Mont Blanc Daniel DeFoe Palm Green Limited Ed writing ink on 6 writing papers

[Bling72]

Hello once again. I was stoked to get my hands on this ink relatively quickly.

Daniel DeFoe wrote Robinson Crusoe (thank you dear Migo for pointing that
out, My mistake) many schools would of included this in
the reading collection. I certainly remember from the days of primary
school.

The Mont Blanc Pens of this edition are absolutely devine in design, presentation and
look. I have no doubt this would be a beautiful pen to lift you and inspire your creativity.
(if you choose to use this limited edition pen).

The other Mont Blanc Ink that I own is Irish Green, which is completely different to this ink.

It comes in a 35 ml bottle. It is a very beautiful bottle, and the packaging to match.

From testing the inks on each of the 6 papers, I found that this Palm Green looks the nicest
on white paper, as opposed to cream, grey, and turquoise writing paper.

At first looking at the Quill Metallic Paper, the ink didn't look that special, however as you can
see, when you shine a light on this ink (look at the far left hand side of the photo), the ink
looks very beautiful. I would have to say this metallic paper enhances most inks particularly
when there's more presence of light.

Make no mistake, this ink just dries nicer on white paper. I do like this, but... at the same time
this would not go into my top 3 favourite inks.

Perhaps top 6. It is a nice alternative green. When it dries, it looks olive green. Brown-kind of
green.

Worth a check out if your local ink store has a sample of this ink. This would be a nice
addition to the collection, it brings character that doesn't exist in other inks. As to the
right situation/application for it, well perhaps not quite for formal letters. A social, or romantic
kind of letter, this has a nice touch without the feel of out there, obvious, or strong.

[migo984]

Hello once again. I was stoked to get my hands on this ink relatively quickly.

Daniel DeFoe wrote Tom Sawyer, many schools would of included this in the reading
collection. I certainly remember from the days of primary school.


Didn't Samuel Clemens write Tom Sawyer?

[Bling72]

Thank you for the correction. Don't know why Tom Sawyer popped into my mind at the time.

[Laura N]

Thank you for this useful review with great photos. I personally don't like olive green, so this saves me from buying a bottle. But MB inks are so very nice I'd think anyone who does like that shade of green would be interested.

[Tracy Lee]

I bought a bottle a couple weeks ago. Love it on any paper, and use a lot of cream tomoe river. Looks lovely in these eyeballs! Thsnks for sharing your thoughts.

[reprieve]

I ordered two bottles. Murky olive greens are my favorites. Can't wait to try it out.

[Bling72]

Hi Laura. Well before you decide not to buy a bottle, go to a store and give it a try. I would never trust uploaded photos as 100% accurate.
I took those photos under lamp light, so how the colours actually look on the paper does come out much different to the photos.

Thanks for the feedback reprieve and all the others who have thanked me :)

Like I said, not my favourite ink, but definately on the top half of my entire list. There isn't another colour I have quite like this, and to have
variety is so important. You can nearly match a mood or occasion for most of these available colours.

[Rusty888]

Hi bling. Came across from the rolexforums. I quite like this green as its very subtle. I had my starwalker sent back from Mont Blanc only to have to send it back. In the mean time I've ordered two more sailors. Will buy this green when I get my starwalker back

[hsianloon]

Thanks for the excellent review, love it when people show how an ink performs on various papers !

[Laura N]

Hi Laura. Well before you decide not to buy a bottle, go to a store and give it a try. I would never trust uploaded photos as 100% accurate.
I took those photos under lamp light, so how the colours actually look on the paper does come out much different to the photos.

Thanks for the feedback reprieve and all the others who have thanked me :)

Like I said, not my favourite ink, but definately on the top half of my entire list. There isn't another colour I have quite like this, and to have
variety is so important. You can nearly match a mood or occasion for most of these available colours.

Your photos are excellent because they show the variety of looks the ink gives. I just got a letter yesterday from a friend written this ink, and I would say with his pen and paper it comes out like the first two photos.

Thanks again for a nice review!

