Noodler’s 54th Massachusetts blue-black ink has become one of my favorites. It is conservative enough to be useful in any situation – business or personal – but is still a lovely diversion from a standard blue or black. It flows easily – it is wet, smooth, and easy to write with. It dries in a reasonable amount of time, and I find the color pleasant and easy to read. It also appears to have a touch of chartreuse to it that blue and black inks don’t typically possess.
Noodler’s Berning Red
It’s an immutable karmic law that, when an ink producer creates a new color specifically to mock a presidential candidate, one then must use said ink to write the candidate’s campaign slogan, regardless of how one actually feels about said candidate. In this case, Nathan Tardiff, the man behind the curtain of Noodler’s Ink, created Berning Red in honor of Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist senator from Vermont, and one of the two remaining candidates for the Democratic nomination.
The USS Lexington is the oldest surviving aircraft carrier in the world. Commissioned in 1943, it saw extensive service as part of the Pacific fleet during WWII, where it developed a reputation for being impossible to sink - so much so that Japanese navy began referring to it as a “ghost” ship. This reputation, coupled with it’s blue camouflage scheme, earned the ship the moniker “The Blue Ghost.”
Since then, the Lexington has had a long career, acting first as an attack carrier, then as an anti-submarine carrier, and finally as a training carrier.
I’m practicing my flex nib skills. Done with a Noodler’s Ahab pen and Noodler’s Black Swan in Australian Roses ink on Midori paper. Filtering via Instagram. The un-filtered version is below.
Unfiltered version. Noodler’s Black Swan in Australian Roses in a Midori lined notebook.
There are many good things to say bout the Goulet Pen Company, but one of them is the degree of care they take in packaging items for shipment. Most bottles of ink are individually wrapped to insure against leakage, then are wrapped in several layers of bubble wrap to prevent them from getting banged around, and then again in plastic wrap to protect them against the elements. As you might expect, I’ve never had any item arrive in a damaged state, despite packages being left in the rain, left in the snow, and left in the rain/snow combination whimsically referred to as a “wintery mix.
My infatuation with Noodler’s bulletproof ink continues. This time, it is #41 Brown – an ink named after the junior senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown. I’ll get to the political meaning behind the name later, when I discuss the label - but for now, let it be known that the ink is a rich, dark brown with golden overtones. It is highly saturated, like most Noodler’s inks, which results in a solid, clean line with little shading.
…or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Noodler’s Black was the very first bottle of fountain pen ink that I purchased. I’d heard people rave about the ink – how smooth it made any pen write, how solid a line it produced, how little it feathered on nearly any surface. When I set out to use it though, I was unimpressed. I reviewed it unenthusiastically, citing its long dry time and lack of character as reasons I didn’t plan to use it frequently.
If you want to get someone’s attention, send them a letter written in Noodler’s Dragon’s Napalm ink. It’s the perfect ink for the task, as it is very close to the color of safety orange – that attention-getting hue that adorns traffic cones, the tips of toy guns, hunting caps, inmate jumpsuits, and the official state fungus of Ohio – the orange barrel.
It’s a vibrant, highly saturated, ink that produces a bright, solid line in a fine-nibbed pen.
Noodler’s has released the second in its line of inks that have been designed for flex nib pens. The high-shading Black Swan in English Roses continues the high level of quality set by its predecessor. In my review of Black Swan in Australian Roses, I praised the ink’s poetic nature, and English Roses delivers a similarly lyrical experience.
Where Australian Roses was violet-black with pink undertones, English Roses is an earthy red-brown with bright, poppy red undertones that peek out from time to time.
Rating: 3.0
February 22, 2011
My first thought, upon opening the bottle of Noodler’s Baystate Blue, was “Holy cats, that’s blue.” It is not a subtle ink. Rather, it is an electric cobalt blue that positively jumps off the page. It’s highly saturated, as many Noodler’s inks tend to be, and it exhibits no shading. It simply lays down a solid, bright, blue line.
Baystate Blue has generated a bit of controversy lately.
