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Pelikan Edelstein Apatite (Ink of the Year 2022) In 2011 Pelikan introduced the Edelstein series of high-end inks, available in a variety of colours. The theme of the Edelstein concept is the gemstone – each ink corresponds to the beautiful colour of a gem. The Edelstein line of inks is presented in 50 ml high-value bottles, that are truly beautiful, and worthy of a place on your desk. In this review I take a closer look at Apatite, the Edelstein Ink of the Year 2022. This is a limited edition ink, that will probably be gone in the near future. Apatite is a blue-turquoise shade of colour, that – according to Pelikan – “leads to an association with the natural element of water, an ink colour that lets all thoughts flow…” Hmm… that sounds a bit over-the-top to me. In reality, the colour was more of a bummer (personal opinion): I don’t hate it with the same intensity as I do Edelstein Jade, but a full page of Apatite is still too much for me. Nevertheless, I collect these Edelstein inks, so I had to get this one, even if it’s not my cup-of-tea. And – as always – I will do my best to give you an honest technical review. The chromatography shows the blue & green components of the ink. It’s definitely a blue with green undertones, but I wouldn’t call it a teal. From the bottom part of the chroma, you can already deduce that Apatite is not a water resistant ink. This Edelstein ink can handle all nib sizes with ease, always showing an easily readable line. I do prefer this ink with the broader nibs (M,B), where it becomes more saturated and leaves a darker line on the paper. Regardless of nib size, a full page of text written with Apatite remains overwhelming. Too bright and in-your-face for me… this ink could use some toning down. To show you the impact of saturation on the ink’s look & feel on paper, I made some scribbles where I really saturated portions of a scrap of 52 gsm Tomoe River paper with ink. This gives you a good idea of what the ink is capable of in terms of colour range. Apatite has a medium dynamic range, with not too much difference between the light and darker parts. But the ink makes the most of it: in writing Apatite mainly uses the extremes of this spectrum, resulting in fairly heavy shading. Personally, I find this one of the few strong points of this blue-turquoise ink. The ink copes well with a wide variety of paper, both white and more creamy ones. Apatite prefers higher quality paper. With the cheaper variety, you get a tiny amount of feathering, and a fair amount of see-through and even some bleed-through. I had expected the ink too look ugly on yellow-leaning paper, but that’s not the case. The ink’s colour remains fairly consistent across paper types. Below, you’ll find the writing samples. On each scrap of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with an M-nib Safari fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a B-nibbed Lamy Safari A small text sample, written with the M-nib Safari Source of the quote, written with a wet-writing Laban Rosa Lilac M-nib Drying times of the ink on the paper, with the M-nib Lamy Safari I’ve also added a few photos to give you another view on the ink. Scanned images and photos often capture different aspects of the ink’s colour & contrast. That’s why I present them both. In this case, the photos capture Apatite’s colour best – the scans of the writing samples are little bit too bright, and definitely exaggerate the shading. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. As you can see, Apatite works well in all nib sizes, even the finest ones. I personally prefer using it with broader nibs, where the colour becomes more saturated, and more to my liking. With broader nibs, the shading becomes more pronounced, and can be quite good-looking. In my opinion, this prominent shading is the saving point for the ink. Related inks To show off related inks, I use my nine-grid format, with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact form. This allows you to easily compare the ink with its eight direct neighbours, which I hope will be useful to you. Apatite sits somewhere between Kaweco Paradise Blue (greener) and Robert Oster Clearwater Rain (more blue). Personally, I prefer the Robert Oster ink over Apatite: only minute differences in the amount of green, but Clearwater Rain simply look better to me. Inkxperiment – Green City As a personal experiment, I try to produce interesting drawings using only the ink I’m reviewing. For me this is an incredibly fun extension of the hobby, and one that continuously challenges my drawing skills. Inspiration