Diamine Delamere Green

Ink Reviews
Written By Julian

Ink Review #134

 

*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.

 

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Overview

The color/properties

Diamine Delamere Green is a medium blue-green with blue undertones. It shades with a soft gradient in cursive and a soft cut in print between light and darker, greener tones where the ink pools. I wouldn’t call this a sheening ink, but depending on the paper and wetness of the pen, you may also notice some light sheening around the edges of pooled ink, especially when writing in print.

Ink splat

Ink droplets

 

Rhodia

Leuchtturm1917

 

Performance on paper:

Outside of the slight bleed-through on Kokuyo, I didn’t have any bleeding or feathering on any of my other test pages. There’s some fuzziness around the edges of some of the ink droplets, however, I don’t believe that this ink would have any issues on most fountain pen-friendly papers.

The dry times aren’t the best. Most of the large nib sizes dried within the 30-second mark, but still took between 20-25 seconds to dry. The 1.1 stub especially had issues keeping the dry times within 30 seconds, but only managed to do so on the Rhodia and Kokuyo sheets. The finer nib sizes were also below average, and often took between 15-20 seconds to dry.

The water resistance also isn’t great. There are legible dark shadows left behind after water exposure, however, it immediately gets cloudy and messy. This can be problematic with anything that was written with larger or wetter nibs.

Midori MD

Maruman

Tomoe River

Kokuyo

Water resistance

Chromatography

Performance in the pen:

Delamere Green has a consistent medium flow across all of the nib sizes I used in my tests. It’s not overly slick, but it’s lubricated well enough to be comfortable to write with. I didn't run into any hard starts, stops, or skips during my tests, and it was an overall enjoyable writing experience

Cleaning this ink out of my nib units and pen didn’t take long but after the initial flush, I noticed a light pink stain on the barrel. Thankfully, leaving the barrel filled with water for a few days took care of that, but I would still proceed with some caution when using pens that you may be afraid of staining. Unfortunately, something that didn’t wash out with just water was a fine ring of residue in the barrel of the pen. This wasn’t difficult to remove with a towel, however, it may be an issue in some pens.

 
Diamine Delamere Green cleaning

Written on 52 GSM Tomoe River paper (white) with a medium nib.

Written on 68 GSM Tomoe River paper (white) with a medium-fine nib.

Written on Midori MD paper (cream) with a medium nib.

  • Performance in a pen: 10/10

  • Performance on paper: 9/10

  • Color saturation: 6.5/10

  • Sheening: 2.5/10

  • Shading: 2.5/10

  • Dry time: 5.5/10

  • Water resistance: 2/10

  • Ease of cleaning: 6/10

  • Shimmer: None

My Personal Thoughts…

Delamere Green, I presume, is named after none other than Delamere Forest in Cheshire, England. The name “Delamere” is a mashup of “de la mere” or “of the lake.” Maybe that’s what inspires the light blue tones of this ink. Unfortunately, I have no way to go there and inspect for myself whether Delamere Green is ‘Delamere Forest’ enough, or if it’s simply an arbitrary choice of English forest to name this green after. Would that be a bad thing? Not at all! But I’ll have to leave it up to my friends overseas to decide. I was a little surprised when I first got my hands on this ink, too — it was a gift and I hadn’t heard any talk about this one compared to, say, Sherwood Green. I genuinely thought it was a UK exclusive when I saw it. As it turns out, it’s simply another excellent green in Diamine’s regular line-up, and one that shouldn’t be overlooked. If you’re not worried about dry times or water resistance, I think it makes a strong case for an everyday green. It’s certainly dark enough, but it maintains a hint of freshness and lushness thanks to its subtle blue tones. And it does all of this without falling into the now-overused-feeling blue-green-with-red-sheen category (which would ruin any chance of this being a daily ink). You can’t go wrong with this one.

Sample written on 52 and 68 gsm Tomoe River paper (cursive) and Midori MD paper (print) with a Scriveiner Classic (medium nib) and a Sailor Pro Gear Slim (medium-fine nib).

More images/info:

 

Featured in the photography and writing samples:

 

Tools and materials used in the writing samples:

  • A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 7 nib units including a Needlepoint grind, EF, F, M, B, 1.1mm stub, and an Architect grind. All nibs are tuned to perform at the same medium wetness.

  • A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad

  • A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook

  • A Midori MD A5 Notebook

  • A 52gsm A5 Tomoe River Notebook

  • A Maruman Mnemosyne A5 Spiral Notebook

  • A Kokuyo Campus A5 Notebook

 
Julian
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