as other Diamine inks, like Imperial Purple, or as light as J.

Rating: 4.5 February 1, 2011 When I first put Diamine Midnight to paper, I thought to myself that it was a nice, but not particularly interesting dark blue ink. Then I looked closer, and closer, and closer – and got drawn right in. For those willing to pay attention, this ink has a wonderful sense of depth that captures the variability and mystery of the nighttime sky. In fact, in the more saturated sections, there’s a hint of red that peeks out, giving it an almost sinister look.

Rating: 4.5 December 24, 2010 Monaco Red is another great red ink from Diamine. It’s an earthy, orange red with brick undertones – very reminiscent of J Herbin 1670. It is less blue than Diamine Red Dragon and less brown than Diamine Oxblood. According to at least one source, this ink was formulated by Diamine at the special request of the Crown Prince of Monaco. I presume the ink was engineered to match the red in the Monegasque flag and coat of arms.

Rating: 4.0 December 07, 2010 Diamine Sepia is a wonderful fall color, reminding me of golden fields of wheat that sway in the wind of a cool November day. It is a golden-brown ink with a low level of saturation and an amazing ability to produce beautiful shading. While the color of some inks varies with the shade of paper, Sepia is consistent, appearing just slightly darker on the off-white paper of a Moleskine journal than on the bright-white paper of a Rhodia pad.

Greg asked: I just read your review at: /2010/10/ink-review-diamine-imperial-purple.html Very nice. How permanent is this ink? Well, as you can see above - not very. The smear test, which is a wet finger dragged across the ink, left a big, purple streak. The lines range from obliterated to semi-readable. The drop test, in which I drip water, let it soak for a second, and then blot it up, fared a little better.

Rating: 4.0 November 2, 2010 I do not use black ink on a daily basis. To me, one of the joys of using fountain pens is the broad spectrum of available ink colors and black ink just isn’t all that interesting. However, there are a number of situations for which only black ink will do, so when Diamine offered to send me ink samples for review, I requested Jet Black.

Rating: 5.0 October 18, 2010 I’ve been using Diamine Imperial Purple for the past two weeks, and I can’t get enough of it. It’s a vibrant, majestic purple that makes me think of royal banners waving in a bright, sunny sky – of knights jousting on horseback and ladies waiting in…um…waiting. It is a highly saturated “red” purple that exhibits moderate shading. It is not reddish per-se, but rather red by contrast with a blue-purple or indigo.