Monteverde Mercury Noir

Ink Reviews
Written By Julian

Ink Review #164

 

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

 

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The Color | Properties

Monteverde Mercury Noir is a red ink with mild pink undertones. It shades with a crisp cut in both print and cursive, as well as possible dark edges around the letters and pooled areas of the ink. There’s not a ton of tonal variation, but the unshaded areas are visibly pinker, especially on white paper. Cream paper brings out much more of the red. The ink also has a slighly matte finish to it, especially around the shaded areas, and even more so with wetter pens.

Ink droplets

Ink splat

 

Chromatography

 

Performance on Paper | Dry Times | Water Resistance

You may have noticed the feathering in the ink droplets above, and that unfortunately continues into the writing experience, although it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. There’s mostly micro feathering on the Rhodia, Leuchtturm, and even Tomoe River. It’s mostly with the larger nib sizes, and it’s usually with small punctuation marks, such as commas, where the pooled ink is heavy and concentrated. There was also heavy feathering and bleed-through on the Maruman Mnemosyne sheet and in the Kokuyo Campus notebook. In general, I think this ink will be okay in most conditions, with a lot of fountain pen-friendly papers. However, larger or wetter nibs will absolutely introduce more feathering when used with this ink. I suggest trying it on a test page first.

Rhodia

Leuchtturm1917

The dry times were good, often taking between 10 and 15 seconds across all the nib sizes, with a few instances where the larger nibs would take 20-25 seconds, especially on Tomoe River paper, where the dry times took slightly longer, but were still average.

 
 

The water resistance isn’t great, and the color will quickly cloud over when it gets wet. There are some pink shadows left over of the writing, but the legibility is poor overall.

More Pages

Midori MD

Maruman

Tomoe River

Kokuyo

Performance in the Pen | Cleaning

Mercury Noir has a medium flow and sufficient lubrication to make the writing experience comfortable; however, I wish it were just slightly slicker, especially considering the featheriness mentioned earlier. Still, the performance is good overall, and I didn’t run into any hard starts, stops, or skips during my writing tests or during my regular use with the ink. In fact, the experience with the needlepoint (something generally subar with most inks) was shockingly good. The flow is also able to keep up well during extended writing, with only a minimal drop in flow with the broad nib during my extended writing tests.

The cleaning experience was also great, only requiring a single soak and flush with a bulb syringe to clean both the pen and nib units with no visible stains or residue remaining.

 
 

Written on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper (white, 6mm ruling) with a medium nib.

Written on Midori MD paper (cream, 7mm ruling) with a medium nib.

Written in a Profolio Oasis notebook (cream, 6mm ruling) with a broad nib.

 
 

Written on Midori MD paper (cream, 7mm ruling) with a needlepoint nib.

Written on Midori MD paper (cream, 7mm ruling) with a fine nib.

  • Performance in a pen: 10/10

  • Performance on paper: 7/10

  • Color saturation: 6/10

  • Sheening: 0/10

  • Shading: 4/10

  • Dry time: 7.5/10

  • Water resistance: 1/10

  • Ease of cleaning: 10/10

  • Shimmer: None

My Personal Thoughts…

This is the single ink in the Noir Collection that I’ve already had a lot of experience with. It came in a pen I purchased a long time back, and its unique color and matte finish quickly won me over and had me buying a bottle that I’ve since used up. The matte look also sparked my interest in trying the entire set of Monteverde’s Noir inks in hopes of finding others like it. All this to say, I think Mercury Noir is a great ink. It’s such a unique color, and admittedly, it’s far from perfect, but I still recommend that anyone who’s interested give it a try! It’s not just my favorite ink in the Noir Collection, it’s one of my favorite inks of all time, and I’m sure that my second bottle will be emptied too.

 

Written on 52 gsm Tomoe River Paper with a Conklin 1898 (medium nib).

 

More images/info:

 

Featured in the photography and writing samples:

Current text: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (Amazon)

Here’s a free Patron post on making the Origami Bird from Heavy Rain used in the photos!

 

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 52 gsm A5 Tomoe River Notebook

  • A Maruman Mnemosyne A5 Spiral Notebook

  • A Kokuyo Campus A5 Notebook

 
Julian
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