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L'Artisan Pastellier Callifolio - Heure Dorée L’Artisan Pastellier is a small company in southern France that specialises in natural pigments, and offers customers authentic and reliable products in beautiful colours based on mineral or vegetable pigments. In a collaboration with Loic Rainouard from Styloplume.net, the chemist Didier Boinnard from L’Artisan Pastellier created the line of Callifolio fountain pen inks. These pastel-colored inks are traditionally crafted, and can be freely mixed and matched. Overall these inks are only moderately saturated, and have low water-resistance. The inks were specifically designed to work well with all types of paper, and all types of fountain pens. Being pastel-tinted, these inks have a watercolor-like appearance, and are not only fine inks for journaling, but are also really excellent inks for doodling & drawing. I only recently discovered them, and they are already the inks I gravitate towards for personal journaling. In this review I take apart Heure Dorée, by far the lightest ink in the Callifolio series. This ink takes its name from the famous “golden hour” – the period shortly after sunrise or before sunset during which daylight is redder and softer than when the sun is higher in the sky. This magic hour is perfect for photography, but unfortunately did not result in a perfect ink. Heure Dorée is way to light and unsaturated to be usable for normal writing. It might be tolerable with broad nibs in very wet pens – but I would choose an ink that’s a bit darker on its own like Cannelle or Inti. Like all Callifolio inks, it’s definitely suitable for ink drawings – but even then it’s on the light side. Technically, the ink behaves acceptably. But for most people it will just be too light, with too little contrast with the paper. With broad nibs it looks a bit more saturated, with heavy shading… but still too light for my tastes. On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – Heure Dorée behaved acceptably. Water resistance is low. The yellow component of the ink washes away rather quikly, leaving a very faint brownish residue. Writing can be reconstructed, but only with some serious effort. Definitely not a water resistant ink. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. For the Callifolio reviews, I’m using a new format to show you the ink’s appearance and behaviour on the different paper types. On every small band of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturationAn ink scribble made with an M-nib fountain penThe name of the paper used, written with a B-nibA small text sample, written with an M-nibDrying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib)Heure Dorée behaved perfectly on all the paper types, with no apparent feathering even on the lower quality papers in my test set. Drying times are mostly around the 10 second mark, with a low of 5 seconds on the more absorbent paper. The ink looks way too light, and writing is difficult to read due to the low contrast with the paper. The ink swab on Tomoe River looks good – but that’s because the ink pooled heavily on this smooth paper, resulting in a darker than normal ink swab. Writing remains light with low contrast. I also show the back-side of the different paper types, in the same order. With the low-end Moleskine there is very prominent show-through and bleed-through. With the other papers, Heure Dorée behaved just fine. The ink copes really well with a wide variety of paper types. Conclusion Heure Dorée is a light yellow-brown ink that’s just not made for writing. In my opinion, it’s too light and too low-contrast to make for an enjoyable writing experience. For drawing the ink works just fine, but remains on the light side. All in all, not an ink that I enjoyed using. I will still use it for drawing, but it will not find its way into my pens again. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib