Tools of the Trade Mega Review: Diamine 150th Anniversary Inks--All of Them!

A while back, I promised in-depth reviews of the new Diamine 150th Anniversary ink set. I meant to get to it before now, but since I don't have a time machine (or do I?), I decided I would just cut to the chase and post all the reviews in one fell swoop.

Overall, though each of these inks has its own personality, I can say that they are universally well-behaved and pleasant to use. I spent about a week writing with them sporadically, and never had any issues with hard-starting or clogging. I think it's fair to judge these inks by their color and not worry too much about letting it touch your beloved pens (as long as you're good with your pen hygiene! You can't blame the ink if you let it sit for months and it ruins your pen). It is my understanding they will be available on a continual basis, so don't be afraid to fall in love.

1864 Blue Black

Blue black is one of those colors everyone needs, so all the pen/ink manufacturers have some variation. Several of the ones I've tried have ended up being a kind of chalky, sometimes almost greenish dark blue, but not what I would call truly blue-black. Not so here. This is as true a blue-black as ever there could be. It's dark, very, but the blue shows up in the light. When I go hunting for a stolid, almost intimidating blue-black, I think this will be the one I reach for. My only issue with it is that it is not even remotely water resistant, so that is something to consider if signing documents.

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Blue Velvet

I am a long established blue ink junkie. I have more bottles of blue ink than any other color, and I know them all by heart. There are three blues in this set, but Blue Velvet was the one that stole my vision. It's just gorgeous, and though nothing (nothing) captures the vibrancy of Noodler's Baystate Blue, this is a good substitute if you're after a soul-stirring true blue ink.

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 Carnival

This is the one ink in the set that I was most concerned about with regard to behavioral problems. It's red. I love a good deep red ink, which this one is, but red dyes are notorious for staining. I'm pleased to say this ink did not end up leaving its mark on my pen, but I did make sure not to leave it in the converter for a long period time. That's just good practice anyway, but especially with red inks. That said, I love this color! It's a rich, true red without leaning too much to the orange side. I am really going to enjoy this one, and it will likely replace Diamine Poppy Red as my editing ink.

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Regency Blue

Regency Blue covers the place between the rich, true-blue of Blue Velvet and the near-vacuous 1864 Blue Black. It is a dark blue, but a true one, and would be the kind of ink that could fill almost any need handily. It is a highly saturated ink, much like Diamine Majestic Blue or P.W. Akkerman Shocking Blue, but it is missing some of the sheening qualities those display. I suspect that may be why I had such a different experience with clogging here. Both Majestic Blue and Shocking Blue are deep and fascinating with the red sheen puddling up from heavy areas, but they also clog like crazy in a very short time. I did not have that problem with Regency Blue. Do I miss the sheen? I do, a little, but that's not the only reason I reach for a rich blue, and it's good to know there is a better-behaved version in my collection.

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Safari

I don't think there are many other inks out there that fit this unique niche. I don't know what it is about this shade that intrigues me, but for some reason it catches my eye. I love olives, but if you ever asked me where olive green rates on my list of favorite colors, it would be pretty far down the list. I mean, it's like The Brady Bunch's carpet, right? However, there is something about the context of this color as an ink that works for me. I have to lump this one and Terracotta together as my "sleeper" inks, ones I wasn't sure I would like that I ended up enjoying a lot. The closest other color to this that I've used is Rohrer & Klingner Alt-Goldgrün, which I sampled as a potential match to my Pelikan White Tortoise m400. This ink is almost a dead ringer, maybe missing just a little yellow pop. I think it's going to get a surprising amount of use.

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Silver Fox

Silver Fox stands out as the mildest ink in the set, a mellow gray whispering to be seen among the likes of stunners like Blue Velvet and bullies like 1864 Blue Black. When it gets its chance to shine, though, it's such a lovely color. I really like the look of a full page written in a friendly gray. It reminds me of my pencil days without the threat of erasure. Unless there is water, of course. This stuff ceases to exist when wet, but what do we expect from such a polite ink?

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Terracotta

If Safari is The Brady Bunch's carpet, Terracotta seemed to me that it would go nicely with their kitchen counters. There is just not much about a flower pot I would have ever told you would be attractive, but here again, I ran it through a pen and found myself amazed at how much I enjoyed watching it fill up the page. There is a lot to enjoy here--the ink shades like a champ, and it has a cool color change effect as it dries. I always enjoy that, as it makes the meta-writing experience a little more interesting. No one is more surprised than me, but this may be my favorite ink of the whole set. (Shh. Don't tell Blue Velvet.)

