Perle Noir is one of the most recommended and well reviewed black inks out there. When I bought this ink a few years ago, I was disappointed. It is not the blackest, not the smoothest, not the fastest drying ink, not an archival ink, not the cheapest. I decided to give it a second chance so I eyedropped a Preppy with it and filled a Lamy All-star. Over the past few days I have written many pages of work notes with the ink. Perle Noir is a well behaving black ink that is sold at a reasonable price, but it doesn't excel in anything. Below some writing samples, followed by drying times and test in water resistance. Drying times are about average to slow, 45 secs with a broad nib on Tomoe River 52g paper. The ink is certainly not water resistant, but it can handle an accidental drop. The full characteristics: Feathering none Shading hardly any Show through negligible ...
The ink looks quite toxic in the bottle, but I do like red inks and a Moldovan friend likes the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, so when I stumbled across this bottle, I had two reasons to buy it. For the occasion and for fun, I experimented with Russian handwriting.
It's a typical Noodler's ink. The color is neither ugly nor beautiful, the bottle is chock-full (careful), the ink dries quickly and it behaves decently in almost every pen and on every paper. Plus, it's not very expensive. Looking further at the characteristics I was amazed with its behavior on Crown Mill Vellum paper... even after a few seconds the ink didn't smear anymore. Incredibly fast! There was hardly any feathering, but be careful with a dip pen or broad nib, the ink didn't do very well with that. Show through is significant, even on heavy 90g paper. Shading is low. You don't have to be afraid that an occasional spill of water will ruin your writing. I left water on the grid for 20 seconds before taking it off with a paper towel. The paper suffered far more than the ink.
So what about this color... it's too bright for office use, too light to use for long personal notes, letters or stories. It's red but certainly leans towards orange. It's a lot less red than Rouge Hematite (Herbin), more close to Fuyu Gaki (Iroshizuku) then. I might use this ink for greeting cards, or short personal notes. But then again, a choice between Noodler's and Iroshizuku is not a choice.
In short, a functional, not very beautiful ink. I won't use it often.
Written on Original Crown Mill Vellum paper