Review: J. Herbin Rouge Caroubier Ink

J Herbin Rouge Caroubier Fountain Pen Ink.

I had been looking for a red ink for a while, and having liked a few other colors from the Herbin line, I decided to try the Rouge Caroubier



From the J Herbin website:

"J. Herbin is the oldest name in pen inks in the world. M. Herbin created “The Jewel of Inks” in his shop on the Rue des Fosses Saint-Germain in Paris in 1700."

"Each bottle of 30 ml has an integrated pen rest. They are known as “D bottle pen inks. The “D” refers to the old French unit of measure “la Demi Courtine”.

* 30 beautiful colors!
* Non toxic and pH neutral
* Lightfast
* Water based
* Flows smoothly and is fast drying
* All natural dyes



I've been having some difficulty in trying to establish a baseline paper to test fountain pen inks. I wanted to go with Clairefontaine because it's bright white, takes fountain pen inks beautifully and is fairly easy to obtain, but I had one heck of a time trying to photograph or scan it.

And while Clairefontaine paper is widely recognized and loved for it's friendliness towards fountain pen inks, I don't like the way all my pens write ultra thin and almost "dry" on this paper. When I first tested this ink on this paper, I didn't like it because I thought it was too thin, not saturated enough and leaning towards dry in the pen. But then......



But then I tried it in a Canteo journal with cream colored pages. Same pen, (a .05 Cursive Italic Lamy Safari) same ink. Look at the difference. More nib definition, (but does that mean it's spreading in the Canteo? or dry on the Clairefontaine?) more saturation, and now you can see some shading.



Once I tried it in the Canteo journal, I liked it a lot. It's an orange-red and on paper other than the Clairefontaine, it flowed smoothly - not dry.



J Herbin Rouge Caroubier Ink in Clairefontaine



J Herbin Rouge Caroubier Ink in Canteo.



Mandala created on Fabriano Hot Press Watercolor paper with a Lamy Safari fountain pen (.05 Cursive Italic) filled with J. Herbin Rouge Caroubier ink. Highlighted with Prismacolor pencils, mantra written in Noodler's Bulletproof Black ink in a Lamy Studio EF.

Overall, Herbin inks are not terribly saturated, and I'm fine with that. Not a great deal of shading, and that's ok for me as well.

They run $8.75 per 30ml bottle at Pear Tree Pens

See a good article on Pentrace where I think they did a great job demonstrating the Herbin colors.