Mouse Fur?

The J. Herbin ink library of colors includes a rich assortment of beautiful, striking and unique, or at least idiosyncratic colors. The Vert Olive is a distinctive ink, and the perfectly named Rouge Opéra is for one who has a taste for reds, particularly individual. And though it it close to Private Reserve’s Arabian Rose, the J. Herbin Larmes de Cassis has its own quality apart from the former. But the feeling is they have done something truly individual with the ink they call Cacao du Brésil. A quick look might prompt one to say, “Yeah, a gray-brown ink. Not very pretty.”

In my opinion that snap description would be about 50% accurate. It honestly is not an ink that anyone would choose to brighten up or prettify the page. But then, we must realize it was never meant to serve that purpose, and that the mixologists at J. Herbin had a different idea in mind when they devised this odd shade of gray-brown. I have always felt that fountain pen inks should be chosen to illuminate the writer’s mood, or the tone of what is being put on the page. Certainly graphic designers routinely select their fonts and colors to enhance the ad or layout on their drawing board. Are we who love fountain pens, ink and paper any different in that respect?

I saw right off that Cacao du Brésil would fill a useful spot in my palette of inks. In writing out the detailed review page shown above, I mentioned that the ink reminds me of the De Atramentis ink, Charles Dickens—slightly somber, but in that description we also sense a hard-to-name quality of quiet simplicity. The Japanese call it shibui, or sober refinement and elegance. To my eye, the Herbin gray-brown has that quiet elegance.

Gray-brown. Mmm…is that accurate? How did they achieve this shade? At the risk of sounding as though I’m making a joke (and I’m not), if I had to imagine how Herbin arrived at this color, I would say they tried to come up with something that might look like a mix of unwashed potato peels, mouse fur and two, three at the most blueberries. Of course, that’s a preposterous recipe, but it does look a little like that to these eyes. My hope is that no one will read it as an inky indictment. When all has been said, when finally the inked words march or dance they way across the page, I’m happy with what I see.

The above review gives a few of the details, but I must warn that as of now, I have only tried the Cacao du Brésil in one pen, a Lamy Safari, and on three or four varieties of paper. The overall impression with the Lamy was good, but I'm not sure that another (perhaps better) fountain pen won’t bring out some other qualities in the ink. I have a feeling that the shading might be improved in a Pelikan, with a gold nib. In time, I might have some other ideas about this wonderfully peculiar J. Herbin Cacao du Brésil.

Lemme Have That Lamy

Kingdom Note is a small but very good fountain pen & ink shop on the 6th floor of the Branché Building in Shinjuku. You get used to it in time, but reaching the store requires a halting, sidestepping, baby-stepping walk through crowds that rival Times Square and Piccadilly Circus. Not more than five minutes from Shinjuku Station, the shop is located very near several giant multi-storied electronics stores, and most of the people are headed to those stores. Once inside Kingdom Note, the atmosphere changes immediately, suddenly quiet and full of polished surfaces and hundreds of fountain pens in glass cases. Bottles of ink are arrayed behind a long counter where customers sit and sample this ink, or that fountain pen.

My purpose today was to buy a Lamy Safari. I’ve gotten the feeling lately that I might be missing the charms of a pen that enjoys huge popularity, and knowing it isn’t an expensive item, the time had come to give it a try. I knew from the website that Kingdom Note carries a wide range of Lamy pens, so knew I’d find what I wanted. Didn’t take long to find, and I chose the bright orange Safari L13 with a medium steel nib. It came with a blue ink cartridge, but I had that replaced with a Waterman converter, which was added to the price. The pen and converter came to almost $52.00, but I learned later that it sells for less online through Rakuten. I’ve had some less than satisfactory experience with this particular online store, so I would not have bought the Lamy online even had I known beforehand of the lower price.

Was happy to find that Kingdom Note has the new Life notebook edition, the Premium, so bought two of them. Usually I stick to the notebooks with blank pages, but I also bought one with graphed pages this time. Bought, too a small notebook of traditional Japanese design, something that caught my eye as handy for quick memos. It’s the one under the Lamy Safari in the photo, and is called genkô yôshi in Japanese.

I would have been daft to leave the store without looking through the wealth of inks stacked right in front of me, and so I passed a happy thirty minutes looking at the sample books and a few of the bottles. In the end, it was no surprise that I settled on two J. Herbin inks that have been on my mind: Cacao du Brésil and Vert Empire. The first is a gray-brown, the second a green close to, but lighter than Montblanc’s discontinued Racing Green. More on these two inks later, as they deserve a post of their own with photo examples.

By now I’ve had time to fill the Lamy Safari (with J. Herbin) and write some lines with it. Tried it on four different kinds of paper, and believe it or not, the smoothest lines came on cheap white copy paper. It also writes well on an inexpensive variety of Muji recycled paper, but I wasn’t satisfied with the feel of the Lamy in my Life notebook, or the traditional Japanese paper. I have a feeling it will improve with time and use, hopefully soften a little, or as much as the steel nib will allow.

And last, a funny confession about something that happened to me when I joined the Fountain Pen Network. Part of the application process was to type in the answer to a question. The question was: Who makes Safari?

I stared at it for a minute wondering why they would ask such an off the wall question that many may not know the answer to. But I went ahead and typed in my answer: Apple

Gong! Huh? Well…duh. Took another minute before it occurred to me that the answer they were looking for was Lamy. I’m a member now despite the quiz I almost failed.