thINKthursday
thINKthursday – Diamine Golden Brown
We’re falling head over heels for this autumnal amber!
thINKthursday – Diamine Golden Brown
Diamine Golden is a lovely warm brown with loads of shading! Diamine inks come in a glass 80ml bottle shaped like a rounded square. The giant bottle might make the opening look a bit small, but a pen would have to have a pretty ridiculous-sized nib not to fit in it (sorry, Mammoth Falcon users.) At only $14.95 for 80ml of ink, Diamine’s standard colors are a great value!
The best thing about Diamine Golden Brown is its wonderful shading. Even in a fine nib, it tended to range from a warm dijon to rich amber. The shading was more apparent with printed rather than cursive letters. In a broad nib, however, I found that same mustard color moved into golden honey hues before ending in that rich amber brown. In the places where the most ink had pooled, I caught glimpses of an even darker true brown that formed a nice outline around the letters. The ink was matte and did not have any sheen, but the shading kept things interesting.
Diamine Golden Brown was a well-behaved ink with good flow and no feathering or bleedthough on Rhodia paper. It felt a little dry compared to other inks I’ve used, but it started right away and I had no problems with skipping. As a bonus, dry times were great at 15 to 25 seconds! The ink had no water resistance, but clean-up was a breeze!
I was surprised at how impressed I was with this ink! There are a lot of golden browns out there, but this one stands out from the crowd, especially for writing journal entries, letters, or other long blocks of text. The low price and fast dry times make it very practical for daily use and the high level of shading gives each letter the sort of unique character that brought many of to fountain pens in the first place!
As with any ink review, the pen, paper, and person doing the writing will influence the way the ink looks. If you’re not sure about a color, try a sample to see if it’s the one for you, or see how it measures up against your favorites using our ink tool.
Ink it Up!
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