Noodler's Ottoman Azure

[caleb]

Noodler's Ottoman Azure Ink Review

Note: This review is also available on my personal reviews site, with better formatting. If you would like to take a look, please click here.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the review.

Noodler's Ottoman Azure is definitely one of my go-to blue inks. It has incredible color and saturation, and, with a thick nib, brilliant shading from blue to navy.

On the label of ink is a photo of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Also knows as 'The Blue Mosque' due to its interior color). And, like many Noodler's inks, the bottle has its particular style, with the WordArt logos and text, which—albeit not incredible design—gets the point across quite well. The ink comes in the 3 ounce (89 mL) Noodler's bottle, with the ink filled to the brim (watch out when opening it up!). Some people love the Noodler's bottle, and others aren't crazy about it. Personally, I find myself in the former category: it has a wide neck, black coating for storage, and a no-nonsense cubical shape makes it brilliant for organized storage. It also comes with a lot of ink, so you won't get to the bottom for a while.

However, the name of this ink "Ottoman Azure" is a bit misleading. Azure, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, means "having the bright blue colour of the sky on a clear day." This ink, following that definition, is a quite far off. The color is a rather dark and deep blue, similar to that of Diamine Majestic Blue (and Iroshizuku Asa-gao to a lesser extent). If I could match it to a natural color, it would be much more similar to the Arctic Ocean. It is a deep, incredibly saturated, and (personally) pleasing color. It looks best in stub and medium broad nibs (I love it in a JoWo 1.1 Stub), as in more narrow nibs, the shading is less obvious and the ink becomes more like navy.

That being said, the ink does have some peculiarities, although unlike some Noodler's inks, it is not bulletproof, waterproof, or anything similar. It does, however, take a very long time to dry—up to 45 second on Clairefontaine 90gsm paper. It also has poor water resistance and smudges easily for about an hour after being on paper. However, it flows very well, and it has incredibly beautiful shading and an equally beautiful color. It is also quite easy to clean from pens and does not take much time to flush. Although, it will stay on skin for a while (as I learned performing the smudge test), so try your best to keep it off of your hands.

Aside from its picky peculiar qualities, Noodler's Ottoman Azure is a wonderful ink with a spectacular color, which easily makes up for its shortcomings, and I recommend it highly. It retails for $12.50 on Goulet Pens, and for $12.99 on Amazon with Prime Shipping (this is not an affiliate link).

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-Caleb

[Alexandra]

I have both Ottoman Azure and Majestic Blue and find the MB to be very much darker. After getting away from blues for a while I'm using Ottoman Azure daily and loving it.

[inkstainedruth]

Thanks for the review.

I tried a sample of Ottoman Azure a while back, and it was a bit too teal leaning for me. However, I did notice one peculiarity about the ink: I kept refilling the pen with distilled water, and it took several fills before I actually noticed much of a change. It's *that* saturated a color.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[jmccarty3]

This makes me wonder if the ink might not be a bit better behaved if it were diluted a bit.

[Hallel]

I think I read somewhere that Nathan Tardif makes his inks super saturated for the purpose of being diluted and therefore a better deal. I think its pretty necessary to dilute Ottoman Azure, I found that it took over 45 seconds to dry on certain papers which is a bit excessive IMO.

[OPG4711]

Ottoman Azure and Noodler's Elysium have become my Go-To blue inks. Worthy successors to "the ink we shall not name" in many aspects!

[dcwaites]

I have both Ottoman Azure and Noodler's Blue. Both are standard (for Nathan) dye inks, both very saturated and slow-drying on non-absorbent papers like Nu:Elite, Tomoe River, CF and Rhodia.

 

It is worth while taking a 5 or 10 ml sample and then adding 10%, 20%, 30%, etc, distilled water until you can just begin to see a slight lightening of the colour. Fill you pen with that, and see how you go. You might also get some shading to die for, depending on your pen, paper, mood of the sun, etc.

 

.

[iveyman]

I have both Ottoman Azure and Noodler's Liberty Elysium. I like them both, leaning towards liking

Liberty Elysium more mostly because Ottoman Azure take a much longer time to dry and often gets smeared before it is dry.