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DEATRAMENTIS PEARL VIOLET This lovely ink is one of my top 5 favorite inks ever. This is made by DeAtramentis inks. They are hand-made in Hachenburg, German by Dr. Franz-Josef. The inks are completely hand-made, with all aspects done manually in their manufacturing center. The dyes used are high quality from well established European companies that include BASF and Bayer, meeting high European standards. The inks could be considered traditional, although DeAtramentis does make scented and other kinds of special inks including permanent inks and most recently "shimmer-types", and makes a variety of ink colors resembling great European beverages including fine wines, whiskeys and beer. DeAtramentis has a wide selection of colors to please every eye, although not all colors are sold in every country. The bottles are heavy dark glass which contain 35 ml of ink, deep enough and with a large enough opening for large pens. Prices for the standard ink are about $12.95 in the U.S. When I made my return to fountain pens several years ago, DeAtramentis inks were some of the first inks that I tried. Ever since then, they make up a significant portion of my ink collection. But of all the DeAtramentis inks, Pearl Violet is probably my favorite. It is a lovely shade of purple, leaning toward pink on the light side and grey on the dark side. I love the shading variation of this ink on the various papers that I use it on. On cream color paper, it has almost an antique feel, evocative of Victorian times - of lovely ladies with parasols and gentlemen with top hats. On bright white it is a joyful color reminding me of the first tulips of spring. I love the color of this ink. But what I love most about the ink is the way it behaves. In almost every pen that I own, this ink helps the pen perform to its very best - whether it be a very dry Chinese pen or my wet and wild Italix oblique italic pen. Most recently, I filled my Montblanc 144 with this ink for the first time. This Montblanc is a bit finicky in many respects, like you would expect from a fine Parisian lady. In fact, I had not found a really good ink for this pen . . . until I filled it with Pearl Violet. That's it . . . end of story. This is the ink for this pen. And just in the nick of time. I was seriously contemplating selling the pen because it seemed too fussy about inks and paper. Well, now this pen hums . . . yes hums. You know what I mean . . . when a pen is just happy with life. And that makes me happy as well. O.K. . . . o.k... here are the scans. Water Test: Right was treated with water drops left on the page for 5 minutes, then blotted. The scan above is the closest to the real color. This is made on my portable ScanSnap which is the best of my scanners in terms of color accuracy. The following two scans are done on my HP printer/scanner, which does a moderately reasonable job. Note the differences of the ink on the Rhodia paper, which is not as bright white as the HP copy paper above. But also notice the beauty of this ink on the cream colored Tomoe River paper. As you can see, this is not a heavily saturated ink. But it behaves very well on all papers that I have used it on, with little feathering, bleedthrough or showthrough except when the ink is used in really wet pens and pools. I can not say enough good things about this ink. BUT, it does have a couple of things against it. It is not water resistant. It does have some water resistance, leaving some remnants of readable letters behind. And it does not sheen... not even on Tomoe River paper. While I like sheen in some inks, for me it is not an important feature for an everyday ink. This is likely not an ink that you would in a formal business setting. I do use it for my business for markups, note taking, etc. But I don't use it for meetings with clients and signing documents. I have noted that in much older reviews, the reviewers stated that this ink is dry. I have not found that to be the case with my last two bottles, which were purchased in the last couple of years. I would consider it to be a moderately wet ink in most of my pens.

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