Very Vintage "deep Green" Carter Ink - Review-Ish

[Intensity]

I've had a decanted Parker Quink bottle's worth of very old green Carter's "Deep Green" ink that I got a few months ago at a pen shop downtown. The ink came from a huge glass bottle:

 

 

If anyone has some historical context for this ink and more information, I'd be very interested in learning more about it! It's a local Boston company, so it's exciting to have a piece of local history on my desk.

 

I don't know if it's just age, but there's nothing "deep green" about it at this point. On the contrary, it's fairly low saturation. It's an interesting emerald green color, looks quite nice in the bottle. But I was hesitant to put it into a pen I cared about, because it was a complete unknown entity to me. So I filled a brand new Jinhao X750, of which I had a few spares, and let the ink sit in the pen for a long time. Periodically I tried using the pen, but the ink wasn't quite my cup of tea. Mainly because it is so runny and has fairly low saturation.

 

However, it has a feature I really like: red-magenta outlining. It becomes very noticeable either with a dip pen (but because the ink is so runny, you have to dip very often!) or after sitting in a pen for a while and concentrating. I wonder if letting the bottle dry out a little by sitting open will have a positive effect on the concentration / darkness of color and will help bring out that nice red-magenta outlining. This liquid/color very much reminds me of "Brilliant Green" of triarylmethane dyes, which, in alcohol, have been used as skin antiseptic solution in some countries.

 

Here are some writing samples, mostly on Clairefontaine, as any lesser paper was subject to feathering with a dip pen (although could write okay with normal fountain pen).

 

 

Fabriano paper below Clairefontaine, can't stand up to the super-slow drying dip pen globs and feathers:

 

TLDR: neat vintage ink, would not use daily due to being too thin and runny.

Edited October 27, 2017 by Intensity

[lapis]

Nice review. It does look rather "thin", watery, little saturated. But the shading is as you say great. It has a sort of a White Forest appeal (which is, however, apparently more saturated).

[inkstainedruth]

Thanks for the review. Not a color for me....

I run across (mostly empty) Carters bottles every now and again in antiques stores (generally for more than I want to pay for a little bottle of dried up ink). OTOH, I LOVE some of their advertising -- I'm not normally one to collect ephemera, but the Albert Staehle ills of the white mother cat and her ink colored litter of kittens are just adorable.

I first got interested in the brand several years ago, when I was trying to match (with a modern ink) some blue-black ink which came out of an Esterbrook pen I found in the wild and was starting to flush. And when I was in the late, lamented Art Brown's in NYC, showing a store clerk my journal and going "I'm trying to find an ink that looks like THIS!" and the guy sent me to Mrs. Brown, who said that I probably wanted Noodler's Manhattan Blue because it was an attempt to replicate the old Carter's Blue Black (I also picked up a bottle of Diamine Denim while I was there, because it was a better color match to what was in the pen, but didn't give the shading).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[OCArt]

This color reminds me of the vintage Sheafer Skrip washable green. I suppose, well speculate really, that's why the Parker Penman Inks were so revolutionary when they were introduced with their high color saturation.