Montblanc 146 with broad nib. Admittedly, I am not the world’s biggest user of broad nibs, but my favorites are those made by Montblanc. Not than just wider, the Montblanc broad nib is stubbish, with a thinner cross-stroke and wider down-stroke.
I have it inked with Kaweco Ruby Red, a color I like a lot.
Montblanc LeGrand Platinum with fine nib. Sometimes when you’re using a lot of colorful, new or exciting inks, you just need to decompress and pick up an old reliable. I went for my LeGrand with platinum trim and fine nib, and Rohrer & Klingner Blau Permanent ink.
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There are those who want their fountain pen inks to be permanent. Then there are those who don’t. I am the latter, since I never write anything important, but I do spill a lot.
Someone mentioned washable black ink to me, and I thought that Seitz-Kreuznach Panthers Black, Stipula Ebony Black and Montblanc Mystery Black would be washable. So let’s see.
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I just finished making some comparisons between some inks from Montblanc, on the one hand, and Monteverde and Seitz-Kreuznach on the other.
Here are more comparisons, involving a few Stipula Calamo inks and one from Caran d’Ache.
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Montblanc Writers Edition F. Scott Fitzgerald with fine nib. I do own pens with bling. This one, for instance. I occasionally think about selling it, to pay for some other pens I’ve bought. But then I use it, and immediately think, no, I love this pen.
The Fitzgerald is filled with a Montblanc limited edition ink from a few years ago, Montblanc Albert Einstein ink. This is a gray that is so dark it can almost look black. I love this ink, too. Using it actually rekindled my interest in black inks.
The pen is more glamorous. Its black, white and silver color scheme, its materials and its details pay homage to Art Deco style and to Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age. It would look at home on the set of an Astaire and Rogers film. And it’s a wonderful writer: the Fitzgerald is lightweight and comfortable, and mine has a superb, albeit wide, fine nib.
I really love it, though, because it is the F. Scott Fitzgerald pen. Fitzgerald is a favorite of mine. Sadly, he died relatively young, with his career in shambles and his body of work uneven. In his twenties, he had written a great American novel. In his forties he died in reduced circumstances, separated from his wife and estranged from many of his former friends, thinking himself a failure.
On his and Zelda’s tombstone is engraved his famous final sentence from The Great Gatsby: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” But in the novel, immediately before those words came these, of hope: “Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we run faster, stretch out our arms farther…. And one fine morning —”
The dreamer’s eternal hope always was the other side of Fitzgerald’s vision. I think that’s the quality that endears him to us still, despite knowing that no matter how fast he himself ran, his talent could not outrun his demons.
Montblanc Alfred Hitchcock Ink. Montblanc’s Alfred Hitchcock ink is a gorgeous burgundy with more vivacity and cheer than might be guessed from the matching pen’s allusion to the movie Psycho. This limited edition ink from 2012 is no longer made and commands high prices on the secondary market — for good reason.
An everyday ink? Alas, only if you are a multimillionaire.
Okay, confusing name. And so long. I actually owned this ink for more than two months before I figured out I had been using the wrong shorthand name for it. I had been calling it Montblanc Blue Hour. Which I think would have been an excellent name, by the way. And the box does say “Meisterstück Blue Hour.” But that seems intended to identify the ink as part of a Blue Hour limited edition collection. Because underneath that, Montblanc adds “Twilight Blue.” And the Montblanc USA website calls it “Montblanc Meisterstück Blue Hour, Twilight Blue. So. Okay. I will call it by its correct name now.
Blue Hour Twilight Blue costs $16 in the US and comes in Montblanc’s standard 30 ml square bottle for limited edition inks other than Writers Edition inks. I actually bought mine in May from the Netherlands, so I have been using it for a few months now.
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Fountain Pen Follies 