Fountain Pens + Mont Blanc Lavender Purple Ink

I like writing.I actually like the way my handwriting looks too. I stumbled across someone calling this form of printing a modified italic script. I think that it's a good description of it. It's not block printing, but it's not cursive either.In any case, this post is as much about writing as it is about the medium for the writing.The writing above is on a high-end 32-pound laser-printer paper from HP. It's a very nice thick smooth bond. The ink in this case as you probably guessed from the title is Mont Blanc Lavender Purple. The pen used in all of these is a Pelikan M600 Fine-point.The ink really shines. The shading in it brings character to the letters. It's more alive than a ballpoint pen. It's as if the letters themselves have inherent movement.In a more pedestrian setting, normal copy paper, the results are not quite as dramatic:There's some feathering and there's a bit of shadow on the opposite side of the paper (not shown). That being said, it's still more alive than a normal pen!In either case it's still a very nice looking ink! It's not pink... it's not blue. It's just a very nice deep and saturated purple. The ink seems to flow nicely and isn't too wet in my pens.I wanted to do an experiment though -- I'll repeat with other inks later on. (I tried with interesting results with Pelikan 4001 Royal Blue ink... but that'll be later)Here's the test sheet before the experiment:The top two were written on the morning of Thursday the 17th. The bottom two were today.The test procedure was dipping both of the test strips into cold water for a few seconds to get them saturated. Then I took them out and cut them in half and soaked the right side for a few minutes in cool water.Here's the result:(both of these scans are un-adjusted from the scanner; the other scans are slightly modified to better convey how I think things look)I'm rather impressed with the results. While the pink/purple wasn't pinned down on the paper very much, there is a black shadow that was affixed quite firmly to the paper.Why is this interesting? Two reasons spring to mind: archival and forgery.The archival aspect is pretty easy to see. Dropping a notebook into a puddle shouldn't wash the ideas away with the water. While not completely ideal, the text is legible in all cases.Forgery among other things. Most inks can be chemically washed off papers. You do this to get the proverbial blank check that you can do whatever you want with. The more resistant you are to washing, the better off you'll be.While this isn't marketed as a tamper-resistant ink, I'm happy with it for what it is: a beautiful and functional ink. I've written a few journal entries in it and a page of writing in it isn't overpoweringly purple -- it remains very readable and non-fatiguing to read.[smugmug url="http://photos.vec.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=20209437_KwtrGp&format=rss200" imagecount="100" start="1" num="100" thumbsize="Th" link="lightbox" captions="false" sort="false" window="true" smugmug="true" size="L"]