Diamine Inkvent 2023: Day 4 — Masquerade
Day 4!
Welcome back! Our ink for today is Masquerade.
The color/properties:
Masquerade is a shimmering ink. The base color is similar to Day 2’s Cashmere Rose, but the purples/reds are stronger and deeper. The shading is stronger, as well: instead of a soft gradient, there’s a crisp clear cut between its tones, and there’s a higher contrast overall. The shimmer particulates are gold, though, and to my eyes, they might even be rose gold.
There are a lot of particulates in this ink, but the actual amount of particulate that came through in writing was less than expected based on the amount inside the pen. There’s no dearth of shimmer by any means, but it did feel like the shimmer wanted to stay in the pen rather than come through the nib.
*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.
How did it perform?
For a shimmering ink, Masquerade performed well. I didn’t experience any clogs or hard starts while writing with it. While I expected there to be more shimmer from this ink, at the very least, it was consistent. The ink flowed with a medium wetness and was overall lubricated enough to provide a comfortable writing experience.
As far as cleaning goes, the experience was mixed. The color itself cleaned out easily enough, but there was a clear reflective haze left over along the inside walls of the pen. There wasn’t any kind of flushing that could get it out, and without a doubt, the pen had to be disassembled for it to be rubbed out by hand.
The haze left behind inside the pen
Ink splat
Ink droplets
My personal thoughts…
When I first opened the calendar door and saw the name and label for this ink, I was excited. Then I swatched it. I loved the color. I inked up the test pen and again, things were going great. What a wonderful time of year. This was going to be an instant buy for me. And then I had to clean it out…
Diamine Masquerade came so close to greatness. In most ways, it’s still great — I might even buy the full bottle next year — but now I’m on the fence. Using shimmering inks can be a waffly experience on the best of days, and that’s fine. It’s special. It’s fun. But it’s not fun when you just want to clean an ink out of a pen and find that it needs to be taken apart to be right again. You shouldn’t have to do that. It wasn’t even in the pen for that long. I wouldn’t want to put this in anything where it isn’t easy to scrape the inside walls of its filling system with a towel or Q-tip. If the extra work doesn’t bother you, though: buy it.
Written in a Leuchtturm1917 notebook
More Images/Info:
Tools and materials used in the writing samples:
A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 3 nib units including a Fine, Medium, and Broad. All nibs are tuned to perform at the same wetness.
A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad
A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook
Scan of the writing sample