Jacques Herbin 1798 Cornaline d’Égypte (MSRP $28) is the second color in the 1798 ink line and the sixth (!?) in the J. Herbin specialty line of metallic-ish (I say “-ish” because I don’t know how to explain Rouge Hematite) fountain pen inks. The ink was officially released this week so it should be available from your favorite retailer (check the sidebar for all our favorite retailers that stock J. Herbin).
The packaging for Cornaline d’Égypte is just as deluxe as the previous releases and features the same wider opening as the Emeraude de Chivor last year which means a pen nib will actually fit into the bottle.
I don’t know what it is with me and ink names but I managed to get the name of the ink wrong when I was writing out the header on the page! I kept trying to tell myself “It’s not called Coraline, it’s not called Coraline.” So, I wrote Corinne instead of Cornaline which sounds like the Iowa State Fair Corn Princess to me. The color is sort of reminiscent of a sunflower too so its not far off. Anyway, leave it to me to mess up the spelling of an ink name and not notice it until I am uploading it to the blog. Sorry, folks. I sometimes letter nicely but I don’t always spell well.
In writing, the particles of glitter are not nearly as apparent but the deep, burnt orange color is legible and has a good deal of shading. I stopped and agitated my pen several times in hopes of getting more glitter to show in the writing but it didn’t seem to improve the outcome.
In a wider nib or with heavy application, the color starts to look more reddish. With lighter application, the color is a bit more of a yellow orange but not a clear, clean yellow orange. It’s still got a slightly ruddy undertone.
I tried to get some close-up shots of the ink to show it catching the light. The 1798 inks contain silver metallic flakes instead of gold. The particles in Cornaline d’Egypte are very tiny which helps the overall ink flow but they still sink to the bottom of the bottle or the pen quickly. There is some evidence of the glitter flakes in the close-ups, but not much.
I don’t have a lot of other metallic inks to compare Cornaline d’Egypte to but Pen BBS #218 ($16 for 60ml bottle) and Diamine Shimmer Brandy Dazzle ($20 for a 50ml bottle) were the closest ink colors I had and both had gold sparkles, not silver.
I took some close-up images of both Brandy Dazzle and PenBBS #218 as well, even though the flecks are gold rather than silver. Both seem to have more apparent light reflecting particles and the gold does seem to match the orange hue better than silver.
In the fine, small writing, PenBBS #218 had the most metallic reflection of all three inks. So, if that’s a feature you are looking for I’d hold out for a bottle of PenBBS over the Cornaline d’Egypte. If you are an ink completionist, then you’ll probably want a bottle of Cornaline anyway, just to have to whole set. Thankfully, Herbin only releases one color per year so its not a huge investment each year.
Tools:
- Paper: Rhodia Uni-Blank No. 16 with 6mm guide sheet
- Pens: Jinhao Shark Pen, Midori bullet pencil modified dip nib holder with Zebra G titanium nib ($33.50 per 10-pack), Acrylic dip nib pen (Approx. $15), Shawn Newton Esterbrook Nib Holder with #9556 nib
- Swatches: Col-o-Ring Ink Testing Book ($10) & Col-o-dex Rotary Cards ($15)
- Brush: Blick Synthetic Round #0
- Ink: Robert Oster Australian Opal Mauve ($17 for 50ml bottle)
DISCLAIMER: The items included in this review were provided free of charge by Exaclair/QuoVadis for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.
My bottle just arrived and I was so excited until I opened the outer box. The Herbin label was inverted – a manufacturing quirk. Upon opening the Herbin box, I discovered that the seals on the cap and front were melted onto the box liner! The ink itself looks okay – it’s just that the presentation is totally shot. Ugh 🙁
It’s like an inverted Jenny stamp! It’s probably priceless.
Iowa State Fair Corn Princess…. that is funny and I am glad to find another person whose brain works in strange ways like mine.
Thanks for appreciating my humor.
Lovely, lovely colour. Evokes memories and dreams too. =)
I feel like a closer comparison (if you want silver particles on orange-yellow) would be Diamine’s Citrus Ice. But this ink is indeed really lovely
You are probably right that Citrus Ice would be a better comparison but I didn’t have a sample of that ink available. I didn’t want to hold up the review so I used what I had handy.