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cimoreneThe quest for the perfect brown ink commences.
Herbin Café de Îles (in a Lamy Safari M), Herbin Tierre de Feu (in a Hero 616 petite with extra-fine nib), Herbin Lie de Thé (in a Lamy Safari with 1.1 mm stub nib), and Pelikan Edelstein Smoky Quartz (in a Platinum Preppy 05/M). Clairefontaine white paper.
More doodles and my verdicts:
Café de Îles by Herbin is a good color, pretty well balanced between green and red, medium-dark and pleasing to look at, not super dry although I would like it to be wetter, but this may be partly the fault of this Lamy Safari M nib, which I haven’t tried to adjust yet. I am pretty sure I’m going to order a bottle of it, but I will try it with a broad nib and/or wetter pen first like one of the M Preppies or my Kaweco Sport with the extremely good gold-colored nib (they’re all full of other colors of ink now).
Tierre de Feu does look like terracotta, and I kind of love it, but it’s too dry in the extra-fine Hero 616 nib I’ve got it in; it writes functionally but irritatingly. My guess is that it will seem dry even in a juicier nib, but I’ll give it a try as well. If it isn’t usable, I may look for another similar shade from another brand.
Lie de Thé is the yellowest of the browns here and actually has a bit of green undertone, which I guess is probably why a substantial subset of commenters and reviewers hate the shade. I belong to the other group, who like it a lot, and as everyone has said, the formula is fantastic. Also it’s very fun to doodle with. Will DEFINITELY be buying a bottle.
This is the second Edelstein ink from Pelikan that I’ve sampled (also Tanzanite, a bright blurple, but I didn’t love it enough to keep it in the pen long enough to do a swatch page. I still have it, so it could happen in the future though), and they both have really lovely, smooth-flowing formulas and spread out beautifully when drawing. This brown is cooler than the Herbins (though the coolest of the Herbin browns isn’t represented here because I ran out of empty pens), but layers up richly. Anyway, I like it enough to keep using it, but I’m not quite sure if I’ll buy a bottle of it because I don’t actually aim to have a ton of different browns. Like, when I ordered these samples, I was actually thinking I would just find one perfect brown, although, fool that I was, I failed to consider how different red browns in the terracotta family are from yellow browns and cool browns. But I might buy it instead of Café de Îles.
Herbin Café de Îles (in a Lamy Safari M), Herbin Tierre de Feu (in a Hero 616 petite with extra-fine nib), Herbin Lie de Thé (in a Lamy Safari with 1.1 mm stub nib), and Pelikan Edelstein Smoky Quartz (in a Platinum Preppy 05/M). Clairefontaine white paper.
More doodles and my verdicts:
Café de Îles by Herbin is a good color, pretty well balanced between green and red, medium-dark and pleasing to look at, not super dry although I would like it to be wetter, but this may be partly the fault of this Lamy Safari M nib, which I haven’t tried to adjust yet. I am pretty sure I’m going to order a bottle of it, but I will try it with a broad nib and/or wetter pen first like one of the M Preppies or my Kaweco Sport with the extremely good gold-colored nib (they’re all full of other colors of ink now).
Tierre de Feu does look like terracotta, and I kind of love it, but it’s too dry in the extra-fine Hero 616 nib I’ve got it in; it writes functionally but irritatingly. My guess is that it will seem dry even in a juicier nib, but I’ll give it a try as well. If it isn’t usable, I may look for another similar shade from another brand.
Lie de Thé is the yellowest of the browns here and actually has a bit of green undertone, which I guess is probably why a substantial subset of commenters and reviewers hate the shade. I belong to the other group, who like it a lot, and as everyone has said, the formula is fantastic. Also it’s very fun to doodle with. Will DEFINITELY be buying a bottle.
This is the second Edelstein ink from Pelikan that I’ve sampled (also Tanzanite, a bright blurple, but I didn’t love it enough to keep it in the pen long enough to do a swatch page. I still have it, so it could happen in the future though), and they both have really lovely, smooth-flowing formulas and spread out beautifully when drawing. This brown is cooler than the Herbins (though the coolest of the Herbin browns isn’t represented here because I ran out of empty pens), but layers up richly. Anyway, I like it enough to keep using it, but I’m not quite sure if I’ll buy a bottle of it because I don’t actually aim to have a ton of different browns. Like, when I ordered these samples, I was actually thinking I would just find one perfect brown, although, fool that I was, I failed to consider how different red browns in the terracotta family are from yellow browns and cool browns. But I might buy it instead of Café de Îles.
