Diamine Salamander - a review by a novice!

Diamine Salamander 

(and the wonderful name was given to this excellent ink by Mr. Nigel Strachan)

 

For my first ever ink review (!) [please let me know if I’ve missed out any crucial tests that you would have liked to see]), I have been trying out the newest shade of ink to be produced by Diamine: Salamander. This new ink will be released for sale on the 11^th of October, 2013 – so not long to wait now!

To do this review I was writing with a Lamy Nexx Fountain Pen with a Fine nib, and it was a dip test. Here are the results!

The Colour 

 

I performed this review yesterday but as our more local customers may have noticed, the weather was gloomy, drizzly and the light really wasn’t strong enough to do this ink proper justice in any of the pictures taken on my phone. In fact the first pictures I took made the ink look black which it is far from. The shade’s actually greenish…

(A very zoomed in picture that shows the varying shades: pond green, emerald green, some jade green in there… how would you describe them?)

And as the drawing went on and the nib eventually became drier, undertones of brown and grey appeared on the page:

 

The name Salamander is perfect for this colour – it makes me think of murky ponds, and all things woodland – if you dipped your pen in an inky pond (and didn’t impale an actual salamander), all the colours you’d hope and expect to see come out on the page… and you wouldn’t have to keep dipping in the pond, either - being new to this, I assumed to test the ‘wetness’ of the ink by putting the nib in the inkwell, and then scribbling until the ink ran out. Which it didn’t. This explains the messy wiggly backtrack in the middle of the page (below) where I wrongly assumed that the ink would run out before the paper did. Not only did the ink keep going, I had enough ink left to do the water test beside it. I could have probably scribbled halfway around the page before the nib ran dry which I would say earns it an impressive rating!

The water & smudge resilience test

The Salamander ink perhaps didn’t hold up to the water test as well as its amphibian namesake would have, if I’d thrown a glass of water on that – but can you expect it to, being ink and all? (Also, in the ink’s defense, my hand slipped, and it wasn’t so much a water test as a flash flood.)  In hindsight, I should have just held the page out of the window for a few seconds.

The ink did very well with the smudge test – so well in fact that even after only a second left to dry on the paper, I couldn’t smudge it despite my best attempts...

I was writing on a Sailor tester pad of paper and it soaked in nicely. Here’s an even-more zoomed in picture so you can see the edges of the letters:

To conclude, I hope that you have enjoyed reading this review and that you may even have found it slightly useful (if you did you can follow us on Facebook where they will be announced), and that you like the look of the new Diamine Ink! We’re not allowed to start selling it until the 11^th of October, but if you’d like to pre-order yours and receive it ASAP, we do have a page for that, and we advise that you get yourself onto the list early so we can post it out to you on the day!

First scribblings

In Honour of Talk Like a Pirate Day…

It is a written greeting, so you’ll have to imagine the talking part. I hope that, like me, you find it impossible to read 'thar' in a non-pirate accent, and so it will still count as part of the celebration.

For this blogpost, I have been trying out and experimenting with a selection of fountain pens and have taken a few pictures of the results to share with you. All pictures are taken on my phone camera which is why they don’t quite capture the detail I’d like, 100%. Before today, I hadn’t written with a fountain pen since school (I'm Jade, and I'm new here).  My handwriting tends to be scribbley, even with the ballpoints, and below is a picture to compare with the writing done with the fountain pens.

 

Fountain pens weren’t scratchy as I expected – actually scratch that, they were just as smooth on the page as ballpoints are, and the ink soaked into the paper in a way that gave my letters shape and character which they typically lack. I like ballpoints; they're convenient, but they're not as fun. The novelty of writing in ink soon had me swooping letters, dotting I’s and crossing t’s, and thinking up a reason to write a letter to someone. If only it was Christmas already…

Because I’ve found the perfect pine green ink (that’s Lamy green). My relations won't know who’s sent the card until they read the signature… but would they recognise my usual scrawl through the extra curls and flicks I add to letters as soon as I have a fountain pen in my hand? 

Literary Personality in Pens – who next?

People in Pens

Literary heroes are a popular source of inspiration for special edition pens. From Omas we have an Alexander Pushkin pen – made from simple and yet striking enamel engraved with subtle silver, representative of the great Russian poet’s noble background, and of the style that sparkles in the details that are laced like deep veins throughout his work. The personal nature of his writing is also acknowledged: on the top of the cap, the poet himself is depicted using diamond engraving techniques.

(Alexander Pushkin inspired pen from Omas)

As well as their classically designed Wordsworth selection, Conway Stewart chose Rudyard Kipling as inspiration for a very special edition pen (below) – look closely and you can read two poems printed in minute detail on the cap and the barrel.

The solid black design is representative of the solemn ‘stiff upper lip’ and reserved approach to life endorsed in If, and in Victorian society. The new Gatsby pen from Conway Stewart, in stark contrast, is gleaming with the art deco and decadence of the 1920s.

Gatsby pen

And of course while we're on the subject of great novelists and literary inspired pens, no blog post would be complete without mentioning the Charles Dickens series of pens, designed by Onoto: Pickwick, Copperfield, Nickleby and Chuzzlewit. Each of these pens has the personality of the writer, and the time they lived in.

Copperfield

And so, with this selection already on the writing desk, what new editions can we look forward to in the future? Will we be treated to Roald Dahl editions? I think these would have to have an element of novelty, and of playfulness. Perhaps there could be a Chocolate Factory design available in both edible and non-edible versions. Or a Twits ‘upside down’ pen with a decorative nib on the cap, and a concealed nib for writing and bemusing our friends.  If previous trends of honouring the most popular writers of the time continue, we can undoubtedly look forward to a Rowling pen. I imagine that pen to be transparent, with silvery hues like a pensive, a patronus, and the milky fogs of Hogwarts. There’s already invisible ink. The Poe collection? Spindly, and crafted in black resin, with the details etched as indents... and Murakami pen would be beautiful, patterned with maki-e art - maybe pictures of tiny little birds. I just asked Pete what he’d like to see, and he said a Steinbeck pen dotted with tiny pearls.

Which of your writing heroes do you think should be transfigured into fountain pen form, and how would you go about representing them?

Conway Stewart Fresian

The latest offering from Conway Stewart, hand made resin featuring predominant shades of white and light grey hues offset by rich marbled black. The iridescent pearl lights up the light gray, giving this new edition a glimmering life of its own. The Fresian is further accented by gleaming black resin cap top, section, and barrel end, adorned with solid 18 carat gold bands. 

Remember its a special edition, so only 50 pieces available! - Find out more about it here...