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View Full Version : Ink Review: Caran d'Ache Vibrant Green



DrChumley
March 9th, 2014, 11:29 PM
You can find more photos and a full review here (http://penhabit.com/2014/03/10/ink-review-caran-dache-chromatics-vibrant-green/).

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I, like many others, was pretty bummed when I learned that Caran d'Ache was going to be discontinuing its Colors of the Earth line...especially as I had just barely gotten into fountain pens, and found myself unable to try some of the inks that people really raved about (Caribbean Sea, Storm). I did manage to find several bottles of Grand Canyon, which I adore, before my local stores ran out of stock.

Found myself pretty unimpressed with the colors that Cd'A chose for their Chromatics line, but once the inks became available in the U.S., I decided I should try at least one of the inks, despite their rather ridiculous price tag. (List price of $40USD). If nothing else, I wanted at least one bottle because I really do love those hexagonal bottles with the slanted bottom.

I won't go into a ton of detail (you can read that above), but I was pretty disappointed by this ink. It has a nice color and good shading. The bottles are as cool as they look, and really to facilitate filling the pen. That's about where my praise ends.

There is nothing really special about this ink to me. It doesn't feel terribly lubricated, and tends to flow on the dry side. Despite the fact that it has a dry flow, it takes this ink FOREVER to dry on decent paper. Even at 30 seconds, this ink is still just as wet as it was at 5 seconds. While I'm not a dry time fascist, I find dry times this long for a great majority of the writing that I do, and as such, opportunities for me to use this ink are extremely limited. I just don't have the luxury of 2-3 minutes of dry time between flipping the pages on my work notes or writing in my journal. Even with letters, if I want to write on the back of the paper, this ink is out.

I will say that it does perform pretty well on cheap paper, with only minor feathering and bleedthrough, and acceptable dry times.

But frankly, I didn't find anything particularly special about this emerald green color. I have other inks in that same immediate family. (MB Irish Green is one I much prefer to this). And, at this price point, I would expect my ink to be far more well behaved. This was the first Chromatics ink, but it will probably also be my last. And hopefully, at some point, Caran d'Ache will re-release their Colors of the Earth line as a limited edition (in more fountain-pen friendly bottles.)

Mags
March 10th, 2014, 05:00 AM
I wonder if the brown has any more water resistance in this line of inks. I did like the close up picture of the shading and I found this colour of green quite pleasing to look at.

VertOlive
March 10th, 2014, 08:48 PM
Nicely done, there was more shading than I expected...thanks for a vey helpful review!

Woody
March 14th, 2014, 10:34 PM
Thank you, and agree on the expense. I think the only advantage for me would be the bottle. It looks very functional. Thanks for the review again.

kaisnowbird
March 14th, 2014, 11:41 PM
Thank you for the review. I'm pretty disappointed too.

If we think in liquor terms, this ink is selling at equivalent to $600 for a 750ml bottle. There is not chance of meeting expectation at this price point.

I thought about buying a bottle just for fun, but none of the colour appealed to me in any special way. I might get a sample of the Devine Pink one day. Meh...

swanjun
April 3rd, 2014, 10:52 AM
I have this ink in a broad Levenger True Writer, which is a wet writer, and find that this ink looks pretty glorious in it. On Tomoe River paper, there is tons of red sheen. I've not tried it in a dry pen, but under the right circumstances, it can be awesome.