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KWZ Brown Pink Diamine Merlot Herbin Poussiere del Lune Diamine Tyrian Purple The KWZ, like many others from Konrad, looks almost black when pooled, with a velvety, matt sheen. It is the most free-flowing of the bunch. The Diamines have a very slight golden sheen, more evident on Tomoe than on this Rhodia; Tyrian Purple is the least saturated of the bunch and exhibits a more pronounced halo effect when used with the flat nib. Poussiere de Lune is more blue than the others. If I had to pick a favourite, it'd be Tyrian Purple

My latest ink is Diamine Tyrian Purple This week the Wimbledon tennis tournament started and I'm a big fan of watching it all on TV. So I thought it would be appropriate to review a purple ink as that's one of the Wimbledon colours. Tyrian purple is a technically bromine-containing, reddish-purple, natural dye. Diamine's version is a reddish purple ink that I would call a 'dusty' purple. It's a very attractive colour. It's also a great performer in all of the pens and on all of the paper I tried it with. It has very good shading, but no noticeable sheen. It wrote straight away without any hard starts or skipping. The flow is excellent and it has great lubrication. Although the flow feels very slightly wet, it doesn't suffer from an overlong drying time. It's a quite water resistant ink. I could still see all of the writing, even after over an hour, although it darkened in colour. This is an ink that everyone should buy in an 80ml bottle. A great ink! I had a problem with my monitor matching up both the review ink colour as well as the comparison inks colours. So I paid particular attention to making sure that the review ink colour looks an accurate match next to the review form. However, I can confirm that my sample of Noodler's BSIAR is that shade of pink! Although this isn't sold as a waterproof ink, it shows good water resistance, as do many inks in this colour range. No fade test done, but this dye is known for not easily fading.Bearing in mind the paper I use is thick with a shiny surface, and I used a Libelle M nib, a Waterman F nib and a Lamy 1.1mm nib, this ink took 16-18 secs to dry.It exhibited excellent flow and lubrication and I found it particularly nice to write with. I saw no skips or hard starts while I did swabs and dry time tests.It is currently available in 80ml glass bottles or 30ml plastic bottlesDiamine sell it directly to end-users on their web-site.It's a reasonable price.

I commented that diluted Merlot might be equivalent to Tyrian Purple so, as requested by member theinforat, here is a scan. As you can see, I was wrong. Merlot is far more brown but it is amazing how it holds up at such a dilution; doesn't flow so well, but still a strong colour. Now, I am picky about ink colours and have been looking for something around the subdued wine/purple area. Diamine Damson is good but a little too blue. Tyrian is very close but perhaps a little too red. So I tried adding a little Macassar to dull it down, went too far and added Tyrian back in. I now have an M600 filled with almost Tyrian and that looks about right but I have no clue as to the proportions. Still, all good fun!