for this drawing comes from a town project in my home town. To mitigate the effect of “heat islands” in the town center, one of the central market squares will be turned into a city forest (from the current situation where it is a huge slab of concrete – a superb heat absorber that drives up air temperature with a few degrees). A fine geo-engineering project, that I fully support. I started with an A4 piece of 300 gsm watercolour paper, on which I first drew an outline of a town street leading up to the market square. I then used water-diluted ink with ever more saturation to fill in the street and buildings, using Q-tips as a drawing tool. Next I used more or less pure Apatite to draw the tree trunk. Foliage was added with the rough end of a dishwashing sponge dipped in ink. Final touches of the drawing were done with the M-nib Lamy Safari. This Apatite ink turned out to be rather difficult to draw with. Not much dynamic range, which made it fairly difficult to add texture to the drawing. Definitely not my favourite drawing ink! Inkxpired – computational art I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper, and have added another layer as part of the hobby. I’m exploring computational art, inspired by the ink drawings I do during ink reviews. Another fun offshoot of the hobby… and all that starting with a few drops of dye-coloured water on paper. For this computational derivation, I abstracted the scene a bit, and used a colour palette that adds some contrast to the drawing. The result is definitely an improvement over the original, somewhat bland, Apatite drawing. Conclusion This Edelstein ink of the year 2022 with its blue-turquoise colour is not a must-have in my book. The colour fails to convince me, and the ink has some issues with lower quality paper. Shading looks great though, and is the one saving feature of this ink – in my opinion. A decent ink, just not for me. To salvage my bottle, I already explored some ink mixes with last year’s Golden Beryl, that result in several beautiful greens. Never let a bottle of ink go to waste! Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Back-side of writing samples on different paper types

Quick Look - Pelikan Edelstein Rose Quartz (Ink of the Year 2023) The Pelikan Edelstein Ink of the Year 2023 "Rose Quartz" is available. A full review might be coming, but I wanted to give a quick look at the ink for those of you who are wondering what it looks like. The first thing you'll notice is that the promotion pics of the ink bottle are a big lie - totally Photoshopped. In reality, the bottle looks green! Fortunately, the ink within the bottle is still the promised light rose colour. No idea why it looks green - it must have something to do with the breaking index between ink and glass (my guess). Below is a saturation picture of the ink - showing both photo and scan. The colour is best represented in the photo. The scan is definitely too purple. The ink itself is best described as a light pastel-tinted rose. The inks saturation on the page is fairly low. Not totally unusable, but for me it's borderline tolerable, especially in drier pens. The chomatography looks really delicate. Below, I show you some writing with the ink (photo), and a comparison with some other rose/pink inks I have in my collection. Overall, I like the colour - I just wish it would be a little bit more saturated. But compared to the previous two Inks of the Year, this one is definitely an improvement.

Pelikan Edelstein Rose Quartz Ink of the Year 2023 Many thanks to @Lithium466for the sample. It’s a chameleon of an ink. It has a lot of character with Ef to M nibs and gorgeous with flex, where the halo effect is accentuated. However, with Japanese Ef, B & Stub nibs it was just a plain boring pink. It doesn’t like copy paper. Ink is wet with slightly below average lubrication. You can check this excellent overview by @namrehsnoom Let's start with the chorma: Writing Samples: Quotes are at best attributed. As far as I know Mahler had only one wife. Photo: Comparison: Water test: And finally an art work, inspired by a Japanese vintage photograph and block prints: Other inks used are Platinum Carbon Black and Kuretake Shimbashi Iro · Pens used: Pilot Kakuno Ef, Lamy (EF/F/M/B, 1.1), Kanwrite with an Ahab nib. · What I liked: The halo effect and murky pink. · What I did not like: With B/ Stub nibs. Very Pale with Japanese Ef · What some might not like: The colour, paleness. · Shading: I didn’t see much. · Ghosting: Yes, on copy paper · Bleed through: Same as above. · Flow Rate: Wet · Lubrication: Below average. · Nib Dry-out: Did not notice. · Start-up: Did not notice. · Saturation: Not saturated. · Shading Potential: With flex nibs. · Sheen: Hint of halo. · Spread / Feathering / Woolly Line: Yes, on copy paper. · Nib Creep / “Crud”: Did not notice. · Staining (pen): Did not notice. · Clogging: Did not notice. · Cleaning: Should be easy. · Water resistance: Not so good. · Availability: 50 ml bottles. Please don't hesitate to share your experience, writing samples or any other comments. The more the merrier

