Prosaic Paradise

I’ve been holding on to some fun stuff as the semester rolls on, making my brain useless. But let me break the silence!

Quo Vadis Marketing VP and embracer of Web 2.0 Karen offered some J. Herbin inks for bloggers to review a while back and I jumped at the chance! I’d just purchased a bottle without prompting (Gris Nuage, which I will report on later) and at the time could not get my hands on the colors she was offering.

The first color I am reviewing here is Lierre Sauvage. I was suffering indecision about what pen to try this in, so I finally grabbed something thematic – the green Estie.

The nib on this pen is a little finer than I am used to but that didn’t disrupt my enjoyment of the ink itself, which behaved very well dipped as well as once I filled the pen. I felt like I could trust the flow even in a potentially untrustworthy or unfamiliar pen.

The green is nice and bright. I would say that this is what you expect out of the crayon when you flip the label over and see that it says “green” as opposed to “forest green” or “jungle green” or “magic mint”. BiffyBeans described it as “cartoon grass green”. Based on that, I ran outside and pulled some grass from my yard and included that in my pictures for comparison!

So below is the brief writing sample I made. (On my Rhodia pad, for the paper enthusiasts.) You can see that you get some depth of color to this – it’s not completely flat although that will of course depend on your nib. But I think it concentrates well, and in the ends and dips of strokes you see a darker shade.

Green is generally my favorite color. Since my local pen emporium Bertram’s Inkwell doesn’t carry J. Herbin inks (yet?) the first green I ever bought was a Private Reserve, which I do still like. But this is much brighter than the Sherwood Green I got then, and thus more useful when trying to comment on documents or things like that. So I think the love of this ink is dependent somewhat on what you want to use this for.

Check out this close-up. Can you imagine looking at that much green-ness for page upon page? I totally can, but then I’m weird. I feel like a bright green like this energizes and delights. It helps that the ink performance is so reliable! I’ve continued to write with this since I took these photos, and I have to say I’m pleased and impressed at the consistency.

The bottle itself is a feature in that it has a pen rest! For a hobbyist like myself the attractiveness of the bottle is important and we definitely have a winner here in that department. Note however that while the bottles of ink seem cheap compared to others, you are only getting 30ml. (I tried to find reference to a “demi-courtine” as a french unit of measure anywhere other than in the context of this ink – I couldn’t, except in books about the military written entirely in french. In that context, it seems like it’s a military unit.)

You can order this ink in many places, but my current internet shop of choice is JetPens. They’ve just stocked some of the Herbin colors, so check it out. It looks like Lierre Sauvage itself is out of stock in many places, but if I get a lead on where you can order it I’ll put the link here.

Tags: Stationery

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