Today we are taking a look at Pelikan Edelstein Aquamarine – 2016 Ink of the year that I picked up from our friends at Goldspot, you can find it here on the Goldspot website.  Although I didn’t bother asking for any sort of blogger discount I am obligated to point out that Goldspot is a sponsor of our website here, but that in no way shape or form impacts the review of this product.  As many of you reading the site probably know I pretty much love all of the Pelikan Edelstein inks (and their great looking glass bottles) anyway.

I always like to get the bird’s eye view of the inside of the bottle of ink and the inside of the cap, and it just seems so much more appropriate when the ink itself is manufactured by a company that is named after an actual bird.  This view is always great though because the ink on the inside wall of the glass neck of the bottle and on the inside of the cap are your first impression of the ink that you are about to load up in your favorite fountain pen.  Generally it will always look darker than what it looks like when you start writing with it, but like I said, its just a first impression.

Pelikan Edelstein Aquamarine Writing Sample:

I’ll start off by saying that I did two writing samples for the Pelikan Edelstein Aquamarine because I wasn’t too thrilled with how it looked on the ivory colored paper in my Rhodia Webbie when I first used it there.  In some cases a great ink just doen’t work well (my opinion) on a paper that isn’t pure white and this is one of those cases.  I’d say it performs excellent on the paper as all of the Edelstein inks have in my experience, but this is just a purely aesthetic thing to me, but lets take a closer look.  Both writing samples were done with a Noodler’s Ahab fountain pen with a flex nib.

Obviously the Rhodia Webbie notebook paper has a great reputation for handling fountain pen ink, and that remains solidly intact with the Pelikan Edelstein Aquamarine.  I think my issue with the ink visually on this paper is two fold.  First, I just don’t think it has that pop or contrast as its a pretty soft or mild color so to pair it with another soft or mild color they just kind of mush together in my opinion.  The other reason that I found this not to be an ideal combination is because the in most of the areas where there are strokes with darker shading, the darker parts actually look almost black or dark blue because they just don’t have that base behind them to contrast off of.  I feel like instead of a nice transitioned fade from lighter tones to darker tones its more of an abrupt shift from light to dark with no real transition between the two.  I tried experimenting with a few different squiggles and swirls of the nib on the paper but it just wasn’t getting the visual results I would have hoped for.  The passes I took of the ink with the a cotton swab against the paper though did show a little more depth and shading of the ink, but unfortunately – or maybe fortunately –  we don’t don’t actually write with cotton swabs.

Now here you have the Pelikan Edelstein Aquamarine as written with on the white recycled paper found in a Black n’ Red notebook.  To my eye the ink just has more life on this paper and I was much more pleased with how it looked when writing with it here.  The various shift in tones from light to dark are much more evident and I hardly ever get a sense of the ink looking almost dark blue or black as I did when using it on the ivory paper of the Webbie.  The only minor issue here was that because this is the recycled paper version of the Black n Red notebook, there was some very tiny hint of feathering here and there, but nothing really bothersome.  I really like the shading and some of the darker but still greenish blue tones that you can get with this ink.  Its a great color and even almost borderline business professional.

If you aren’t familiar with the Pelikan Edelstien line of inks, the ink bottles are one of the things besides the actual ink that make this line so great.  The inside of the bottle where the ink actually sits is actually a different shape on each bottle, so its cool to know that no two bottles are the same.  Also, the Pelikan Edelstein Aquamarine color name was actually selected by fans of Pelikan on Facebook, so its pretty cool to having some customer interaction on the ink as well.  Overall the addition of Aquamarine to the Pelikan Edelstien line doesn’t disappoint, and if this color is up your alley you can’t go wrong so head on over to Goldspot and grab a bottle for yourself.

©2016, Brian Greene. All rights reserved.