The Well-Appointed Desk

On the fourth day of Inkmas, I just went with my favorite color, nothing SUB about it… Robert Oster Sublime ($17 for 50ml bottle)!

Not only is lime green one of my favorite everyday colors, its one of my favorite holiday decorating colors too. I love to decorate with lime, sugar pink, minty blue and silver for what I lovingly call Fairy Christmas. Faded bottle brush trees, Shiny Brite ornaments, mercury glass and vintage elves are my favorites. So, to me Oster Sublime is a perfectly holiday green.

It’s also the closest I’ve found to the spot-on Well-Appointed Desk lime green. And trust me, I’ve looked. This ink has some nice shading though it does look a bit darker in finer nibs. There’s no sheening, but for me, that’s okay. I just want juicy lime green here.

See? I’ve been looking for a lime green for awhile. This is just  small smattering of the greens in my stash. Some skew more olive-y and some grassier. While Chiku-Rin looks great on the swatch, it tend to write much lighter. Vert Olive is a nice color but J. Herbin inks are notoriously watery and tend to misbehave on a lot of papers. Kobe #43 Gakuen Toshi is a bright summery green like Diamine Meadow and so neither fit my lime criteria, thought they are lovely colors in their own right. Diamine Light Green is close but is a little too green with not enough yellow for me. So, unless something else comes along, Sublime is my best option for lime green.Who knew it was so hard to find the perfect lime?

TOOLS

• Paper: Rhodia Uni-Blank No. 16 with 6mm guide sheet
• Pens: Empire vintage traveling dip nib holder with Zebra G titanium nib ($33.50 per 10-pack), Esterbrook #2442 nib in a Shawn Newton custom nib holder
• Swatches: Col-o-Ring Ink Testing Cards
• Brush: Blick Studio Synthetic #0 Round
• Ink: Robert Oster Sublime (50ml bottle for $17)

On the third day of Inkmas, this ink nerd couldn’t resist breaking out the holiday appropriate Robert Oster Peppermint ($17 for 50ml bottle)!

When I first started reviewing Robert Oster inks I worried about the tall skinny bottle being difficult to use as it got used up but I have one bottle that has gotten down to the bottom quarter (I have been sharing it among friends) and the mouth of the bottle is really wide enough to get most full-sized pens with a full-sized converter or a piston mechanism all the way to the bottom without too much trouble. You may need to rest your fingers on the lip of the bottle for stability so you may end up with inky fingers but we are used to the by now, right?

Now, about this holiday appropriate Peppermint ink! Who doesn’t love a little bit of peppermint at the holidays? Wouldn’t it be lovely if it was peppermint scented? Oster Peppermint captures the deep green hue with just a hint of blue undertone AND a reddish sheen. What could be more holiday than that? The ink has a good deal of shading too. As I dipped my testing pen, I was able to get a range of colors which demonstrated the array of shading possibilities from a fine nib which would skew darker to a wider pen which would show more shading variation.

In my swatch comparison, Oster Peppermint is very similar to Waterman Harmonious Green ($11.30 for 50ml), even the sheen is there. So, if you have a vintage pen you’d like to use a holiday-inspired ink, you could easily substitute Waterman. DeAtramentis Sandalwood (scented) ($13 for 35ml) might add a little Wise Men to your festivities. Private Reserve Spearmint ($11 for 66ml bottle) and Avacado (sic) seemed too dark to be festive but might be appropriate in a business setting.

Tools:

• Paper: Rhodia Uni-Blank No. 16 with 6mm guide sheet
• Pens:  Esterbrook #2442 nib in a Shawn Newton custom nib holder, Empire vintage traveling dip nib holder with Zebra G titanium nib ($33.50 per 10-pack) (on Col-o-Ring cards only)
• Swatches: Col-o-Ring Ink Testing Cards
• Brush: Princeton Neptune Round #4
• Ink: Robert Oster Peppermint (50ml bottle for £9.99)

DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by Robert Oster for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.

On the second day of Inkmas, the true nerd brought to you:

An ink from the author of The Little Prince! Honestly, that is all I knew about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry which I’m sure makes me poorly educated about the author so I read his wikipedia page. So now I know that besides being the recipient of a limited edition MontBlanc ink, I also know that he was a pilot and a hero to the French. So, let’s talk about the ink.

The MontBlanc Anotine de Saint-Exupéry ink ($43) is in my favorite faceted 50ml square glass bottle.  It’s really a lovely,distinctive bottle.

The box mentioned that the color was “desert” but obviously the color is more reddish burgundy than brown which is what I would associate with a desert. To be honest, this is the color I wanted to see in the Shakespeare ink that was released by MontBlanc earlier this year.

The ink shows some nice shading and color variation and the rich burgundy, plummy color is lovely.

Compared with other inks in the same color family, Diamine Syrah ($14.95 for 80ml) and Callifolio Grenat are probably the closest in color. Syrah is slightly more red and Grenat is slightly more purple. Robert Oster Claret is not as vibrant. As you can see the Shakespeare Velvet Red is not really red at all but a red black.

In conclusion, the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is a very expensive ink in comparison to other options in the same color family but if you are looking for a good gift ink for someone who loves The Little Prince or who is a fan of little luxuries like a bottle of burgundy ink in a fancy bottle, then this might be the perfect holiday gift. If you’re on a budget though, you might consider one of the other inks above as an alternative and a copy of The Little Prince instead.

Tools:

• Paper: Rhodia Uni-Blank No. 16 with 6mm guide sheet
• Pens:  Esterbrook #2442 nib in a Shawn Newton custom nib holder, Empire vintage traveling dip nib holder with Zebra G titanium nib ($33.50 per 10-pack) (on Col-o-Ring cards only)
• Swatches: Col-o-Ring Ink Testing Cards
• Brush: Princeton Neptune Round #4
• Ink: Montblanc Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (40ml bottle for $43)