Ink Review #144: J. Herbin 1670 Emerald of Chivor

J. Herbin 1670 Emerald of Chivor: when this ink came out two years ago, I was just starting to get into fountain pens, and was really clueless about ink. I bought a bottle from Goulet Pens because the pictures online looked so amazing, but at the time I didn't know much about paper, and I wasn't impressed with how it behaved on copy paper, so I put it in a drawer and just kind of forgot about it. Frankly, I was really disappointed since I couldn't get any of the red sheen to show up, and the shimmer never seemed to come out as I wrote. I pulled the bottle out of my ink cabinet today and decided to give it another shot now that I've learned more about paper and shimmer inks, so let's take a look at it. 

The bottle:

The bottle is beautiful-nice and heavy glass, looks great, but the opening on top is so narrow it's hard to fit some pens in for filling.

The color...

Emerald of Chivor is a beautiful teal with red sheen and gold shimmer.

I had a really hard time getting all of the shimmer to show up in the images. There is more shimmer present in the swab than you can see in the image.

Those are some amazing ink drops-just beautiful. 

This is a bit of a tangent, but I use Pilot Vanishing Points to review inks, and I clicked on the EF Vanishing Point to write with it, and a whole mess of ink spit into my hand. I've never had that happen before, and I use this pen daily. I don't know why this happened, I've had it spit a drop or two before, but never this much.

Dry time: 30 seconds

Water resistance: Medium-a lot of the ink washed away, but you could probably still figure out what the writing said.

Feathering: None

Show through: Medium

Bleeding: The ink bled through in the flex nib on every paper, but did fine in the other nib sizes, so I would say low bleeding. 

Other properties: Low shading, medium red sheen, and gold shimmer. You can see the little bit of shading on Rhodia, Leuchtturm, and Tomoe River. You can see the sheen just a little bit on Leuchtturm, quite a bit on TR, and not at all on Rhodia. The sheen really is paper dependent-don't use this ink on copy paper or Rhodia and expect sheen. The shimmer shows up on every paper.

On 32 pound copy paper, you can see plenty of the shimmer, but there is just a little bit of bleeding, mainly in the flex nib. None of the sheen shows up on this paper though. 

Ink swabs for comparison, left to right (top to bottom for mobile RSS): Robert Oster Aqua, J. Herbin 1670 Emerald of Chivor, and Robert Oster Tranquility. Click here to see the J. Herbin inks together. Emerald of Chivor is a blue-green, not a green-blue, meaning that the blue is more dominant than the green, so I think Aqua is the closest color-it is more blue-green while Tranquility is more of a green-blue. 

Organics Studio Walden, Robert Oster Deep Sea, and Sailor Jentle Yama-dori. Click here to see the teal inks together. 

Longer writing:

I used a Pilot Vanishing Point, broad nib on Tomoe River paper. This ink is wet-really wet. The broad nib felt more like a double or triple broad with this ink. 

The shimmer showed up the best in the first paragraph. I rotated the pen before writing to get the shimmer particles in suspension, but then didn't do it again until I was done writing the whole page. The longer I wrote, the less shimmer showed up. It was still present throughout the whole page, just not as much as in the beginning. If I really wanted the shimmer to show up as much as possible, I would rotate the pen after every paragraph to make sure the shimmer stayed suspended in the ink. 

Overall, this ink goes in the art/fun category for me. It's a bit persnickety, needing frequent shaking to keep the shimmer flowing, and it really looks best on Tomoe River paper. It's not one I would use everyday, but it's a ton of fun to play with. I love the color, sheen and shimmer, so I am glad I have a full bottle because I know I will use this ink now that I know how to use it properly, just not as a daily writer. I think the main thing to know about this ink before buying is that you need to manage your expectations-you aren't going to get a ton of sheen on every paper, and the shimmer may not always flow as well as it could. Give it a try, because when it does work well it's a beautiful ink.

Disclaimer: I purchased this ink myself, and all photos and opinions are my own. There are no affiliate links on this page.