Today we are taking a look at some J. Herbin Poussière de Lune fountain pen ink (via JetPens) that I actually picked up a few months ago and just never got around to writing up the review for. This particular bottle was provided to us by JetPens as part of or partnership with them to support our twice monthly giveaway.
As always the first real look at any fountain pen ink we use comes when the bottle is cracked open. Any dark inks almost always look black from the outside, but once opened you can start to get a sense of the color by seeing how it appears on the inside walls of the bottle and the inside of the cap. Generally its still a bit darker than once you load it in a pen and start writing, but its a good start. In this case I couldn’t help but notice that the bottle looks much like a full glass of red wine to me, however I certainly wouldn’t recommend drinking this ink…or any ink I guess.
J. Herbin Poussière de Lune Writing Sample:
I really liked the color of the J. Herbin Poussière de Lune, or Moon Dust Purple which is a pretty descriptive name for this ink, although I’ve never been on the moon or seen moon dust myself. Now you will notice on the writing sample itself, I mention in the top half that it is “fast drying” and then in the bottom portion I call it out as being slow to dry. Now the “fast drying” comes from the J. Herbin marketing language found on the JetPens site, which I usually find to be accurate, however in my experience and as seen here I found that it really didn’t dry that fast. This doesn’t make it a bad ink unless you are a left handed writer, then you might want to stay away from it. For the record the slow dry time is evident here in the writing sample which was done in a ClaireFontaine Collection 1951 Notebook, and I also experienced it on some of my favorite paper (not pictured) which is Levenger’s Circa Rhodia paper (refills via Amazon). I think that the best thing about the L. Herbin Poussière de Lune fountain pen ink though is the very nice shading that I was able to get even with the fairly fine point of my Pelikan M215. I also felt that this ink had sort of a dry and slow flowing feel to it when I was writing which again was a little bit contradictory to the description provided. I liked the drier feel of this ink when writing although probably contributes to some of the slight skipping that I saw with the ink.
Even with the slower drying time and slight skipping that I saw with the J. Herbin Poussière de Lune, I still found the ink to have an overall favorable writing experience. I think part of this comes from the fact that its a more unique color. If this was simply a basic or generic color like blue or black I may have been more critical, but this unique color definitely gets little bit of a pass in my book and I’m looking forward to using it more. Check it out over at JetPens.
I too like this ink because of the shading and the color. From the website http://www.jherbin.com/fountain_pen_inks_colors.shtml :
Poussière de lune (Moondust purple): a very poetic name, the color of the night when only the crescent moon is glowing in the dark.
I also have this ink. I really loved the old formulation (which was the sample of it that I picked up), and was shocked to discover they’d changed it by the time I got the bottle. The old color had a lot more blue in it. It’s still a great color and I love the shading. I’ve used it in several pens and haven’t noticed any dryness or flow issues.
I love this ink, albeit I change my inks depending on what I’m doing.
The colour has a richness and uniqueness, I have not found in other inks.
My number one signature ink, as personal to me as my favourite pen or aftershave.
My boss who uses a fountain made positive comments about the colour when I wrote him a message (it’s not black? it’s a lovely colour, my reply was no it’s not black its moondust purple!), This prompted him to come into work a week or so later saying he’d bought 5 bottles! Giving me a bottle as a gift……….
Wonderful ink, I can’t say I have had any skipping issues with it.
I love that ink too, it looks like the one we used in France as kids, particularly from the old turnable printers my teachers used when I was 7. I loved to smell this ink. Like many pupils did.