Diamine Amazing Amethyst

Diamine is one of the oldest ink producers, dating back to 1864, located in the UK. Diamine offers one of the largest colour ranges (over 100) with shimmer and archival ink in its repertoire. Not only this, Diamine inks are well priced and reliable.

I first saw Diamine Amazing Amethyst on Lady Dandelion’s blog post which showed a muted grape colour which I found fascinating at the time, but perhaps a bit too muted and blue leaning for my taste. A more recent review of this ink by Mountain of Ink showed a brighter, sheening purple. I particularly liked the colour on white Tomoe River paper, which is my go to paper of choice so in a recent order, I picked up a bottle of this interesting ink.

The great thing about Diamine inks is that they are available in a much smaller 30 ml bottle size, so if I fancy trying a new ink, I don’t have to buy the full bottle and feel bad if I don’t end up liking the colour. The 30 ml gives a bit more room for experimentation that a 2 ml sample doesn’t offer, but allays any guilt that I feel by buying a bigger bottle.

In person, the ink is indeed a dusky grape colour – what I would call a “neutral purple” if there is such a thing. By this I mean that, to my eye anyway, its neither red nor blue leaning, but right in the middle of the two.

The ink exhibits shading in wider nibs, which isn’t as apparent in finer or drier pens. In my writing samples, I wasn’t able to see any sheening that was apparent in Mountain of Ink’s review, even on Tomoe River which is usually good for displaying that sort of quality in an ink.

Something that I don’t normally test, but have done so inadvertently in this review, is the water fastness of this ink – its not. The only reason this has been tested here is because my air conditioner leaked over my ink review pages – I’ve had to redo some of the pages and left others, hence a few water stains here.

The colour is muted enough that in finer nibs, you could probably get away with using it in a work environment, but depending on the conservativeness of your workplace, may not be suitable for signing serious documents. It is still an obviously purple ink.

For me, this is not the sort of ink colour that appeals to me. The darker Damson is more to my taste when looking at muted purple inks. I also prefer a redder leaning purple like Sweet Potato Purple, or a darker more vibrant purple like Dark Lilac. I am really glad I bought this in the smaller size because I was able to test this out and have the freedom not to like it without feeling guilty.