review: j. herbin ambre de birmanie

Ooh, we're jumping around quite a bit! Back to the pre-Taipei trip collection.

I have a full bottle of this ink now! The 30ml J. Herbin bottles are flat, square-shaped glass bottles with a paper label on the front. I like the labels because they show you what the color is like, and they also have a cute drawing on the front. Ambre de Birmanie translates to Burma amber, so there's a drawing of a chunk of amber on the front.

Ambre de Birmanie is an ink that has a real similarity to honey. I don't think it's quite like an amber—when I think of amber, I think of a slightly deeper, more orange color. But it is fairly close to what I think amber would look like.

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You can probably tell that the writing sample here is quite a bit lighter than the image that starts off this review. Ambre de Birmanie has an interesting quality: the more ink you put down on the page, the darker the ink appears. It's really quite lovely.

This ink is quite light, but it still has a surprising amount of water resistance. It really clings onto the page.

This ink takes a little more than 15 seconds to dry.

There isn't a lot of shading in the fine nib—really, I would say that there isn't any at all. Even in the broad nib it's quite a flat shade, though it does have a nice "ring" around letters.

It's quite gorgeous on Tomoe River paper, but there still isn't much shading.

I compare this ink to other ones that I have. Colorverse Golden Leaves is more orange. 3 Oysters Mustard is a little more brown. Diamine Citrus Ice is very clearly an orange and it has silver shimmer in it.

I have this ink in my TWSBI Diamond 580 with a Pendleton Butter Line Stub + Flex. It's a finicky nib but when it works it's really worth it. Ambre de Birmanie really shines in this nib size: at times it's lightly golden, and other times it's a rich deep shade.

Where to buy

I purchased this ink with my own funds.

• The Goulet Pen Company: bottle / sample
• JetPens: bottle (10ml, 30ml)
• Pen Chalet: bottle (10ml, 30ml)
• Wonder Pens: bottle + sample

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This post was updated on 12/15/19 to match my current review methodology.