purple: nahvalur original plus lavender tetra fountain pen review

There’s an all devouring fog today, swallowing pedestrians and skyscrapers alike. I imagine this is what walking underwater is like, with the cold droplets on your face and still breathing. It becomes even more eerie in the night. The familiar sounds become impossible to hear, and only the low grumble of city traffic nearby and piercing sirens in the distance come through the fog. You can’t hear the barges or the tram anymore. People materialize out of the fog, their edges blurring right until they’re next to you, but before you can register they’ve already past.

Sometimes you see a pen and the only thing you can think about is oooohh this is dangerous. That’s exactly how I felt when I first saw this pen. A literal love at first sight moment from the first pictures I saw online. In addition to purple being my favourite colour and this pen being straight up one of the prettiest I’ve seen, Nahvalur produces their own nibs in-house and it sits at an interesting place for the price. To me, this price point and transparent aesthetics is dominated by TWSBI, and I want to compare them in the end from my perspective to give an idea about my expectations.

Nahvalur Original Plus Lavender Tetra fountain pen is simply stunning, from the milky swirly purple to the shiny anodization. I can’t find a single thing to say about it other than that. I left it inked with Diamine Wild Strawberry for a while too, and it didn’t stain nor the anodization developed any imperfections that I can see with a naked eye in the year I owned it. The transparency is crystal clear and the red ink simply looks stunning. I am stunned, in awe. No other words to say.

The second interesting point comes down to the filling system. The blind cap for the vacuum is a little rattly, though that’s not a deal breaker for me. The vacuum filling system worked quite smoothly too. Vacuums are generally hard to clean, if not downright impossible, and I  was expecting this. The only problem I came across was that the ink would leak into the cap in my bag throughout the day even when the blind cap was fully screwed tight, shutting off all ink flow to the nib. I was not unwilling to put up with this, but around this time it was becoming obvious to me that maybe the vacuum filler was not the correct filling system for me.

The pen itself is comfortable enough in the hand, the only uncomfortable part for me was due to a quirk of my pen holding habits. I tend to hold the pen quite close to the nib, right around where the section ends. In this pen, there’s a sharper than usual lip there that starts to become a bit uncomfortable in long writing session. On the other hand, if you’re someone that holds the pen further back on the other end of the section where it meets the threads for the cap, you’ll be fine. The threads are smooth and there is no large step up to the barrel that might cause any discomfort.

Well, there is one topic I’ve been avoiding talking about, and now it feels like it is time. The nib that’s so, so undeniably pretty was not writing when it arrived. Technically it was writing, I guess, it was a dry, scratchy mess that skipped more often than it wrote. I got a fine nib, as it’s a good benchmark to test my writing against a new-to-me manufacturer’s line width, and I was downright sad when I first inked this pen. A part of the problem is that I apply very little pressure while writing, which means that any situations become even more pronounced, and even when I let other people try it, they told me I was not imagining it. I got to business with an old, smoothened out nail file and a set of brass shims and managed to smoothen it out enough for it to actually start writing.

Once it did write, this pen had a pencil-like feedback. Usually Sailor pens are described as having the same feedback, and that comparison feels unfair. Sailor’s pencil is smooth, it sings, it glides over the page effortlessly while still giving you enough feedback to let you know that yes, you’re holding pen on paper. The pencil-like feedback I’m talking about in this Nahvalur pen is a chalky, dry pencil that screeches. It’s an old car with a worn-out suspension on a dirt road. I don’t know how can a fountain nib be described as chalky…

One of the biggest reasons why I wanted to try this pen was that Nahvalur was manufacturing their own nibs. In my mind, TWSBI and Nahvalur pens are in more or less the same category, where good performance can outweigh the price tag. Think about the TWSBI ECO, or the TWSBI Diamond 580 ALR. They are among my favourite pens that I reach for often, and it’s for good reason. The pens are comfortable, and the nibs work. Unfortunately, this pen simply did not match those expectations. I was excited to try these after hearing so many good things about the Nahvalur pens, and… I simply hope that I got a dud and most people are much happier with their purple pens.

There, that’s the mental image I want to end this post with. Happy people, enjoying their purple fountain pens.

Thank you for reading! This was a hard fountain pen review to write, because I wanted to love this pen so much, but I feel like it taught me a lot about how to go forward with my fountain pen collection.

Disclaimer: All photos and opinions are my own.