(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)

A new limited edition shimmer ink is on its way as part of J. Herbin’s 1798 Anniversary Ink Collection. It is due to be released on June 21, 2019.

Kyanite du Népal is named after a mineral mined in Nepal. It is a deep blue color which J. Herbin has captured well in this ink.

Kyanite du Népal is a saturated blue ink that is more turquoise than purple on the color spectrum. The ink contains silver shimmer that complements the blue nicely.

In my testing on Maruman Septcouleur paper, the ink demonstrated good flow, shading, and shimmer in both fine and broad nibs. It dried fairly quickly, but the ink did not seem dry in any of the nibs I used. It is not colorfast.

The chromatography test doesn’t show much in terms of color variation. There’s a faint line of silver shimmer at the bottom, and the color ranges from light blue to turquoise to darker blue.

Obviously, shimmer inks show up best in wide nibs and splatters. That’s definitely true of Kyanite as you can see in the following examples. The shimmer is quite stunning.

Because the ink contains shimmer, the particles settle to the bottom of the bottle or within the barrel of your pen. It’s always necessary to shake the bottle or pen (capped, of course) before using the ink. I relegate shimmer inks to my less expensive pens, such as my TWSBI Eco, simply because I don’t want shimmer particles possibly clogging up my expensive pens. This is probably just paranoia on my part, since I’ve yet to experience clogging in my less expensive pens.

Kyanite du Népal is a gorgeous shade of blue with burgundy sheen and silver shimmer. It’s a bit darker than Diamine Blue Lightning (which also has silver shimmer), and Kyanite contains sheen in addition to silver shimmer which gives it more character than the Diamine, in my opinion.