ink review : J. Herbin – Terre de Feu

La Société Herbin, Maître Cirier à Paris, was established in 1670. This makes J. Herbin probably the oldest name among European ink makers. Today, Herbin produces a range of beautiful fountain pen and calligraphy inks, writing instruments, gift sets and accessories. Herbin inks are made in France, and the finishing touches on the bottles are still done by hand in Paris.

A couple of weeks ago, @yazeh did an excellent review of Terre de Feu on the Fountain Pen Network, but didn’t enjoy writing with it due to its low lubrication. I then remembered I also have a bottle of Terre de Feu in my stash. As such – a good time to load up a couple of pens with this ink, and add my own impressions.

Terre de Feu is a red-brown ink that fits its name well: it makes one think of scorched earth, burnt land, and vast deserts where nothing ever grows. The ink’s colour doesn’t speak to me as a writing ink: a full page of it looks a bit too “bricky” – for me, the aesthetics don’t really work. I hunted around for a pen/nib combination that makes the most of the ink, and finally found one with an Esterbrook Estie with 1.1 stub. Terre de Feu looks a bit flat with low shading on most papers, but with the Estie 1.1 nib it gets more depth and character. The added line variation of the stub, and the enhanced shading you get definitely lift up the aesthetics.

Use the ink for drawing though, and we get a completely different story. Terre de Feu works great for artwork, giving you a wide spectrum of brownish, red and red-orange tones. A pleasurable ink to work with.

Terre de Feu lays down a fairly wet line with good contrast to the page. It works well across the complete nib-range from EF to stubs. The biggest technical drawback of this ink is its lower-than-normal lubrication. This is something you can physically feel while writing. I didn’t like the feel of it in my Safari test pens. Also, on hard & smooth paper the low lubrication translates to something of a “sticky” feel – it’s not exactly scratchy, but there is some resistance and unpleasant feedback. Wetter writing pens alleviate this, but they also increase the ink’s saturation, making it a lot darker and losing most of the shading. For me, the combination of wet pen and stub-nib worked the best. It corrected the lubrication issue, whilst maintaining the shading and line variation.

On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – the ink behaved perfectly with only minimal smearing. Water resistance is quite good: most of the colour washes away, but a grey-black residue remains that is easily readable. This ink can survive accidents. This is also visible in the bottom part of the chromatography. Starting with this review, I have also added the way a splash of ink behaves on a kitchen towel. It gives some extra information of how easily the component dyes separate from one another.

Terre de Feu is a fast-drying ink on the more absorbent papers in my test set (5-10 second range). On hard-surface paper drying times increase to the 15-20 second range with my Safari M-nib test pen. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. On each scrap 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 a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen
• The name of the paper used, written with a Lamy Safari B-nib
• A small text sample, written with my Yard-o-Led Standard with F-nib
• Source of the quote, written with an Esterbrook Estie with 1.1 nib
• Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib)

Since this is my first review of 2025, I’ve started with a fresh set of quotes – this time from the novels of Patrick Rothfuss. There’s only a handful of them, but they are well worth reading. “The Slow Regard of Silent Things” is easily my favourite novella of all time.

Terre de Feu handled all papers well, with no visible feathering – it even managed to cooperate with the dreadful Moleskine paper. On the lower quality paper, the backside has become unusable though due to see-through and some bleed-through. In my experience, the ink lacks a certain crispness – the edges of the writing look a bit fuzzy and not well-defined. Shading is present but not very strong due to the medium saturation range of the ink (see saturation sample above).

The writing samples above are shown as photos. Red-brown ink colours are difficult to capture right, and in this case the photos seemed to capture the colours most accurately. Below I also present a scan of some writing samples – the shading gets exaggerated a bit in the scan, and the red undertones are a tiny bit too pronounced.

Below you can find some enlarged details of writing samples. Shading is most pronounced on the Sakae Iroful paper, which seems to work well with this J. Herbin ink.

Writing with different nib sizes

The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. All samples were written with a Lamy Safari, which is typically a dry pen – writing with the Safari was not pleasant, due to bad lubrication. But with the dry writers you do get more of the red tones, which I liked. Wetter pens increase saturation, giving your writing a browner look. I ultimately liked the ink best with my Esterbrook Estie with 1.1 nib – this combination worked well: you still get more of the red tones, and the nib coaxes some really nice shading from this Terre de Feu.

Related inks

To compare J. Herbin Terre de Feu with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. There are lots of similar inks in this colour range that are technically superior to this Terre de Feu – take your pick. Personally, I think Callifolio Inca Sol (which I misnamed Inca Gold) is a good-looking alternative – it’s more sepia-toned with less red in it, and looks a bit better when you have written a full page with it.

Inkxperiment – Space Flowers : Mars

As a personal challenge, I try to create interesting drawings using only the ink I’m reviewing. I find this to be a fun extension of the hobby, and these single-ink drawings often present a real challenge. It also gives you an idea of what the ink is capable of in a more artistic setting.

I experimented with some flower drawings in my most recent ink shoot-out. From this came the idea to do a short mini-series of eerie-looking space flowers. The strong red components in Terre de Feu made it obvious that this first drawing in the series depicts Martian flowers.

I started with an A4 piece of HP photo paper. I first painted in the rocky backdrop, using water-diluted ink applied through a kitchen towel (which provided the rock-veined texture). Next I blotted out the sun with some cardboard, and used a cotton pad with heavily diluted ink to paint the sky. The red tones in Terre de Feu really came alive here. Against this backdrop, I used a glass dip-pen and pure ink to add the Martian flowers. The resulting drawing shows quite well wat can be achieved with Terre de Feu as a drawing ink.

Inkxpired – computational art

I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper, and have added another layer as part of the hobby. I’m exploring computational art, inspired by the ink drawings I do during ink reviews. Another fun offshoot of the hobby… and all that starting with a few drops of dye-coloured water on paper.

I started by applying a lens-blur filter to the drawing that overexposed the image, and followed up with a polygon filter while keeping the colours of the original painting intact. The result is a more abstract looking piece.

Conclusion

J. Herbin Terre de Feu is a red-brown ink that suffers from some technical issues, most prominent being its lack of lubrication. The colour is not really my thing though, and as a writing ink there are many technically superior alternatives for you to consider. But I really did like the ink for doing artwork – the red tones easily separate from the brown and fully come to life when drawing.

Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib

Backside of writing samples on different paper types

[Originally published on the Fountain Pen Network, on 12 January 2025]