(Jeff Abbott is a regular contributor at The Pen Addict. You can find more from Jeff online at Draft Evolution and Twitter.)
One of the purchases I made at the Atlanta Pen Show this year was a new Franklin Christoph fountain pen, but I'm saving that review for later. What I've been really impressed with so far (apart from the pen and nib) is the ink they supplied with the pen — Midnight Emerald. It's a beautiful shade of green that shades nicely and looks great inside the pen.
I've tried several green inks over the past couple of years. Like all colors, there are countless shades and properties to choose from. Luckily, my taste in colors is always changing each month. As part of the buying process, the nice folks at Franklin Christoph offer to fill your new pen with one of their inks. After a quick look at the ink sample sheet, I settled on the Midnight Emerald because it was non-standard and caught my eye compared to the others.
I was a little distracted when first trying the ink because I was mostly focused on the new pen, but after a few lines I started to notice the subtle shading and elegant color of the ink. Huge score with this complimentary ink.
Now, what makes this ink great? Well, like any ink, it comes down to several properties and personal taste. It's a nicely lubricated ink, doesn't feather easily, has nice shading properties, and has a great dark-green color that I love.
To be fair, I haven't tried cleaning it out of my pen yet as I haven't quite gone through it all. I was really hesitant to do an ink swab on the sample page since that's a good amount of ink that I'd rather use when writing, but the swab looks nice too. And, considering that the ink is really well-priced ($12.50 for 59ml), I don't think I'll continue worrying about running out because that means I'll just have the chance to buy a whole bottle.
Compared to several other inks I'm using at the moment, Midnight Emerald is fairly resistant to feathering. Yes, it feathers on cheap paper, but it's minimal. Honestly, it's fairly similar to Noodler's X-Feather, which I happen to still have inked from an earlier review.
And then, there's the shading. I'm a huge fan of inks that have shading properties. Can't really explain why, but I know that shading makes me smile. I like the variation in color and depth. It's adds more character to the pen strokes and adds (subtle) visual interest to the letters. In this ink, it's not extravagant, but it stands out enough to be a delight.
The color/hue is similar to Sailor Yama-dori. When you compare them side-by-side, the differences are fairly obvious, but the basic color is close. Basically, it's a dark green. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a black-green, but it's dark. Only on thin, fast strokes does it turn to a medium green.
Overall, I'm extremely happy with this ink, and I look forward to buying a bottle of this once I run out. As I understand, this is a fairly new ink to Franklin Christoph. If there other new inks are similar to this one, that's a very good thing.
