I flushed all of my inked fountain pens at the end of June. After six months worth of pen shows, testing out store product samples, and a generally chaotic schedule that often left me with little time to regroup, I once again ended up with around two dozen inked pens. Some were 3/4 empty, some had dried out, and others just needed to be cleaned because the whole scene was making me twitch.
For this fresh rotation, I went back to a variation on an experiment I'd tried in the past: inking up six pens, with two old favorites, two pens for review, and two randomly chosen pens, one custom and one vintage. For inks, I decided to work with a tried-and-true ink line that I absolutely love but don't use as much as I should: Caran d'Ache Chromatics.
The nib holder is from our collaboration with Nic Pasquale (PensByPasquale), which is now sold out. Stay tuned for more exclusive releases!
If forced to pick, my favorite of all the Caran d'Ache Chromatics inks would likely be Magnetic Blue, which is an old-school blue-black shade. A dark navy with a hint of grey, Magnetic Blue sits somewhere between traditional iron gall blue-blacks and "midnight blue" inks. I find that it generally flows quite well. On some papers, it will have a hint of red sheen, but it’s subtle. I was looking for a "classy" dark ink for my Waterman Exception I acquired in Chicago, and this ended up as an excellent pairing.
In a finer nib the ink will appear quite dark, which I love for work. It dries fairly quickly, even on non-absorbent paper.
While to my knowledge this particular blue-black ink does not contain iron gall, it does have a moderate degree of water resistance. I've included a picture below of the writing sample (on Cosmo Air Light paper) after being held under a running faucet for approximately one minute. The writing remains highly legible, and this ink would easily survive a water or coffee spill onto a notebook.
Caran d'Ache ink used to have a reputation as being overpriced (at one point I believe it rang in at $50 per bottle), but the price has since come down to the $35 range - not inexpensive but in line with other premium inks sold in 50ml glass bottles. Personally, I love the design of the Caran d'Ache glass bottle. It's a deeper inkwell that's slightly angled to make it easier to fill larger nib pens, and the hexagonal inkwell design looks great on a desk.
We've been Caran d'Ache retailers for nearly four years now, and stock all of the various Chromatics inks in both bottle and cartridge form, as well as Caran d'Ache pens and pencils. If you enjoy our content, please consider supporting us directly!