Berlin Notebook Blue #1 By Victor Walter

[AidenMark]

The store Berlin Notebook has come up in several places recently. The Swedish pen podcast Pen Meets Paper (Penna möter papper) interviewed proprietor Dr. Peter Koval about his brand and his approach to product design and ecological responsibility. The esteemed Mountain of Ink site reviewed Berlin Notebook's store exclusive ink Berlin Notebook Blue #1. The ink was designed by artist by Viktor Walter (whose work is not familiar, sorry) and appeared from MoI's review to be a spectacular, saturated Ultramarine ink, made in Germany.

 

I like a nice Ultramarine, me, so I ordered a 5ml 'traveller' mini bottle for €2.99 from the website. It arrived a day or so later with plastic free packaging a nice hand-written thank you from Peter.

 

 

Here is how the ink performs on Rhodia paper with a fine (Platinum 3776) , medium (Moonman M600) and broad (Fuliwen 017) nibs.

Hi-Rez Scan here

 

I think you can see the colour and shading better in this close up of Oxford Optik.

 

and here is #1's striking, but not excessive, red sheen, visible on less absorbent paper

 

 

So, this is a really striking ink with great shading featuring a blue base colour and a rich overlay of ultramarine. It's a bit Sargasso Sea, a bit Sailor Yonaga or Ocean Noir but with more sheen and warmth than Yonaga and better drying than Sargasso. With some pens the base colour is a pure azure blue. With others it veers, appropriately enough, to a Prussian Blue with hints of grey and turquoise.

 

Flow is good and lubrication excellent - taming the frankly sub-standard broad nib on the Fuliwen 017 test pen.

 

On the other hand it can be slow drying on some paper (Rhodia) and on my office notebook (Oxford Optik) it suffered the perennial problem of all saturated blues - a tendency to smear when encountering the slightest moisture on the hand.

 

I find it enjoyable and flexible to write with. I like that it looks quite different in different pens and on different paper but is always beautiful.

 

It's an upper-medium priced ink (on the Herlitz to Montblanc scale) at €19 for a 30ml bottle but I appreciate that you can order 5ml and decide if a full bottle is an investment you want to make.

Edited February 10, 2020 by AidenMark

[migo984]

Thanks for your review. I agree with your findings. I’ve been using this ink for about 4 months. I went straight for a full bottle and I like the clean, simple and stylish design of the packaging. I really do like this ink . As you say, it has sheen but it isn’t excessive, like some of the ridiculous over-sheening inks that are available at the moment.

 

It has behaved well in every pen I’ve tried it in, with a variety of nibs. Despite looking saturated on paper, and laying down a bright and rich line, what impresses me is that, so far, it has been remarkably easy to clean out of my pens, including demonstrators, without leaving any residue in the barrel or feed. I appreciate this characteristic after so many struggles with saturated blues from Diamine et al.

 

I’ll happily buy another bottle when this one is used up.

[AidenMark]

Browsing the Berlin Notebook site this week I noticed they now have a "black label edition" of this ink (12.99Euro) that does not exhibit the copper sheen of the standard white label ink.

 

This will please people who ..er.. don't like sheen.

 

I haven't tried it yet.

Edited June 12, 2020 by AidenMark

[AidenMark]

Also a correction - the price of the ink in this review is currently 11.99 Euro (not 19Euro as I wrote in the review)

[inkstainedruth]

Hmmm. Looks a lot like KWZI Chicago Blue LE (made for the Chicago Pen Show a few years ago -- the show organizers were selling the leftovers at the Ohio Pen Show one year).

Thanks for the review. Eventually I'll have used up my bottle of Chicago Blue, and good that there might be a replacement available for it.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[welch]

A link directly to the White Label version of the ink, the version reviewed above. AidenMark's review links directly to the newer Black Label version, which was formulated to remove the sheen.

 

https://berlin-notebook.com/shop/berlin-notebook-blue-no-1/

 

I am tempted...

[Antenociticus]

It's a good colour but feathers and bleeds on Leuchtturm, which is my standard notebook. I like it on 68gsm Tomoe River, though. Very similar to Private Reserve Electric DC Blue, not just in hue but in saturation and stickiness.

 

Too much sheen for my liking, so I just ordered a bottle of the "black label", hoping that might also behave a little better in other ways.