De Atramentis Pigeon Blue

De Atramentis is a German ink brand with inks that are handmade by Dr Franz-Josef Jansen. De Atramentis doesn’t seem to get that much attention in the fountain pen community – maybe its that they are a little more expensive than their Diamine or Noodler counterparts or their colour range is not as extensive? My view is that they have always performed quite well and rank up there with Iroshizuku and Sailor – particularly when it comes to getting a more stubborn pen going!

Pigeon blue is a robin’s egg teal blue, that is a bit duskier than the other inks that I own in this category. While other De Atramentis inks I’ve used are typically wetter, I find Pigeon blue marginally drier than its brand counterparts, but not a dry ink by any stretch. It would be a good ink to use if you were using a more absorbent paper, like Fabriano, or a wetter nib.

Being a dusky, muted ink, its not super saturated and did not exhibit any sheening during use, I did see good shading from this ink. Depending on how wet your nib is, the ink appears more blue when wet and more green when dry. I prefer it when it leans bluer, but this is a pleasant shift when using this ink.

Strangely, for a marginally drier ink, it feathered something awful on Rhodia, when I used it in the Spencerian Falcon nib. I didn’t see this happen with any of the other nibs I used for this review on Rhodia and it didn’t happen on any other paper. I guess that’s just one combination of ink, pen and paper that just did not get along.

The only downside to this brand is that often some of their specially named inks are their normal line rebranded (for example, I think Alexander Hamilton is the same as Aubergine), so take care you don’t end up buying double of the same ink. Having said that, its not unique to De Atramentis (there is strong suspicion that PW Akkerman is Diamine rebranded) and their special editions aren’t typically more expensive than their standard inks – so its not a problem if you take care to double check before buying.

It’s a shame that De Atramentis doesn’t get more attention than some others inks because everything I’ve tried from them is well behaved on paper, dries in a reasonable time frame and doesn’t stain up your pens. It’s a tiny bit pricier than say Diamine or Noodler, but not unreasonably so. If you do get a chance to try it, I really recommend them.

This next one is on 85gsm Fabriano (sorry I forgot to note it on the page):