Pelikan Edelstein Golden Beryl - Ink of the Year 2021 In 2011 Pelikan introduced the Edelstein series of high-end inks, available in a variety of colours. The theme of the Edelstein concept is the gemstone – each ink corresponds to the beautiful colour of a gem. The Edelstein line of inks is presented in 50 ml high-value bottles, that are truly beautiful, and worthy of a place on your desk. In this review the spotlight shines on the sparkling presence of Golden Beryl, the Edelstein Ink of the Year 2021. Golden Beryl is a limited edition ink, that will most probably be gone in the near future. I got my bottle fairly late in the year, but the ink is still easily available if you’re thinking about buying it before it’s gone. Golden Beryl has a fairly light yellow-orange colour with some added twinkle. For the first time, Pelikan introduced a shimmering ink in the Edelstein line. This Golden Beryl has gold shimmer added to it, and quite a lot of it too. The effect is that of ornamental writing in old manuscripts. Definitely not an ink for everyday use. To be honest, I’m not impressed by this ink. The yellow-orange colour is fairly light, although with better contrast on the paper than I expected. Unfortunately, you really need wet pens and broad nibs to get the best out of this ink – dry pens or fine nibs won’t do! The added glitter is very present, and only loosely bound to the paper. Once dry, the glitter comes off too easy… rub the paper, and you’ll find glitter all over your hands. That said, the choice of gold glitter for this yellow-orange ink is a good one – they blend well together. Personally, I’m not a fan of glitter in my inks. And without the glitter, this Edelstein has not too much going for it. As it stands, this is an ink that I only see myself using for greeting cards and the like. For this purpose, the 50 ml bottle will easily last you a lifetime. The chromatography shows the yellow & orange dyes, that are very water soluble. What remains fixed to the paper is the gold shimmer, and a faint blue-grey component. Based on this info, I didn’t expect any water resistance, and the water test at the end of this review confirms this. Golden Beryl is not an ink that can survive watery accidents. Golden Beryl writes well in broad nibs, with heavy shading and lots of glitter. It did not do well at all with dry pens and finer nibs. With dry pens, the ink exhibits subpar lubrication and feels fairly scratchy. Worse though is that the gold glitter easily clogs up the ink channel, stopping ink flow. I noticed this multiple times when using finer nibs, both with dry pens (Lamy Safari’s) and even with wet Pelikans. The minimum you need is an M-nib, but ideally you use this ink with a broad nib or even wider (BB and calligraphy nibs). As said before, this is more of an ink for ornamental writing, not really usable for everyday writing & journaling. To show you the impact of saturation on the ink’s look & feel on paper, I made some scribbles where I really saturated portions of a piece of 52 gsm Tomoe River paper with ink. This gives you a good idea of what the ink is capable of in terms of colour range. Golden Beryl has a fairly wide colour span, ranging from a faint light-yellow to a much darker yellow-orange. This translates to heavy shading, which - combined with the heavy glitter - looks real good in calligraphy writing, but is much less at its place for normal journaling. I see only limited uses for this ink. Technically, the ink felt quite dry in my Lamy Safari test pens, where it writes a fairly unsaturated line. With the Safari, the ink is actually too light to be useful. For me, the ink only became tolerable when using a wet Pelikan with M nib and above. With the wet pens and broader nibs, Golden Beryl wrote smoothly, and showed its higher-contrast dark yellow-orange tone. It then becomes quite a nice ink to use, with some lovely shading. But still… not an ink I see myself using for normal journaling. For me, this Golden Beryl remains a greeting-card ink with only limited use-case scenarios. Because dry pens don’t do justice to the ink, I used alternative pens for the writing samples. On each scrap of paper I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with an M-nib Safari fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a wet Pelikan with M cursive italic nib A small text sample, written with a wet Pelikan with M-nib Drying times of the ink on the paper, with a B-nib Lamy Safari I’ve also added a few photos to give you another view of the ink. Scanned images and photos often capture different aspects of the ink’s colour & contrast. That’s why I present them both. In this case, the photos capture Golden Beryl’s colour best – the scans of the writing samples are little bit too yellow, and seem to exaggerate the shading. Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing. The top samples were written with a Lamy Safari, which is typically a dry pen. I also added a few visiting pens – all wet-writing Pelikans. Even with these wet pens, Golden Beryl needs broader nibs. I found it best with M-nibs and above. Related inks To show off related inks, I use my nine-grid format, with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. Golden Beryl’s base colour is fairly similar to several other inks. A good alternative would be Callifolio Heure Dorée… quite similar, but without the glimmer. Inkxperiment – all these worlds … I’ve put myself a challenge to try to produce interesting drawings using only the ink I’m reviewing. I find this to be a fun extension of the hobby, and have found these single-ink drawings ideal for experimenting with different techniques. Yellow-orange inks are often great for drawing, and this Golden Beryl is no exception. I could do without the glitter though… the golden shimmer adds some ornamentation when writing, but didn’t do much to enhance my drawings. Inspiration for this inkxperiment comes from the book “2010 – Odyssey Two” by Arthur C. Clarke. In this book, the planet Jupiter gets transformed into a star, and its moons become new worlds for mankind … “All these worlds are yours - except Europa. Attempt no landing there.” The drawing concept started with a little doodle in my daily journal. For the artwork itself, I used an A4 sheet of HP photo paper, and applied water-diluted Golden Beryl to paint in the background. I then used glass jars and pure ink to stamp in the world circles. Next I used cotton swaps to add the background bands. I finally painted in the worlds and star shapes to complete the drawing. The end-result gives you an idea of what can be achieved with Golden Beryl as a drawing ink. Not too bad… a nice ink to draw with. Conclusion With this Ink of the Year, Pelikan tried something new and risky: a shimmering ink with gold particles against the backdrop of a yellow-orange colour. A nice ink for greeting cards, but less well suited for everyday writing and journaling. For me personally, Golden Beryl feels like a missed opportunity. It has too many flaws: only works with wet pens and broad nibs, and glitter and more glitter… One can only hope that this was a one-off experiment, and that 2022’s Ink of the Year turns out to be a more satisfying one (personal opinion of course). Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with a Pelikan M200, M-nib Back-side of writing samples on different paper types

Ink Mix – Depuydt Green 2 parts : Pelikan Edelstein Tanzanite 5 parts : Pelikan Edelstein Golden Beryl A colleague of mine is entering retirement shortly, and I wanted to present her with a personalized greeting card for this occasion. And to make it even more personal, I decided to create a special-edition green colour using a mix of the Pelikan Edelstein inks Tanzanite and Golden Beryl. I tried out some combinations in an Ink Shift experiment, and the current mix turned out to be a beautiful muted moss-green. And because it’s a personalized ink, it gets her name: “Depuydt Green.” “Depuydt Green” is brewed by mixing 2 parts of Edelstein Tanzanite with 5 parts of Edelstein Golden Beryl. This mix resulted in a stunning muted grey-moss-green colour that totally fits my taste and that is worthy of the occasion. For the writing samples in this review, I used a mix without the Golden Beryl shimmer particles. For the drawing, Golden Beryl’s golden shimmer was allowed into the mix (and I must admit that it works quite well within this Depuydt Green). See below for a swab with the golden shimmer particles included. This new ink writes fairly wet and well-lubricated in my Safari test pens. Contrast with the paper is excellent, even with EF nibs. This Depuydt Green shades nicely too – not harsh, but with a soft presence and aesthetically very pleasing. I like this mix a lot! To show you the impact of saturation on the ink’s look & feel on paper, I made