(Susan M. Pigott is a fountain pen collector, pen and paperholic, photographer, and professor. You can find more from Susan on her blog Scribalishess.)
Diamine produces inks in such a wide array of colors that it’s hard to keep up. But sometimes they offer collections of inks that follow a theme, such as the Gibson Les Paul collection. Each ink in the collection evokes one of the finishes of the Gibson Les Paul guitars. I received the version called Pelham Blue Burst. It is named after the color on this gorgeous guitar:
This is a Gibson Les Paul Studio 2016 T Pelham Blue Guitar. (image via Reverb.com)
As soon as I received my bottle of ink, I put it in a beautiful blue PenBBS Model 323 and have been writing with it for a couple of months. It’s a gorgeous deep blue that leans toward dark turquoise.
In my tests, the ink is simply stunning on Rhodia dot paper. Even in fine nibs there’s a bit of shading, and it only gets better in wider nibs. The ink is medium-wet, not too dry and not so wet that it smears when you write with it. The swab shows how dark the color can get--it actually spans a wide range of blues depending on the width of the nib. It is not waterproof.
On my Col-o-dex card, the deepness of the blue shows in the swab. I used a Brause Blue Pumpkin dip nib to write the name of the ink, and, again, you can see how dark the ink can get. What’s really intriguing is the sheen. The ink splats glow magenta and green.
Chromatography confirms the sheen found in the ink. There’s a good amount of pink/magenta, a bit of green, and, of course, blue.
I always like to test my inks with my Handwritmic ruling pen to see how they perform in a giant nib. Pelham blue definitely shines, with lots of shading variation and sheen where the ink pools.
I am quite taken with Pelham Blue. It’s an unusual blue with a wide range of hues depending on the paper, the nib width, and the wetness of the nib. The sheen is quite striking, but even in normal writing circumstances when the ink doesn’t pool, this blue exudes sophistication.
You can purchase Diamine Gibson Les Paul Guitar Ink in Pelham Blue from Goldspot Pens in a 30ml bottle for $7.50 or a huge 80ml bottle for $15.00.
(Goldspot provided this product at no charge to The Pen Addict for review purposes.)
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