[reprieve]

My bottles of Palm Green arrived and I filled a broad-nibbed Pilot Custom 92. The ink is a lovely green with lots of pretty shading on Rhodia and Tomoe River paper. What I see in person with this nib and ink combo is closest to the first photo in this review.

It reminds me of R&K Alt Goldgrün, but Palm Green is slightly darker and slightly less yellow (Palm Green perhaps has a hint more brown than Alt Goldgrün). It's a relatively unique color--I can't really think of any other greens that are close. I'm very glad I ordered two bottles!

[Bling72]

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate the appreciation :)

I was very fortunate to get this ink early, however I will be able to get more next month. I have been trying to get some other Mont Blanc limed edition inks.

It wasn't easy to get all these papers, I found half of these purely by accident, being in a pen store at the right place at the right time.

I really enjoy the Fiorenza and G. Lalo paper. However it's not paper one can really afford to be always writing on, it is rather more expensive even per page.

Once you get your writing good, so that you no longer have to practice, then with the right occasion you can use these papers.

The advantage of having so many papers to choose from is that you should always be able to find at least one paper that a specific ink looks wonderful on.

[VertOlive]

Love.
Where to buy?

[Laura N]

Love.
Where to buy?

Montblanc boutique. Pen Boutique (but much better if you place a phone order instead of an internet order). Maybe Anderson's -- I think they often have MB ink.

[reprieve]

Love.
Where to buy?

I got mine from Fahrney's (http://www.fahrneyspens.com/Item--i-111410). I didn't know Anderson Pens carried Montblanc ink (http://www.andersonpens.net/Montblanc-Daniel-Defoe-Palm-Green-35-ml-p/mb-defoe-palm-green.htm) (thanks, Laura!). If I had known, I would've ordered from them.

[mustud52]

Love.
Where to buy?

Montblanc boutique. Pen Boutique (but much better if you place a phone order instead of an internet order). Maybe Anderson's -- I think they often have MB ink.

I like greens and use MB Irish Green and the old MB Turquoise often. The turquoise is in my writer for the week, an old Canadian Duofold, and I love the way it and the paper I use make nice music. The only pen/ink combination in the collection that sound quite like that.

Anyway, the Palm Green is available here for those down here in the Antipodes.

https://www.penandink.com.au/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=42_364_980&products_id=4857

[mustud52]

I have had two comments suggesting that my post describing MB Turquoise as a green is indicative of colour blindness (of course, put to me in the most polite way). I assure you, the 21 year old MB Turquoise I am using in the 83 year old Duofold is quite a greeny colour. I just checked it again, really it is.

Then again, perhaps I am just colour blind.......

I will take writing samples to the two people who made comments and make them give me chocolates as apologies.

[Laura N]

I have had two comments suggesting that my post describing MB Turquoise as a green is indicative of colour blindness (of course, put to me in the most polite way). I assure you, the 21 year old MB Turquoise I am using in the 83 year old Duofold is quite a greeny colour. I just checked it again, really it is.

Then again, perhaps I am just colour blind.......

I will take writing samples to the two people who made comments and make them give me chocolates as apologies.

Turquoise is a blue-green, and lots of people distinguish those differently. I wouldn't worry about it. You see more green, others see more blue. I think that's very common.

[elaineb]

I assure you, the 21 year old MB Turquoise I am using in the 83 year old Duofold is quite a greeny colour. I just checked it again, really it is.

If you're writing at night under most incandescent light settings, especially if you're not writing on stark white paper, turquoise blues easily shift into looking green. Our brains have very sophisticated visual processing that allow us to filter out colored light and see underlying hues. (When you're wearing sunglasses, for instance, everything in the world still looks the same color even though a color meter would say otherwise.) But for some reason, yellow light is harder to filter out than other hues, especially when viewing light cool blues. Our eyes will see green more readily in that situation.

As an experiment, write a small sample on the brightest white paper you can find, and look at it in bright light from a window. If it still looks green, then, well, perhaps you're colorblind :)

[mustud52]

I assure you, the 21 year old MB Turquoise I am using in the 83 year old Duofold is quite a greeny colour. I just checked it again, really it is.

