Fountain Pen Love: a Cautionary Rant

What with my feeling cranky at typewriters right now, I've had the fountain pens and pencils out more than usual this week.  I've also been reading back through some journals lately.  I just passed the five year anniversary of my move to Washington, and the five year anniversary of starting my current job.  Time really has flown!  When I first moved out here, my oldest niece was a few weeks old.  Now she's a little chatterbox of a five-year-old and has been joined by several siblings.  When did all *that* happen?

Anyhow, in reading back through my journals, I'm again made cranky (cranky seems to be my theme of the week) by certain inks, which include some of those *most* recommended to fountain pen newbies!  Yes, they flow nicely, are relatively easy to clean up if you spill, and are more readily available than most.  However, they fade like the dickens.  Now...considering a lot of people seem attracted to fountain pens as tools for keeping long-term logs and journals, because they seem sort of romantic and old-fashioned and intimate, this worries me.  I realize I likely can blame some of my earliest troubles on bad paper and low quality ink--for example, here's a page I wrote in the late 90s using a basic no-name fountain pen and the washable blue ink cartridges that came with it, in one of those inexpensive, gaudy journals you can pick up in drug stores and Hallmark stores everywhere:

Can you read it without some sort of digital cheating?  I can't.  Not except for a word here and there.  And unfortunately, I didn't catch the disappearing act until it was too late.  I'm guessing the paper is acidic as anything, and the acid acted as a slow-mo ink eradicator.  It makes me sad.

When I discovered it, I (for the most part) resolved to stick with high quality paper and decent brand-name inks.  But, I discovered, that's no guarantee either.  Take this entry--nothing too earth-shattering if I lose it, but it's the principal of the thing.  It's not even five years old, yet it has already faded.  Waterman Blue-Black.  Exactly what the fountain pen folk would probably recommend to a newbie, no?  It's on Moleskine paper, which isn't great for fountain pen ink just because it bleeds and feathers, but should be pretty acid free.  And yet...

I have similar examples written in Parker Quink Black, Waterman Black, and to a lesser extent, Waterman Havana.  Granted, this example is still perfectly legible, but what will it look like in five *more* years, or five years after that?  My guess is that while these inks are wonderfully behaved and very pretty at first, making them great for short-term notes, you shouldn't depend on them to stick with you for the long haul.

As a side tangent, while Waterman South Seas Blue fades maybe a teensy bit, but strangely (considering how much lighter it is) is far less affected--I used a basic Waterman fountain pen (a school pen not available in the states) for quite a few of my journal entries when I was overseas, and while the Florida Blue entries are faded badly, South Seas Blue is still pretty bright.  (Even if it did fade quickly, you'd have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.  The stuff is world-rockingly lovely, though if you even *show* it a drip of water, it will flee the page without leaving so much as a shadow behind.)

Waterman South Seas Blue brush scribble--it's even prettier in person!

Now...I dunno that there are really any archive-proven fountain pen inks--particularly as most companies have changed their formulas over the years, and many of the big names today haven't been around much more than a decade.  You'll see lots of folks talking about family papers from relatively far back that are still perfectly legible though written in fountain pen ink, but my personal experience gives me pause.  Lately I've mostly been using pencil, though I admit, I've slipped a time or two into my fountain pen ways.  But I try to stick with inks that remain vibrant in my own older journals--it's not a *guarantee* of real longevity, but perhaps an indicator they'll be around at least awhile.  Most of the Noodler's colors are good, particularly their "bulletproof" or near-bulletproof colors.  I bought a few Private Reserve inks early on, and most of those look OK as well, though I found many of them more problematic than I cared to deal with on a regular basis (some colors are really hard to rinse out of pens, the inks take ages to dry on the page, and some ink colors faded or shifted in the bottle--Burgandy Mist, for example, turned to Industrial Sludge).  I keep wanting to try some other brands, J. Herbin and Diamine in particular, but it's hard to know (without risk) if their current inks will last a good while.  I'd be interested in the experience of others.  I don't expect my babbling to last centuries, nor do I want it to...but it would be nice if it at least lasted decades.

For the most part, I'm something of a Noodler's fan girl.  I've had good luck with most colors, and they seem to maintain their brilliance in my notebooks even after years on the shelf.  Right now, I'm really, really fighting the urge to order more colors: some Black Swan in Australian Roses (that color and the shading makes my heart go pitter-pat) and maybe some Zhivago (I'm a sucker for subtle near-black inks, and that one has been calling my name for years now--and speaking of names, I like the name of it, too!)

Bottom line: if you really, really want something to last, pencil is a great choice--even some of my journals written in ballpoint are faded quite badly in places, but my old grade school journals written in pencil have held up very well.  After all, they're pretty much written in stone, albeit stone in powder form.  Stone doesn't tend to change much over time, at least when closed up out of water and wind...  The paper will fail first.  Dip pens, with the ability to use old fashioned iron gall and pigmented inks, are also likely a great choice, and one I want to try out one of these days.

And if you (like me) are in love with the fountain pens and the wonderful rainbow of ink colors available, either assume your writing is likely to sneak away as the years roll by and just enjoy the present moments, or choose wisely, and (unlike me) think ahead a bit.