I've worked my way through approximately three quarters of the dozen or so pens I had inked up when I started this blog a month ago. If you're like me (and I assume most of you reading this are), you'll understand my reluctance to ever flush out a pen when it's still full of ink, even if I've long since grown tired of the color. It's a completely irrational hesitation, I recognize, because it often amounts to about .2ml of ink from a nearly full 50ml bottle that will take me years to finish, but I digress..... What I meant to say was that writing all these ink reviews was my way of cleaning out these pens (so I can try new inks, of course). Now that I'm almost finished, I've got loads of new non-ink review material coming your way.
I think that Montblanc has some of the nicest ink bottles on the market, up there with Pilot-Namiki Iroshizuku and the Akkermans. I need to get my hands on some of the vintage Montblanc "shoe" bottles, which have a more rounded shape.
But in the meantime, I present to you Montblanc's Irish Green. The name is self-explanatory--it's a very bright, "Happy St. Patrick's Day"-type green ink that I would label a "Kelly Green." No comparison to the Diamine by that name is intended--I've never tried it. I use this ink for multiple purposes: annotations, personal/work notes, and even some limited correspondence, although I write very few letters these days. (Next year I'm going to participate in InkoWriMo, I swear.) Irish Green is great for pretty much any use. It's a Montblanc ink, which means that it works well on a wide range of papers without feathering, bleeding, or ghosting (all must-have characteristics for me) and the dry time is almost immediate. It washes out of a pen very easily. I've been using this on a clear plastic TWSBI 580 demonstrator, and have had no problems with staining. Shading is average, but if you use a broader nib than the TWSBI EF that I used to write this review, you will see more.
This scan nails it on color replication. Paper is an Exacompta index card.
N.B. : I was recently shocked to learn that writing people letters in green ink has "negative" connotations (if you consider being labeled a nutter "negative."). See Here. Those in Great Britain might want to be more careful than those in the U.S.
