Jacques Herbin 1670 Emerald of Chivor: Ink Review

Supplies Used:

• LAMY AL-star with medium steel nib (also EF and B nib)
• Rhodia No. 16 dotpad, 80g white paper
• Tomoé River white paper
• Moleskine notebook

Smear Test (Dry Time):

• Medium– it was pushing towards the long side, and I think it'll depend on the paper used. If you want to draw out the sheen (which um, is kinda the point of this ink), then you'll want to dump a lot of ink on some very ink-resistant paper. And that extends dry time.

Drip Test (Water Resistance):

• Medium– it actually wasn't as bad as I was originally anticipating. I definitely wouldn't recommend this ink as a go-to for permanent documents or anything, but if you spill something on it, there's a change you'll have a very beautiful mess (that's still readable) on the page.

Saturation:

• High– what's interesting about this ink over other ones is that it doesn't just get darker in color when you put it down heavy, which is typically what you find with ‘normal' inks. This one will actually shift/change color to a red/gold sheen as you put it down heavy. Very cool.

Ease of Cleaning:

• Difficult– this is not your run-of-the-mill ink, so I feel it's a little harsh to give it such a hard rating for ease of cleaning. The maintenance on this ink will be more effort than your average ink, especially given the gold sparkles which will tend to cling to your feed. If it dried up in the pen you might get a little crusting that happens on the nib, but it cleans away pretty easily. Using a pen flush to clean this ink out of your pen actually makes it fairly effortless, but because I have to even bring pen flush into the equation, I thought the difficult rating was appropriate.

Shading:

• High– this is one rating that could be controversial, because it's going to depend on the paper involved (as well as the nib size). Just the teal aspect of the ink shades well, but there's no way I could go without giving a high rating because of the red and gold sheen you get when this ink really goes down.

Flow:

• Wet– It writes wet, which is good because it needs to flow well with the gold specks in it. I haven't had any flow issues with it in several different pens, even when left in there for weeks with inconsistent use.

Packaging and Aesthetics:

• Awesome– J. Herbin definitely has beautiful packaging with their 1670 series of inks. It has a wax stamp on the front and a wax cap that matches the ink, c'mon! The box is really nice, too, though a white paper box is just begging for you to touch with your inky fingers so it looks like you actually use the ink. The one downside is the neck of the bottle is fairly thin, so larger pens might have a tough time getting in there.

Inks Similar in Color

Summary:

J. Herbin has really nailed it out of the park with this one. It's my favorite 1670 ink to date, and favorite J. Herbin ink by far. I absolutely love to see unique and innovative inks come out, and this one is like no other. You've set a pretty high bar here Herbin, if you're going to do another 1670 ink I don't know what it will be that could top this.

Just a side note here, you want to shake up the bottle pretty hardcore when filling, the gold stuff settles out pretty quick. You'll even see it settle out in your pen a bit, but don't go shaking your pen or you'll get ink everywhere! (yup, that's happened)

J. Herbin 1670 Emerald of Chivor ink is now available at Gouletpens.com in a 50 ml bottle for $26 and in a 2ml sample for $1.75.