Monteverde - Topaz

Topaz is a silicate material of aluminium and fluorine on of the hardest naturally occurring minerals and the hardest of any silicate minerals.  Due to its hardness, transparency and variety of colours it has long been popular for jewellery.  It does have a low index of refraction which means if it is cut with large facets unlike other gems it will not sparkle.

In its natural state it is golden brown to yellow and quite frequently is confused with the cheaper citrine. 
Orange topaz is the precious topaz and Novembers birth stone
Imperial topaz is yellow pink
Blue topaz is the state gemstone of Texas
Mystic Topaz is colourless and is frequently artificially coated to give a rainbow appearance on its surface.

Monteverde is based in California and was established in 1978.  Their inks are lubricated meaning they stay wet in the pen for longer.  It is very hard to find their inks in my part of the world. In the US the price is around US$9 for 30ml and US$15 for 90ml.  Though they are harder for me to find Monteverde have been very helpful – I contacted them directly and they put me in touch with their Australasian distributer who put me in touch with the best company to contact in Australia – Pen and Ink.  There, the inks are AUD$13 for 30 ml, unfortunately they didn’t have the colours I wanted but are obtaining them from the US for me.

The bottle on the left is the standard packaging for Monteverde inks. 
I obtained my topaz as part of a sample pack.  In the sample vial the ink is very orange so I can understand why topaz is mistaken for citrine, a yellower colour which is what this ink is starting to look like.

Chromatography was orange with just a hint of yellow at the leading edge.

On col-o-ring it is a dull orange colour and even Tomoe river doesn’t lift it.

Other orange inks of similar shade J Herbin’s Orange Indien,  Bungbox’s Ginza line and Nemosine’s  solar storm.

I started the writing with Tomoe river and became increasingly disillusioned with this ink.  I am not sure what the problem was or is.  It had a very hard start and despite priming I ended up leaving my pen in a holder nib down to get the ink to flow.  The result had some nice shading but it is a rather dull orange.

From Tomoe I went to Rhodia and then gave up completely with this ink.  At the top of the page you can see all the skipping as I wrote.  I primed the pen again to no avail so decided to ink a second pen.  The first was a Birmingham pen Co 6th Avenue of which I have 6 and have NEVER had a problem with them.  The second pen was a PenBBS 323 of which, again I have never had a problem and you can see the continuing issue.  I primed the pen three times and left it in a holder nib down and still couldn’t get anything more than you see below.  It makes it look like I was digging into the page – I assure it wasn't.

At this point I thought I am NOT inking a third pen and gave up.
In summary -I am really disappointed with the difficult performance of this ink
Saturation – ok
Shading – yes
Sheen – no
Flow – see all the comments above
Nib dry-out – unsure probably yes considering its flow characteristics
Nib creep – none
Start-up – VERY hard see above comments
Feathering – none
Drying – ok
Cleaning – easy
Water resistance – did not test