ink review : L’Artisan Pastellier Callifolio Violet

L’Artisan Pastellier is a small company in southern France that specialises in natural pigments, and offers customers authentic and reliable products in beautiful colours based on mineral or vegetable pigments. In a collaboration with Loic Rainouard from Styloplume.net, the chemist Didier Boinnard from L’Artisan Pastellier created the line of Callifolio fountain pen inks. These pastel-coloured inks are traditionally crafted, and can be freely mixed and matched. Overall these inks are only moderately saturated, and have low water-resistance. The inks were specifically designed to work well with all types of paper, and all types of fountain pens.

Being pastel-tinted, these inks have a watercolour-like appearance, and are not only fine inks for journaling, but are also really excellent inks for doodling & drawing. I only recently discovered them, and they are already the inks I gravitate towards for personal journaling.

In this review, Callifolio Violet takes center stage: a springtime light-purple ink obviously named after the violet flower (aka viola of the Violaceae family of flowering plants). You can also think of the colour of lavender if you prefer. Violet is a fresh, lively and primarily beautiful looking ink. The ink gives me a playful feeling – perfectly suited for this late spring / early summer season. It is not too intrusive though, and in my opinion not only suited for personal journaling but also well adapted for note taking at work.

Be aware that this is a reformulated version of the older Callifolio Violet, and a totally different ink than the one previously reviewed by fellow Fountain Pen Network Member visvamitra (no golden glitter in this incarnation of the ink!). As far as I’m concerned, this ink doesn’t need a golden shimmer to shine. It’s a beauty in its own right. The ink works well in all nib sizes but is a bit undersaturated in drier fine nibs. It shows some really nice shading in the broader nibs, from light to dark violet. I’m not a fan of too bold a shading (with a large difference between light and dark) – here the contrast between the light & dark portions of the text is obviously present, but remains subdued with an aesthetically pleasing look. I really like it !

This flowery ink really blossoms in wetter nibs where it leaves a much more saturated and darker-looking line, which looks amazing. Be sure to find a wet pen to use with this ink – you’ll be well rewarded with the eye-pleasing result. Below you’ll find a writing sample with my drier Safari M and B nib, compared to the wet golden M-nib of my Lamy Dialog 3. The difference is obvious.

On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – Violet behaved perfectly with almost no smearing. Water resistance is remarkably good ! This is the first Callifolio ink I’ve used that is nearly water-proof. A 15-minute soak in still water posed no problem at all. Running tap water caused some purplish smudging, but the text remained perfectly readable. This water resistance makes Callifolio Violet all the more suited for the workplace, earning an extra plus from me. The ink’s water resistance is demonstrated clearly in the chromatography, which shows that most of the ink remains in place when coming into contact with water. It also clearly shows that this is a one-pigment ink.

I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. For the Callifolio reviews, I’m using a format that clearly shows you the ink’s appearance and behaviour on the different paper types. On every small band of paper I show you:

An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip
1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation
An ink scribble made with an M-nib fountain pen
The name of the paper used, written with a B-nib
A small text sample, written with an M-nib
Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib)

Callifolio Violet behaved perfectly on all the paper types I used, without any feathering even on the lower quality papers in my test set. Drying times are fairly short in the 5-10 second range on most papers. In my opinion, the ink looks best on true white paper, and is a bit less eye-pleasing on more yellow paper. I find it great-looking on the readily available Rhodia paper.

At the end of the review, I also show the back-side of the different paper types, in the same order. The ink behaved superbly on all paper types. Only with Moleskine there was a tiny bit of bleed-through – given that Moleskine is a notoriously bad paper for fountain pens, this was really surprising (in a good way). Violet is a really well-behaving ink.

Conclusion

Callifolio Violet from L’Artisan Pastellier is a wonderful ink, perfectly suited for late spring / early summer. I am really impressed by the ink’s performance on different paper types, as well as its near-perfect water resistance. But primarily I am totally charmed by the ink’s colour, which looks fresh & beautiful, but is still not too out-of-bounds for an office setting. A great-looking ink for any occasion ! You should really try it out for yourself !