Last month at the Washington, D.C. Pen Show, Lori at Franklin-Christoph kindly provided me with a handful of samples of Franklin-Christoph's new line of inks. Franklin-Christoph has carried its own brand of inks for a while now--readers who have been with me since the beginning may recall that I reviewed colors such as Syrah Syrah (a dark, wine-colored red) and Olde Emerald (what I'd characterize as a "money-colored" green). Both were decent inks, but after long-term use had some traits that kept them from making it into my regular rotation, namely their tendencies to dry up in the nib after about a week or so of use and leave residual "gunk" (scientific term there) on the nib and feed. I can happily announce that, from what I've seen so far, Franklin-Christoph fixed those issues.
My D.C. Pen Show haul, which I'm slowly working my way through.
Lori set me up with some healthy samples of the following inks: Loden, Black Cherry, Dark Chocolate, Midnight Emerald, Noir et Bleu, and Tenebris Purpuratum. (They must have a multilinguist in house: respectively, Dark Green, Red Black, Dark Brown, Dark Teal Green, Blue-Black, and "Purple Shadow" (my Latin's rusty).) So far, I've had the opportunity to use the Dark Chocolate (used for the writing sample in my TWSBI 580 review), Loden, and the Black Cherry. The first two are great inks that I've enjoyed a lot. The third, the Dark Cherry, is a good ink but just doesn't do anything for me personally. I'd reach for other dark reds/burgundies before this one. Once I finally drain all of the pens I inked up to take to D.C., I'll load the rest of these samples for review.
I've had no issues with any of these inks. The colors that I've tested are fairly earthy and muted, but behave well on all sorts of paper. I've witnessed no clogging, gunking-of-nibs, or staining-of-pens, and these inks have been loaded and writing for well over a month now. If I had one criticism, it would be that the inks (or at least the three that I've tested extensively) tend to write a bit on the dry side, but I personally don't consider that a bad thing as long as the ink doesn't skip or hard-start, which these do not. These inks wouldn't be my first choice for writing on super slick paper like Clairefontaine, however, given their slight dryness.
Paul over at Gorgeous.Ink has posted an excellent overview of the new Franklin-Christoph line, as well as some in-depth reviews of specific inks (including ones I don't have samples of). His site in general is well worth a read.
DISCLAIMER: I was provided the ink samples used in this review free of charge, for review purposes. All of the inks reviewed here are available for purchase directly from Franklin-Christoph on their website for $12.50. This is not an affiliate link, and I have not otherwise been compensated for this review.