Friedrich Nietzsche once (allegedly) said that “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking,” or however you say that in German.
Clearly he wasn’t writing with J. Herbin ink, because I can think of some pretty great thoughts that were conceived of while people were writing. In fact, he probably wouldn’t have kept that thought around if he had not been writing, so who knows? He looks grumpy, but all guys back then did. Yet, if you look closely, there’s a twinkle in his eyes (or perhaps it’s that baby fat) that says maybe he was using J. Herbin’s ink at the time since Nietzsche lived from about 1844 to 1900 and, as we fountain pen aficionados and J. Herbin lovers know, that venerable company “depuis 1670″ (has been extant since 1670). For a little of its history and to look at its wonderful products, specialty inks, calligraphy items, sealing waxes and seals, go to the J. Herbin link on my blogroll or click on the link here.
I got a bottle of J. Herbin Violette Pensée courtesy of Exaclair, a distributor of such excellent brands as Clairefontaine paper (the best paper for writing, especially for fountain pens!), Quo Vadis, Rhodia, J. Herbin, Exacompta, and others with which I am not so familiar. You can see my bottle here, posing with a different Clairefontaine notebook and my Black Knight because I wanted an elegant, classy pen to go with an elegant, classy ink. Background: a purple and green scarf.
J Herbin Violette Pensée, Black Knight, Clairefontaine, Green/Purple. Weavy!
You may not have noticed it yet, gentle reader, but I choose my backgrounds with some care, selecting them from my rather large store of scarves and dupattas (a kind of scarf thing that is a component of a salwaar kameez, a three-piece Indian outfit, the dupatta is what goes around the neck. Needless to say, mine are much plainer than that which is pictured here.) Green is my favorite color, and purple is a close second, and I particularly love the combination of green and purple together after having read The Tale of Murasaki by Liza Dalby. I highly recommend this book, by the way. I think I might have to put a category of book reviews up here at some point. Some day.
Anyway, to the inks. I am comparing the Violette Pensée (click here for the J. Herbin color comparison chart, and especially, enjoy, as I do, each little icon that goes with each ink. I find them charming! For example, the little elephant that goes with Orange Indien, or the fan that goes with Rouge Opéra; they’re such charming little pictures! Just an extra little touch that makes these inks extra special.) to Daler Rowney’s FW Pourpre Lac 437 and Waterman’s Violette Encre). The FW was in a broad nib pen, and it hits you like a purple brick to the head, and the Waterman is in two pens: a Pen & Ink Extra Fine as well as my Charcopan Fine. The Violette Pensée is in a Pen & Ink Extra Fine.
Three purples in four pens. Purpley!
Because I am relatively new at this whole “having more than one shade of basic colors of ink” thing, I naturally thought that more saturated = better quality of ink. Therefore, I was surprised to see that the J. Herbin was the lightest of the samples. (It is the second one down.) At first I thought perhaps it was the pen’s fault; it is an extra fine nib, so maybe I should have put it in a broader nib. But I tried the Waterman Violette Encre in the same brand and the same extra fine nib, and it was a lot darker, so I thought, hmm, well, that must just be how the ink is. So I went on with the testing and wrote here and there. I turned it over, and, not surprised, did not see any bleedthrough. I took two shots of the reverse side because when one shines a light, one can see the reverse swatch more clearly…
Reverse side, not anchored, darkest patch visible, slightly. Swatchy!
The darkest of the swatches was the Waterman Violette Encre with the Pen & Ink Extra Fine nib, the last test. You can see a bit of it on the reverse, which speaks extremely well of Clairefontaine paper because I felt like I was tearing straight through it when I was scribbling on the front side. I thought I was actually damaging the paper, but that silky 90 gsm magic paper didn’t bleed through at all.
However, when I anchored the paper with the bottle of ink, the swatch was less visible, at least to the naked eye.
Anchored page with ink and Sailor desk pen. Blindy!
You can still see a little of the two heaviest inks, the Waterman in the Charcopan and the Pen & Ink EF nib. But given how I ripped up the front side of that page, the fact that you can see anything at all on the back side is remarkable.
Receiving this bottle of J. Herbin Violette Pensée taught me an important lesson. Higher chroma does not necessarily mean better quality ink. As the name of the ink tells us, it’s “the idea of purple,” perhaps the shadow of purple, or the sentiment of purple, the conception of purple, the purple that is yet to come, the purple that occurs in one’s mind before it becomes the purple of action: Violette Encre. Even as the word “pensée” is etymologically related to our own lovely and contemplative word “pensive,” this ink is softer, a presentiment, perhaps, or a memory of a gentler time, a time that J. Herbin can claim to remember, a shadow of the fast-paced and high-performance inks that, even as we all love them, I love them too, perhaps should step aside every so often for an ink that evokes rather than declares, that suggests rather than states. Violette Pensée is that pensive, evocative ink, not deluging you with a strong purple lake that you drown in, but one that might have been written by a modest lady in a more demure time, one who would allow you to come calling to her, bouquet of wildflowers just picked, in an evening that was just starting to be, but was not quite, hinting on the impression of violet.
La Perle des Encres: The Jewel of Inks.Thinking out of the Box. Boxy!
(Note: I realize that I already got the Review Queue out of order, but my main concern was that the Exaclair items should go first, so the J. Herbin has gone first, next will be the lovely Clairefontaine Basics notebook, and then the rest will be in the order that you saw.)
(Extra Note: I don’t want to give anyone the impression that I don’t like the super-saturated, high-chroma inks. I do. I love them. The more saturated the better. But this was really a lesson in learning how to gentle things down a bit. I think I might invest in some more feminine stationery to go with this essentially feminine ink…it may bring out a different side of myself. But when I make the comment about the purple lake one drowns oneself in, sometimes I like to do just that. I just know that not everyone does.)
And now, the moment you have all been waiting for…
but first, a note on pronunciation. For those of you who don’t read French out there*, pensée sounds more like /ponsay/ than /pensee/ so when reading the Bailiwick Limerick, make sure that you read the rhymes with the appropriate exaggerated French/British accent with the a that sounds like a short o as in “opera.” So “fancy” would sound like “fawnsay” to make this limerick rhyme properly all the way through and cop the proper ‘tude.
The Bailiwick Limerick
If you don’t want any inks chancy,
Yet you want to go a bit fancy,
And you say, “A pox
On ink in a box!”
Then try J. Herbin’s Violette Pensee!
* I was a French major before I switched to English, so I have my pronunciations and definitions on pretty good authority.