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Tropical Green

Tropical Green is probably the green equivalent to Blue Velvet for vibrancy. Diamine has a lot of greens to choose from in their line, but Tropical Green hits that middle-green area with fervor. It leans a little toward the blue, but it knows who it is. It is Tropical Green, mighty, strong-willed, and pretty good at shading. I don't have a ton of green inks in my collection, and if you're only going to have one, this is a good candidate.

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This concludes your 8-for-1 ink review special! If any or all of these inks strikes your fancy, you can snap them up one at a time or as a set. Again, I'm grateful to my friend Derek for giving this set to Husband and me for Christmas, and grateful to Vanness Pens for answering the phone when he called to snap it up about as quickly as they had unboxed it. It's rare that I get to be a front-of-the-line person, and it was pretty cool being among the first to try these out. It's also cool getting presents you really love from friends who share your interests. They're worth their weight in gold (nibs or otherwise).

Tools of the Trade: Ink Review - P.W. Akkerman Shocking Blue

Last week I gushed about my big, beautiful new bottle of P.W. Akkerman Denneweg Groen. I have continued using it--a lot--and it remains as peaceful and well-behaved as my purring Penny-cat.

The fateful trip to Vanness Pens that netted me my vaunted Akkerman ink was not only for Husband and me. Our friend Derek had recently discovered a Waterman Executive fountain pen in the back of a drawer. Silly Derek. He picked up the pen and used it, not realizing he was opening the door to Pen Acquisition Disease. Since there is no cure and Vanness is like a pen addict's Disneyland, we all tucked into the car and took a field trip.

Despite claiming to only like black ink, the exotic allure of Akkerman ink got to Derek too and he purchased a bottle of what we're told is the store's most popular Akkerman color: Shocking Blue.

It is an apt name. The closest ink I can liken it to is Diamine Majestic Blue, but there is a slight difference in hue. The Shocking Blue is maybe a half-shade lighter, but it is still a true, center-hued dark blue ink that fills a gap where one might traditionally use a blue-black. The "shocking" part comes in with the intense red sheen the ink can get in saturated areas. Again, this is similar to Diamine Majestic Blue, and it is one of my favorite features.

I wrote the handwritten review with Derek's Waterman Phileas, which wrote nicely but isn't a pen I'm familiar with. While I was at it, I siphoned off a fill for my Pelikan m805 so I could give the ink a test drive in one my most beloved and well-used pens. (Besides, it matches the barrel!)

I found that the things I liked about the ink at first continued to be things I liked about it. The color is just pleasant to look at, either scribbling a grocery list, taking notes for work, or filling up a slew of notebook pages with this and that. I did catch myself getting preoccupied looking at the sheen, losing a thought here or there because I was too busy holding the page up to the light to admire it. (I never said I was an efficient writer, just a passionate one.) The ink feels "soft" on paper, especially Rhodia. It is a feel I've noticed with some other highly saturated inks, leading me to believe it is something about the viscosity of the high dye content that gives that velvety ride. My Denneweg Groen writes smoothly and flawlessly, but it is missing that texture. It's nice...while it writes.

Derek and I both noticed that the Shocking Blue tends to dry out in the nib very quickly when the pen is left uncapped. I'm not talking leaving it uncapped on the dash of your car like your childhood Crayola magic markers, I mean pausing long enough to rephrase a sentence so it doesn't end with a preposition. As a veteran fountain pen user, I've grown used to the compromises and quirks, including getting into the habit of recapping my pen if I'm going to think more than a few seconds. I keep this habit faithfully, but usually found I had recapped the pen too late with the Shocking Blue, though it rarely happens with other inks. My Pelikan m805 is one of the smoothest, most trustworthy, perfect pens I have ever touched and it never skips, at least not of its own accord, but with this ink there was more than once that I had to swipe the nib with a damp paper towel to coax the ink to flow again. I haven't noticed any of this problem when opening the pen for a fresh writing session, so it doesn't appear to be evaporating too rapidly from the pen itself, but I don't plan on leaving it unattended too long. This ink is definitely higher maintenance than Denneweg Groen.

It would be a hard sell of this ink to someone who already owns Diamine Majestic Blue unless the person is as enamored with the amazing bottle as I am. That said, I already own Majestic Blue, and I can already see a space on my ink shelf for a bottle of Shocking Blue. That half-shade of color difference is enough to appeal to me. This ink is the very definition of deep blue, and since blue is my favorite color, there is always room for one more.

