Diamine Vivaldi
Thanks for @Lithium466 for the sample. This review is in three parts: Feel free to jump to your preferred part.
In a nutshell: a gorgeous dark purple, which is almost black with EF nibs. It doesn’t appreciate cheap paper. It’s wet, well lubricated. It’s Diamine.
Chroma:
Chroma - Diamine Vivaldi.jpeg
What’s in a name?
I’m confused by the Diamine Music set.
It’s composed of 3 baroque composers: Bach, Vivaldi and Handel.
2 Classical era composers: Mozart and Beethoven. (Cancelling Poor Haydn)
And 5 romantics. Schubert and Chopin, Wagner, Tchaikovsky and Strauss. Though technically you can argue that Schubert is early romantic, and Tchaikovsky late romantic. And then there is Strauss which I’m assuming it's Richard and not one of the Johann's .
I don’t understand the logic behind the names. Diamine could have chosen some fabulous English composers, granted they would be mostly renaissance, baroque, and then jump to early 20th century, Byrd, Tallis, Dowland, Hume, Purcell, Sullivan, Elgar, Delius, William, Britten etc.. Or they could have chosen one composer per European country. This is just a mishmash of composers, with no rhyme or reason.
Vivaldi’s micro bio and music (1678 - 1741)
Now a bit about Antonio Vivaldi.
Vivaldi is one of the pillars of the Baroque era and codified the concerto form. He was the musical director of Ospedale della Pietà an orphanage. He was admired by Bach who transposed some of his concertos for Harpsichord, died in poverty and his work was promptly forgotten until the early 20th century, until his work was re-discovered. He composed some 500 concertos about 50 odds opera, religious music etc.
His nicknamed was il Prete Rosso, the Red Priest. (He was ordained a priest)
The Four Seasons his most famous fiery tempo, dynamics contrasts with the colour of the ink:
Or his lovely Lovely lute or Mandolin concertos. Here is the slow movement of his Lute Concerto RV 93.
Or If you’re an opera fan, and have 3 hours or such to spend you can try his opera Orlando furioso, don't ask me the story, it's a medieval fantasy story
Ink review:
Now for the ink, again I don’t understand why would any one would choose this dark purple for Vivaldi, who's nicknamed the Red Priest, thanks to his reddish hair, and his passionate music. This one is not an ink for a Vivaldi over.
Writing Samples:
I used a Pilot F3A for the Japanese Ef and is it semi-flexible, I flexed it at the end to give you an idea of "flex".
Rhodia - Vivaldi.jpgMidori - Vivaldi.jpegTR 68gr - Vivaldi.jpegHammermill - Vivaldi.jpg
Photo:
Diamine Vivaldi.jpg
Comparison:
Comparison - Vivaldi.jpg
Water test:
Decent water resistance.
Watertest - Vivaldi.jpeg
and finally An art work. I had a bit of difficulty. While I appreciate his music, he's not one of my favourites composers. 😛
Anyway here's is one of Vivaldi's cats playing one of his concertos on an imaginary gondola
I used a bit of of Octopus Grey Merkat and the brownish ink was created by mixing the purple with De Atramentis Artist Orange:
· Pens used: Pilot F3A (JEf /Semiflex)Lamy (EF/F/M/B, BB)
· What I liked: Colour, Doing washes.
· What I did not like: Name didn’t correspond to the fieriness of composer nor his music
· What some might not like: It doesn’t like copy paper.
· Shading: Only with wide nib.
· Ghosting: Yes, on cheap paper.
· Bleed through: Yes, on cheap paper.
· Flow Rate: Wet
· Lubrication: Well lubricated.
· Nib Dry-out: Did not notice.
· Start-up: Ok
· Saturation: Dark
· Shading Potential: Not so much.
· Sheen: No.
· Spread / Feathering / Woolly Line: Did not notice.
· Nib Creep / “Crud”: Did not notice.
· Staining (pen): Did not notice.
· Clogging: Did not notice.
· Cleaning: Easy. Though as a purple ink it might stain
· Water resistance: Not bad.
· Availability: 30 ml bottles.
Please don't hesitate to share your experience, writing samples or any other comments. The more the merrier
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