The Return of Sepia: Montblanc's Toffee Brown

            We all remember old family pictures in faded brown tones, or perhaps you have looked at medieval manuscripts, books or journals, dutifully preserved and still displaying their artful script. Sepia is a colouration often associated with romantic, sentimental or aged things. It is the colour we often correlate with an image or a thought from another time, documented for posterity and carried as a precious memory in culture, in a family or by just one individual. Sometimes lost, these treasures are often found serendipitously by those who will appreciate them and, because they have survived, they give us a glimpse into a past world.

            To the delight of horology aficionados, leather goods users and fountain pen collectors, sepia, itself, has survived the ravages of time, emerging more recently as comforting colour, tone or finish in an increasingly austere, white and post modern world.  

Harkening back to times when a quill and parchment or vellum were the only way to preserve a message or information for following generations, sepia hints at the necessity of those basic things which we now consider to be luxuries, and which we cannot fully justify as practical in our own times. It bears a gravitas which enduring things often have, and justifies its own existence by the irrefutable and supremely important role it played in bringing humanity through the dark ages, preserving our societies, cultures and empires for their eventual resurgence.

            With these things in mind, it seemed appropriate to use a vintage Montblanc149 for this review. The smoothness of a time worn nib seemed a good match for this ink, which flows with a rather enjoyable, pigment-rich mellifluousness. Shading heavily from a light, almost amber colour to a dark and saturated brown, reminiscent of a fine coffee, Montblanc’s Toffee Brown is aptly named and as delicious to use as the name implies.    

Montblanc 
1055 Alberni Street
Phone: (604) 235-1770