So I admit I have been drawn to yet another purple.  I was browsing inks and lo and behold a violet and white box pops up on my screen and somehow magically arrives in my mailbox 😜


The culprit is J. Herbin Encre Violette.  This is not just any purple ink but a scented purple ink!  I was a bit skeptical about the smell.  I had tried an MB scented ink about 10 years ago and remember not being too impressed with the scented part.  Figured after all this time why not give scented ink another go?

The box arrived as pictured.  It features a beautiful white and purple theme, and it gives you a bit of information about the fragrance the user is about to experience.  Like the other boxes in this collection, the top has a helpful color block to identify what’s inside when stored.


Now the bottle.  It looks like all the other 30ML J. Herbin bottles, and fit right in with the rest of the collection I have going.


I decided to ink up my Vanishing Point Raden for this ink.  I use it a lot for reviews because of the small converter, it lets me choose something different all the time ^_^.  It also seems to play nice with these inks.  I had a lot of trouble finding a pen to play nice with Bouquet D’Antan from the same collection and the VP handles it flawlessly.  No difference here.


So now let’s get to what really counts, the ink!

This ink has an absolutely wonderful flow, my nib just glides across the paper, even moreso than what I use the same pen with other inks on tomoe paper.  The saturation is great for what I consider a lighter purple πŸ’œ.  There is some shading, however it isn’t as prevalent here as with other purples.  I notice that the shading in this collection is not too impressive.  There was also no sheen that I could see 😦

Since purple is one of the staple colors to my ink collection of course I have a bunch of pens inked with various purples.  Here is a comparison photo of the purple inks that are currently in my rotation:


The second photo is natural light, the first I enhanced.  Keep in mind that this test was done on cream tomoe river paper.

Now the bonus part of this ink, the scent.  I have really mixed feelings about it, while it is a clean floral smelling scent I don’t know if I necessarily want to smell it each time I use this color.  The scent is rather strong when you open the bottle and also while the ink is drying but then fades to a very mild scent which I prefer.  I am sure that given enough time it will not smell at all.  If there were an option to buy this unscented I would probably go with that, but this scent is far from horrible so I would still highly recommend this ink.  The other qualities it has to offer far outweigh having to deal with a floral scent every now and then.

Perhaps WordPress will allow the uploading of smells one day?  Wouldn’t that be interesting 😜