Nahvalur Orchid Flower
Ink Review #69
*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.
Overview
The color/properties:
Nahvalur Orchid Flower is a standard ink that shades lightly between a gentle Fuschia tone into a deeper, slightly more purple shade. The shading usually appears with a softer cut between its tones. While I wouldn’t go as far as to call this color vibrant, it’s still bold and stands out on the page, and more notably, from afar.
Ink Splat
Ink Droplets
Performance on paper:
Orchid Flower should be well-behaved enough on most fountain pen-friendly papers, but from my observations, it does seem to be on the more aggressive side. There wasn’t any bleeding or feathering on any of the test pages outside of the usual bleeding on the Kokuyo sheet, but the bleed-through there was visible across all of the nib sizes. The ink droplets (on Rhodia) also show some easily visible feathering. This ink may be significantly more prone to feathering on some papers with wetter-tuned nibs.
The dry times were also not the best, with even the fine and extra fine nibs taking up to 20 seconds to dry on some of the papers, and one instance on Tomoe River with the Architect nib that failed to dry within 30 seconds. I was even doing some extracurricular journaling with this ink, and some areas of the writing were taking longer than a minute to completely dry. This wouldn’t be the best choice if you need to close a notebook on it quickly.
The water resistance was better than expected, and while it’s slightly cloudy, the remains after water-exposure are still dark and legible.
Water resistance
Chromatography
Performance in the pen:
This is where the ink truly shined to me: Orchid Flower has a medium flow, but it’s so smooth. What have you done, Nahvalur? Admittedly, it did take a strangely long time to flow to the nib compared to other inks, but once it did — bliss. I never ran into any hard starts or skips either. It was a great experience overall. Smooth.
Unfortunately, the cleaning wasn’t so great. The color washed out of the nibs easily enough — it didn’t take more than a basic soak and flush — but it left a horrible stain on the inside of the pen’s barrel. Even with disassembly, it wasn’t easy to get out. In the end, I had to use Rapido - Eze technical pen cleaner to get it out (which worked instantly, when nothing else would, but still took some time till the barrel was clear again). This probably isn’t that big of a deal for most pens, but I would recommend against using this ink in pens with integrated filling systems that are hard to get into (especially if it’s a demonstrator).
Performance in a pen: 9/10
Performance on paper: 7.5/10
Color saturation: 7/10
Sheening: 0/10
Shading: 5/10
Dry time: 5/10
Water resistance: 5/10
Ease of cleaning: 4/10
Shimmer: None
My personal thoughts...
I’m usually very critical of ink names — it’s a key component in what makes buying new inks so enjoyable for me. If an ink says it’s going to look like something, it better well look like it. With Orchid Flower, I think I can ease up on my assessment. Orchids come in many varieties, and on the whole, I think that this ink conveys the idea well enough.
On the subject of its performance though, it’s a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s painfully satisfying how smooth it is to write with. On the other hand, it takes forever to dry and it stained my pen. Whether or not that’s enough of a reason to write it off is up to you, but I still like it.
Final note: this was the hardest ink bottle I’ve ever had to open. Why, Nahvalur?
Written in a Leuchtturm1917 notebook with a Lamy AL-star (Broad)
More images/info:
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 68gsm A5 Tomoe River Notebook
A Maruman Mnemosyne A5 Spiral Notebook
A Kokuyo Campus A5 Notebook