If you're writing at night under most incandescent light settings, especially if you're not writing on stark white paper, turquoise blues easily shift into looking green. Our brains have very sophisticated visual processing that allow us to filter out colored light and see underlying hues. (When you're wearing sunglasses, for instance, everything in the world still looks the same color even though a color meter would say otherwise.) But for some reason, yellow light is harder to filter out than other hues, especially when viewing light cool blues. Our eyes will see green more readily in that situation.

As an experiment, write a small sample on the brightest white paper you can find, and look at it in bright light from a window. If it still looks green, then, well, perhaps you're colorblind :)

Methinks you also owe me a chocolate. A brown one. Not a white one.

:)

[elaineb]

Certainly! Where should I mail it? Dark or milk?

Another thought: turquoise dyes tend to be quite fugitive and it's possible that your 28-year-old ink has changed color as the dye destabilized. Even if you kept it stored in a dark desk drawer there could be chemical elements that broke down due to oxidation rather than light exposure. I'm not a dye chemist, but I know that a lot of turquoise dye compounds have copper as a component in there somewhere, and when copper oxidizes, you get that green verdigris color. Just an off the wall guess. But! I'll still send the chocolate. It's InCoWriMo month, after all. :)

[mustud52]

Certainly! Where should I mail it? Dark or milk?

Another thought: turquoise dyes tend to be quite fugitive and it's possible that your 28-year-old ink has changed color as the dye destabilized. Even if you kept it stored in a dark desk drawer there could be chemical elements that broke down due to oxidation rather than light exposure. I'm not a dye chemist, but I know that a lot of turquoise dye compounds have copper as a component in there somewhere, and when copper oxidizes, you get that green verdigris color. Just an off the wall guess. But! I'll still send the chocolate. It's InCoWriMo month, after all. :)

In the interest of full disclosure I will have to admit that my old MB turquoise is the most green turquoise I have seen. Well,strictly speaking, it belongs to Mrs Mustud - it was her favourite ink back in the days when people still wrote letters. That was part of the attraction in purchasing a few bottles of it all those years ago.

You make a good point about the possible effects of aging. we are now down to the last bottle, just opened in January, and comparing its current shade with some old notes that were stored in a genealogy file suggests the colour has not changed. Unless both the bottled ink and the written notes have both changed by about the same amount. The bottled ink and notes have been stored in the dark. A bit like their owners.

A bit of an aside. I also have a half bottle of similarly old and now discontinued MB green. That green was always a yucky colour to my eyes while the turquoise was always lovely. I wonder why they discontinued it? I see nothing in their range now like it. I also like Diamine inks for colour range and flow and do not see a similar shade there either.

I know it is a bit silly, however there is a special frisson in using old inks in old pens. From the same period I also have 6 unopened and still boxed Royal Blue and 2 Black MD inks. They will get used over time, it is just that as I became older I found other colours more interesting.

[Laura N]

Certainly! Where should I mail it? Dark or milk?

Another thought: turquoise dyes tend to be quite fugitive and it's possible that your 28-year-old ink has changed color as the dye destabilized. Even if you kept it stored in a dark desk drawer there could be chemical elements that broke down due to oxidation rather than light exposure. I'm not a dye chemist, but I know that a lot of turquoise dye compounds have copper as a component in there somewhere, and when copper oxidizes, you get that green verdigris color. Just an off the wall guess. But! I'll still send the chocolate. It's InCoWriMo month, after all. :)

In the interest of full disclosure I will have to admit that my old MB turquoise is the most green turquoise I have seen. Well,strictly speaking, it belongs to Mrs Mustud - it was her favourite ink back in the days when people still wrote letters. That was part of the attraction in purchasing a few bottles of it all those years ago.

You make a good point about the possible effects of aging. we are now down to the last bottle, just opened in January, and comparing its current shade with some old notes that were stored in a genealogy file suggests the colour has not changed. Unless both the bottled ink and the written notes have both changed by about the same amount. The bottled ink and notes have been stored in the dark. A bit like their owners.

