Where to buy: Beaufort [Here]

Price: £8.35

Bottle size: 45ml

Price/ml: £0.19 (2dp)

Colour: Black

Shading: Kinda

Sheening: Very slight gold sheen

Recommend?: A fairly interesting black ink. If you don’t want a straight up black, this might be a good choice

I have been sent six inks to review from Beaufort. Below I will put links to the other six (which includes the overview, my maths hasn’t failed me.. Yet!) reviews that you can read.

I’ve never done a published review of a black ink before. In part because we are so spoilt for choice with other inks, but also because black inks are (or so I imagined (and since finishing the review, my hunch was right)) very difficult to review. They’re sort of the vanilla of ink colours. Yeah, they’re well known and yes they do their job but hey – look at that mint double choc-chip strawberry with sprinkles and a Flake (as someone who isn’t overly keen on ice cream, this analogy doesn’t stretch too far, but I hope it gets the point across. Though I do love Flakes. Also, I think mint double choc-chip strawberry would be awful).

I’m not going to over exaggerate and say that this is an exception to the rule and it’s ultra exciting – it isn’t. Below you can also see a comparison between two other black inks. It really shows that this isn’t a super black ink, but has the cool properties that I will go on to explain later in the review:

Obsidian is a “hard, glass-like dark volcanic rock that forms from the rapid solidification of lava without crystallisation.” While this ink isn’t itself formed from volcanic rock (let’s leave that to Visconti, huh?), there are characteristics of this ink that does make me think this is a fitting name.

This isn’t the blackest-black ink that you’ll come across. If you look at obsidian, you’ll notice that it’s (spoiler) black, but is also very reflective. You can see this in the ink because it’s not a black-hole looking black. It has a shading property to it that makes it almost look metallic and reflective – somewhat similar to (my personal favourite black ink) Diamine Onyx Black.

Though it isn’t until you get close up to the ink where you can fully appreciate the characteristics that it has.

Also somewhat interestingly, this ink has a bit of sheen to it. Personally, I have no interest in sheen (in fact, I prefer to stay away from it if it’s excessive), though I know that it’s a very popular characteristic within the community. Albeit very minimal, I think it’s interesting to see in a black ink because (and I will confess I don’t own a mountain of black ink) I’ve never seen sheen in a black before. It’s quite a nice hint that you catch every so often and not in your face, so I rather enjoy it.

Black inks are ones that you can use in most circumstances, particularly professional settings which can make them very useful as you’re not likely to use a bright pink ink in these applications (though you might). Where this ink falls short is in terms of waterproofness. Often if you’re signing something important or writing something down that you can’t lose, without a waterproof ink you run the risk of losing that completely. It’s a very niche problem, but one worth perhaps mentioning. If a black ink with incredible waterproof qualities is something that’s important to you, this probably isn’t for you.

To further comment on the different scenarios you’d use this ink. Should you need a black ink for work or something of the sort where you don’t have access to the quality of paper you’re used to at home, fear not. Obsidian Black is very good on poorer quality paper. Interestingly enough, it becomes a whole lot darker.

Conclusion

I don’t write with black inks very often, but sometimes I’ll ink a pen up with the colour and it’s a nice experience to step away from the abundance of choices we have with all these fancy characteristics. However, if you’re someone that still wants some level of pizzazz, this could be a good choice for you. Not a straight up black, has a few interesting characteristics to it but, and though it sounds bad I definitely don’t mean it in such a way, it’s nothing special relative to what’s out there (though just with black inks, perhaps it is).

As it’s a black ink, I thought it was important to listen to a bit of black metal while writing the review, but uh.. For the writing sample, perhaps I should look for something a bit calmer. So I went with my late-14 emo roots (I wish I was joking) and decided to go for a writing sample of My Chemical Romance’s Welcome To The Black Parade.

Disclaimer: I was sent these inks from Beaufort in exchange for an honest review. All views expressed are my own and I received no further compensation for these reviews.