As always, my color correction abilities are pretty abysmal. Husband and I are working on remedying that in the future, but hopefully these scans and pictures will give you a pretty close idea of what we are looking at. Er...at what we are looking?

Tools of the Trade: Ink Review - P.W. Akkerman Denneweg Groen

Have you ever noticed how seeing something you can't have makes you want it even more?

Yeah, me too. My list is long, including vintage Mustangs, signed first editions of To Kill a Mockingbird, 90's Nickelodeon, a bed (don't ever give away your old bed before your new bed is delivered because it probably won't be delivered--ask me how I know), a vacation, and Akkerman ink.

I first heard about Akkerman ink from the inimitable fountain pen reviewer and contributor to FPGeeks, Stephen Brown. Being a resident of the Netherlands, he first showed the rest of world the un-have-able Akkerman ink.

Photo courtesy of Marieke G. via yelp.com

I wanted it. Lots of people wanted it, but the only place a person could get it was from P.W. Akkerman's located in the Hague, Netherlands. For a time, there was no way to order it unless you were fluent in Dutch and were prepared to buy a plane ticket to pick it up.

The ink itself looked good to me, but the real draw was the BOTTLE. Even if I was not an avid pen user and ink enthusiast, I would want the bottle. It is just cool. If there was such a thing as a genie and it had a literary streak, it would live in this ink bottle. If I was that genie, I certainly would.

I grumbled about my misfortune, this cool bottle of ink that I wanted as much a vintage Mustang and a new episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? that I was likely never to have.

But then! My favorite pen store came to the rescue.

Vanness Pens in Little Rock, Arkansas is the only distributor of Akkerman ink in the U.S. that I know of, and they carry all the colors of the rainbow. It is a beautiful, genie-filled rainbow.

After my last trip to Vanness, I left with a bottle of Akkerman Denneweg Groen (translated as Denneweg Green. Denneweg is a street in The Hague, but why oh why is it associated with green?) I may have also slunk out with a pen and some paper, but that is beside the point. I only bought those things because the staff at Vanness is so nice. ONLY. I'm cool that way.

I chose this color because I have long been after a bottle of Iroshizuku Shin-ryoku (Forest Green). It is a lovely dark blue-tinged green with a lot of nuance and texture. Akkerman Denneweg Green is a DEAD RINGER for the Iroshizuku Shin-ryoku, and when you calculate the price to volume ratio, it is a lot cheaper. Plus, the awesome bottle! Plus-plus the fact that this is the vaunted grail ink I thought I'd never have.

Yes, please.

It's a huge bottle of ink. 150mL is roughly enough ink to write by hand the great American (Dutch?) novel, the second greatest American novel, and the second greatest French novel (because Les Miserables can never be topped), and you would still have enough left over to write letters to all the TV executives that cancelled your favorite shows. It is a LOT of ink.

The inkwell in the neck of the bottle is worth the price of admission. It makes it so easy to fill your pen without getting inky, and when the ink level gets low (and by then, expect you'll be in a nursing home explaining to the staff what a pen is and why you insist on scratching symbols on wood-pulp instead of communicating telepathically like everyone else), you will still have enough volume to submerge the nib. The bottle shape also keeps things stable, and with that much ink volume, stable is a good thing.


Since I wrote the handwritten review, I've had more time to play with the ink, and I can say that it is truly well-behaved. I haven't had any problems with it clogging or staining, and the flow has been satisfactory in the pens I've used it in. I've tried it on a variety of papers, ranging from Rhodia to a cheap composition notebook, and while there was some mild feathering and bleedthrough on the cheaper paper, it was comparable to other well-known, well-behaved inks. I tend to write with finer nibs, so your mileage may vary if you prefer broader ones, but thus far, I'd say this ink uses its manners.

If you want your very own bottle of Akkerman, you needn't gnash your teeth or cash in your frequent flier miles, you just need to pick up the phone and call Vanness Pens. I believe there may be some restrictions with advertising the ink on their website, but I assure you, they have the ink in stock and if you pay them a fair and reasonable amount of money, they will send you some. If you find yourself in Little Rock, pick some up in person, but be warned--you'll probably also leave with a pen. Or two.

My scan doesn't really capture the true color of the ink. I tried to get some pictures of the subtle depth and sheen of the ink, but didn't really manage it. I guess you'll just have to try some for yourself.

Now you have no excuse not to.