Diamine - Monboddos Hat

This is one of two inks developed by Diamine in collaboration with the UK Fountain Pen Facebook group.  Ten prototypes were developed and this is one of two selected for production.

James Burnett (Lord Monboddo) born Sept / Oct 1714 (baptised 25.10.1714) was a Scottish judge, scholar of linguistic evolution, philosopher and deist.  He was appointed to the Court of Session in 1767 and then adopted the honorary title of Lord, basing it on his fathers estate and family seat of Monboddo House.

As a scholar of linguistic evolution he believed humans developed language skills in response to changing environments, he talked / wrote about evolution long before Darwin came along.  Lord Monboddo is also famous for teaching orangutans to play the flute.  RIP 26.05.1799.

I did not know until I bought the two inks the UK pen community voted for (this and Scribble Purple) that there existed a blog titled 'Too Many Purples' - the search for the perfect purple fountain pen ink written by one, Scribble Monboddo.  A man who also apparently has a hat in this shade of purple.
I have written a little about this ink on IG as my col-o-ring swatch was a lovely purple-purple however the writing experience was dark.  My first attempt I thought it was black ink though I now suspect that was a feature of the paper I used as it definitely a purple ink.  I did this review in an attempt to love the ink (it is purple after all) as it meant I would do a lot more writing using it.  I do now like it but Mont Blanc Psychedelic Purple remains the number one purple ink for me.

I bought a 30ml bottle as though there can never have too many purple inks one can have too much ink in total volume and an 80ml bottle is a lot.  The colour on the label is absolutely no indication of the ink in the bottle.  The Diamine 30ml bottles are all black so opening the bottle also gives no clue.

The ink has variously been described as a mid-purple veering towards blue or with hints of blue and a faint yellow or a high sheen.  Chromatography revealed mid-purple and there is definitely blue but try as I might on various papers including Tomoe NO sheen was to be had.

On my col-o-ring its a darker purple but still purple, on Tomoe it is more a royal purple, in fact pretty close to my favourite Mont Blanc ink

Col-o-ring

Tomoe River

For the writing a used a large Sailor 1911 with a medium nib.  I read somewhere afterwards that this ink prefers a pen that runs wet.  The Sailor isn't the wettest but its not dry either.

I started with cheap notepaper.  There was some feathering but mostly noticeable with magnification or if I paused when writing without lifting my pen off the paper.  Show through was a problem, worse with writing rather than printing for reasons already mentioned ie pausing and not lifting pen, printing was much quicker with few pauses.
On cheap paper the colour is quite dark.

From cheap paper to Rhodia.  It was clearly more purple but I would call it purple-black, I can't see any blue and still no sheen.  It is an impressively quick drying ink which is usually a sign of sheen but I'm not seeing it.

Last, Tomoe river which as the best of fountainpen friendly papers should bring out everything that is right and proper about this ink.  It is a beautiful purple I really like it on good quality paper.

And now I have to fess up, I have banged on about lack of sheen and then went back to some of my Tomoe writing.  It is very dependent on getting just the right angle of the light across the ink but yes there is some yellow sheen, JUST!

Of all my purple inks the closest dupe is Van Diemans, Elizabeth's Violet eyes

Though I adore purple ink I am not sure why I bought this.  However, I admit I was wrong about the sheen but it is very subtle.  I will definitely use this ink again but it hasn't displaced any in my top 5 purple inks.  There is nothing new / striking / special about the ink for me to want to encourage people to go out and buy it.
I bought the ink in Germany, I highly recommend Fountainfeder.  They may not carry the largest range of ink brands but they do have a lot of the Diamine German or European exclusives , are reasonably priced and charge next to nothing for postage.  Everything arrives within a week.  Currently they only have 80ml bottles at 10euros.  I know Goulet pens in the US have the ink for sale in 30ml (US$7.50) and sample bottles (US$1.50).
In summary -
Saturation - high
Shading - no
Sheen - oh so subtle and only on really good paper
Flow - good
Nib dry-out - none
Nib creep - none
Start-up - sluggish had to prime the feed
Feathering - on cheap paper
Drying - excellent, rapid
Cleaning - good
Water resistance - not sold as waterproof because it really isn't