A bit of an aside. I also have a half bottle of similarly old and now discontinued MB green. That green was always a yucky colour to my eyes while the turquoise was always lovely. I wonder why they discontinued it? I see nothing in their range now like it. I also like Diamine inks for colour range and flow and do not see a similar shade there either.

I know it is a bit silly, however there is a special frisson in using old inks in old pens. From the same period I also have 6 unopened and still boxed Royal Blue and 2 Black MD inks. They will get used over time, it is just that as I became older I found other colours more interesting.

Well, if that's a half full bottle of Montblanc Racing Green you guys are lucky. Now that it's discontinued it's very sought-after and highly valued. :)

[mustud52]

I that case I shall put it towards the front of one of the shelves of the Pen Palace and give it another try.

Just shows that commenting on personal preferences may have unexpected consequences!

[mustud52]

Had a bit of time and decided to check out MB Racing Green. Nope, the old MB green I have is much, much lighter than Racing Green. RG looks very nice - I would use it if I had it.

I don't think you would like my old MB green, Laura. Wonder when they discontinued it? The bottle I have is pretty close to full and I think I purchased it around 1994. That makes it older than I initially thought.

I'm thinking of trying Diamine Delamere as my next green. I think it would age very nicely.

[mustud52]

http://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w267/mustud52/Greenink3_zps0a04a188.jpg

A picture can be helpful - or perhaps misleading. The Daniel Defoe looks mighty non green in this pic. I think that Tony Rex would have done much better.

Still, I tried.

[Cob]

My bottles of Palm Green arrived and I filled a broad-nibbed Pilot Custom 92. The ink is a lovely green with lots of pretty shading on Rhodia and Tomoe River paper. What I see in person with this nib and ink combo is closest to the first photo in this review.

It reminds me of R&K Alt Goldgrün, but Palm Green is slightly darker and slightly less yellow (Palm Green perhaps has a hint more brown than Alt Goldgrün). It's a relatively unique color--I can't really think of any other greens that are close. I'm very glad I ordered two bottles!

To me looks somewhere between Diamine's Safari and Salamander inks.

Cob

[Cob]

Certainly! Where should I mail it? Dark or milk?

Another thought: turquoise dyes tend to be quite fugitive and it's possible that your 28-year-old ink has changed color as the dye destabilized. Even if you kept it stored in a dark desk drawer there could be chemical elements that broke down due to oxidation rather than light exposure. I'm not a dye chemist, but I know that a lot of turquoise dye compounds have copper as a component in there somewhere, and when copper oxidizes, you get that green verdigris color. Just an off the wall guess. But! I'll still send the chocolate. It's InCoWriMo month, after all. :)

In the interest of full disclosure I will have to admit that my old MB turquoise is the most green turquoise I have seen. Well,strictly speaking, it belongs to Mrs Mustud - it was her favourite ink back in the days when people still wrote letters. That was part of the attraction in purchasing a few bottles of it all those years ago.

You make a good point about the possible effects of aging. we are now down to the last bottle, just opened in January, and comparing its current shade with some old notes that were stored in a genealogy file suggests the colour has not changed. Unless both the bottled ink and the written notes have both changed by about the same amount. The bottled ink and notes have been stored in the dark. A bit like their owners.

A bit of an aside. I also have a half bottle of similarly old and now discontinued MB green. That green was always a yucky colour to my eyes while the turquoise was always lovely. I wonder why they discontinued it? I see nothing in their range now like it. I also like Diamine inks for colour range and flow and do not see a similar shade there either.

I know it is a bit silly, however there is a special frisson in using old inks in old pens. From the same period I also have 6 unopened and still boxed Royal Blue and 2 Black MD inks. They will get used over time, it is just that as I became older I found other colours more interesting.

Well, if that's a half full bottle of Montblanc Racing Green you guys are lucky. Now that it's discontinued it's very sought-after and highly valued. :)

What's the problem at Montblanc? So many people want Racing Green, including me.

Perhaps they will re-introduce it; they could follow the trend and instead of Racing Green, call it Woolf Barnato or Sir Henry Birkin, Mike Hawthorn, Jim Clark or Graham Hill...

Cob