Noodler's Henry Hudson Blue

[antichresis]

A friend bought this for me many years ago on her trip to New York. It's an exclusive ink for Fountain Pen Hospital at 10 Warren Street in Downtown Manhattan. The ink comes in the usual Noodler's bottle and I'm glad to report that the ink and the bottle has held up over the years in my ink drawer. I wish I could say the same for my Private Reserve inks, but I digress.
 
As you can hopefully see from the scan, the color is what I would describe as a (medium) Prussian Blue. The color is dusty and not vibrant. To my eyes, it closely resembles the background of the Fountain Pen Hospital store signage you'll see if you look up the store online. Another reference would be the color of Hokusai's signature in his The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. The color is perhaps slightly closer on the spectrum to green than violet.

The writing experience is a bit complicated. I currently have it inked in a Lanbitou 757 (Fine) and it writes well and smoothly on ordinary, smooth-texture notebook paper. While the color is medium-to-light in shade, there is good saturation and very little shading. There is also no sheen or shimmer to speak of; definitely a "flat" ink. All of this help make it a very legible ink that is ideal for taking lengthy notes.

As a left-handed writer who writes from the side, I’ve found the ink to be very well-behaved. The dry time is impressive; I’ve had no issues with smudging on the paper or my hand. Additionally, there is no feathering or bleed-through on this paper. While there is some ghosting, it’s no more than I’ve experienced with any other ink on this specific paper.

The water resistance is excellent: the ink remains completely legible even when the paper is placed under running water. At the same time, it isn't difficult to clean off your hands and it doesn't stain my white sink. Haven't tried with clothes though and I don't plan to!

Now for the drawback: as one might expect from a "bulletproof" Noodler’s ink, the pursuit of permanence has led to some fickleness. When it writes, it writes beautifully as described above but, on this very cheap pen, it tends to dry out if you don't write with it at length everyday. This leads to hard starting, skipping, or generally a thinner line than "normal". Since I don't write every day, I usually have to flood the feed or quickly run the nib under a faucet to get the ink moving again.

Altogether, not a bad ink if you know what you're getting into (that's what ink reviews are for) but I don't see it having mass appeal with so many choices available on the market. I myself have gravitated towards well-behaved, normal inks since asking my friend to buy this for me.

[LizEF]

Great review, @antichresis!   Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experience with the ink.  I like the color - it's right up my alley.  I'm not surprised that the ink wants a pen that seals really well - that's usually the case with permanent inks and those with high dye concentration.

[inkstainedruth]

@antichresis Thanks for posting!  I had COMPLETELY forgotten that I had a bottle of this ink.  I should dig it out and put it in some pen (although when I dug out the relevant ink testing journal, my batch looks very different, being a much darker color -- more of a blue grey, almost to the point of being a blue-black).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[antichresis]

Thank you both for the comments. Regarding the color variation, it seems this comes with the territory for Noodler's. Have they improved in recent years?

 

I agree that mine is a paler blue and, if memory serves right, I was looking forward to getting the darker "variant" of the ink. I just check and it's actually nowhere near the swab on Fountain Pen Hospital's website:

 

😅

[yazeh]

Great review! What lovely handwriting. I enjoyed reading it.  

Looking forward to more your review.

[inkstainedruth]

Wow, that is really seriously different from both your bottle and mine!

Yeah, Nathan Tardif calls it a "feature" (as in you can tell if someone has updated -- or doctored -- a file).  But I'm more likely to consider it poor quality control (OTOH, he does apparently make up batches in his basement, then sends them off to be bottled).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth