J Herbin - Ambre de Birmanie

This is an ink from Herbins essential collection.  The name sounds romantic in French, in English it translates to Burmese Amber

Burmese amber if also known as Burmite or Kachin amber.  It is found in the Hukawng valley in north Myanmar.  The amber is of paleontological interest due to the flora and fauna found as inclusions.  Research into the amber is controversial as it apparently has a role in funding internal conflict in Myanmar and the conditions were it is mined are not the greatest.  

I do like the fact you can buy Herbin inks from the essential collection in 10ml bottles.  It means  can try inks without over committing and having  a lot of unused ink lying around.  The 10 ml bottle for this ink has a picture of  lump of amber on the front – though it is hard to appreciate that is what it is without being told.

I have played and played  with this ink because if you look online many pictures show this as a very yellow ink – it isn’t, I wanted to be sure. The ink colour ranges from yellow to a rum / whisky brown colour.  It really does attempt to capture the shades of amber as seen in the photo above. 
Chromatography was surprising as it is very monomchromatic and you get no appreciation of what has gone into making this ink.

On colo-o-ring there is a yellow-undertone but the browner shades dominate and on Tomoe a washed out browny-yellow.  It is far more vibrant on the col-o-ring swatch.

Col-o-ring

Tomoe

I was inclined to this review as I was using the ink in a very cheap pen on very cheap paper and I was so impressed with its behaviour- shade and no feathering.  The pen is a knock-off Mont Blanc I was given a few weeks ago, the paper used was airmail weight cheap paper, Rhodia and Tomoe river 52gms.
The Rhodia brings out the yellow and of all the papers I like best on the cheapest.  I was surprised by the longish dry time on the cheaper paper as cheap papers tend to soak up the ink so they dry quickly but do feather.  Actually, since the ink didn't feather should I have been so surprised about the dry time?

Cheap airmail weight paper

Rhodia

Tomoe

In summary this is a nice shading brown-yellow ink.  The brown tones make this ink very useful for day to day writing and a full page of writing easy to read.  The yellow makes it interesting and gives it the shade.  Herbin inks are available everywhere the 10ml bottles are just fantastic is you don’t want to buy too much, if you like the ink you can always go and purchase a bigger bottle.  In all my inks the closest I came to this was Coloverse – Martian.  

In summary 
Saturation - good
Shading – great even on cheap paper
Sheen – no
Shimmer – no
Flow – good, a wet ink
Nib dry-out - none
Nib creep - none
Start-up – ok
Feathering – no 
Drying – wet ink – took 30 secs even on cheap paper
Cleaning – good
Water resistance – Not said to be waterproof but quite a bit remained