Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 449

 Continuing on with Part 3 (part 1 here, part 2 here) of Lawrence's thoughts on his favourite fountain-pen-and-ink matchups (or what he calls "Lavalife and pens" lol)....

Lawrence writes: "Okay, finally the pen/ink matching write-up that started it all. I figure with the two previous "practice" sessions, I think I can organize my thoughts better now to tackle this one. 

 This group is the most important for me, anyway, since it includes a good number of my grail pens, and it's also the beginning of my pen-ink matching craziness. The wonderful ink that started this all: Diamine's Syrah:

(all photos courtesy of Lawrence ~ please click on images to enlarge)

Ironically, Syrah is also the last one to be acquired in the group (I got it just last year); it was out of stock in stores for a while and I basically accumulated a whole bunch of other inks that are sort of close to it, but not quite. So all the rest of the inks in this group are what I have acquired "while working my way towards the Syrah ink". Syrah is what I had in mind as a perfect match for my first grail pen, MB's Daniel Defoe (which I have reviewed here before):

Yes, there are three of them here with different nib sizes. I am not going to dwell on the topic of "bat-s@#t crazy hoarder" at the moment, so we'll just leave it at that LOL. I have always treated them as one pen (maybe to make myself feel less guilty). Anyway, so I had this perfect image of a black pen with burgundy/reddish ink. I am not a "goth" person really, but the combo of black pen with reddish/burgundy ink gives off a gothic vampire vibe, which I think is kind of cool. And of course I can't leave out the "matching" tribute pen for this:

I know it's not the real thing, but whatever, I like it anyway. It looks like the Defoe a great deal but just don't look too close at it. So the Defoe(s) is my default Burgundy pen, and is probably the one that uses this colour the most.

At that time, Syrah was still not available, so I got the most logical one to match my Defoes, which is MB's Burgundy Red. This is also a very nice deep-coloured ink, however, I do find that the ink dries a bit on the greyish/bluish side on certain paper. It does not retain that vibrant burgundy colour when I first put the ink to paper (the picture below shows the ink as it just begins to dry). Regardless, it is still a good match (and I guess an MB pen does go with MB inks, also):

While I waited for Syrah to be available, I also found another ink that I thought would be fine with the Defoe and this is J. Herbin's Larmes de Cassis. As expected of most J. Herbin inks, it has a more washed out effect, but still pretty good. This ink is a bit more purple than MB's burgundy.

In the meantime, I ended up with another black pen, Visconti's Michelangelo (I have reviewed this here as well):

This pen is "black on black on black". At least that is how I would describe it. So I thought perhaps a reddish ink would be perfect. Burgundy works, I'm sure, but I decided to expand the pallete here. So I ended up with J. Herbin's Rouge Opera:

It ended up being a nice bright raspberry instead of red, and of course, it also has this washed out look that is expected of Herbin's inks. The match is okay, though, not perfect but okay. It needs a "stronger" red I think.

By this time, a few other black pens somehow "appeared" in my life (LOL) and I used that as an excuse to search for some more burgundy/reddish ink choices. I found another one that is pretty good: MB's Corn Poppy Red. This ink will go well with the Michelangelo for sure. The contrast will be awesome. It's a very beautiful ink. Nice scathing red. It also seems to retain this colour when the ink dries:

I think Diamine's Oxblood is pretty close to this (I don't have this ink...yet LOL). This ink is also perfect with the Rouge et Noire which "appeared" at this time somehow LOL (I have reviewed this pen here also):

This pen looks like MB's Agatha Christie, so the red ink works very well to give it that "bloody murder mystery feel".

Another ink that I found is Graf von Faber Castell's Garnet Red, although this one has a slight "greyish" look (not sure how else to describe it) compared to MB's Corn Poppy, but this seems to retain this colour when it dries.

This is my largest ink group so far (and I'm still looking to get more). The number of pens in this group is also relatively larger than the rest, as I do have a thing for black pens. Speaking of which, here are other pens in this group:

Visconti Homo Sapiens (a Palladium stub nib, and an 18K F nib....the stub was reviewed here before):

Black and silver Franklin Covey (an impulse buy from Staples):

The TWSBI 580: As mentioned in the last few posts, these demonstrators can take all sorts of different inks. However, because I do love Burgundy/Reddish inks in general, I do fill them up with this ink colour whenever I have the chance.

Montegrappa Ducale: It's not a black pen, and I normally will not feed this pen anything remotely close to red in my OCD world. But I tried the reddish coloured inks on it for fun, and it seems to work well; however, I still prefer another colour with this pen so it will come up again in another (ink) group later on. Occasionally, I do put a reddish ink in it to spice things up..yes I like living on the edge LOL. But no burgundy...just red.

Not to be left out, my Parker 21 (not shown) also tried out this group. But being a "school pen" I tend to stay away from red inks with them. When I was in school, red ink was associated with wrong answers and "nasty" teachers (probably still is)....so....the Parker 21 and I had a "mutual psychological agreement" that we will not revisit childhood traumatic issues. Basically.. any colour except red/burgundy for this pen. This also applies to my other vintage school pens.

Okay that's it for now. The next set will probably be the purples/violets."


Wow - what a great write-up! Many thanks to Lawrence for sharing his thoughts (and photos) on pens & inks with us; I eagerly look forward to the next installment :)