some scribbles where I really saturated portions of a piece of 52 gsm Tomoe River paper with ink. This gives you a good idea of what the ink is capable of in terms of colour range. Depuydt Green has a medium tonal range. Contrast between light and dark parts is not too harsh, resulting in soft and elegant shading. For me, the sweet spot for this ink lies in the less saturated range – which translates to dry-writing pens and/or finer nibs. I prefer to use this mix with EF/F/M nibs, where the moss-green colour comes out the best. The resulting mix shows fairly good water resistance, undoubtedly inherited from its Tanzanite heritage. Short exposures to water flush away the yellow component dyes, leaving a blue-grey residue behind that remains perfectly readable. This is also clear from the bottom part of the chromatography. This added water resistance makes Depuydt Green a good ink for use at the office. I have tested the ink on a variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. Below I show you the ink’s appearance and behaviour on different paper types. On every small band of paper, I show you: An ink swab, made with a cotton Q-tip 1-2-3 pass swab, to show increasing saturation An ink scribble made with an M-nib Safari fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a B-nib Safari A small text quote, written with the M-nib Safari Source of the quote, written with a Pelikan M200 with M-nib Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) The Depuydt Green mix behaved perfectly on most of the paper types I used, with excellent behaviour all-around. It even works with the notoriously bad Moleskine paper: just a tiny bit of feathering, but you still get bleed-through (so you won’t be able to use the backside of the paper). Drying times with the M-nib are fairly short in the 5-10 second range. The ink looks good on both white and cream-coloured paper, but the muted grey-green look works best with pure white paper. The scan above shows a bit too much yellow. I therefore add a photo of the same writing, which is almost spot-on colourwise. Related inks To compare this mix with related inks, I use my nine-grid format with the currently reviewed ink at the center. This format shows the name of related inks, a saturation sample, a 1-2-3 swab and a water resistance test – all in a very compact format. Depuydt Green looks fairly similar to Graf von Faber Castell Olive Green (which has a touch more yellow in the mix). Inkxperiment – A History of ICTS I always enjoy doing a small drawing using only the ink I’m reviewing. In this case, the inkxperiment was used on the invitation card for the thank-you party we’re organizing. The drawing summarizes the history of our university’s IT department. Its origins are pictured in the circles on the left: the University Computing Centre (abbreviated URC in Dutch), the Computer Science group and the Administrative Information Processing group (abbreviated AIV in Dutch). These groups merged over time to form the current IT department (ICTS in Dutch, symbolized by the pyramid on the right – and written out in ASCII code on the pyramid), with Annemie as our CIO. With the help of all our co-workers, we built a smoothly running organization that is prepared for the future. Our department’s one-liner motto’s are enscribed in Pigpen cypher code on the drawing. Oh… and you may have noticed the little fisherman in the drawing … it’s not always work-work-work, we sometimes take a break 😉. For this inkxperiment, I started with an A4 piece of HP photo paper. I taped out the pyramid and some other parts with washi tape, and used water-diluted ink to fill in the background, with a darker region at the bottom. After removing the washi tape, I used a piece of cardboard with pure Depuydt Green (with shimmer particles) to draw in the lines – resulting in a nice shimmer effect. Next I drew the circles on the left and filled circles and pyramid with ink. I added the circuit-board lines with a dip pen and bleach (this ink mix reacts really well with bleach). Finally I drew in my co-workers, and added the capping stone to the ICTS pyramid (which symbolizes the end of a career). The result is a one-image history of our university’s IT department, that also shows what can be achieved with this Depuydt Green ink mix in a more artistic context. In my opinion, this ink is simply great for drawing! Inkxpired – computational art I love experimenting with pen/ink/paper, and have added another layer as part of the hobby. I’m exploring computational art, inspired by the ink drawings I do during ink reviews. Another fun offshoot of the hobby… and all that starting with a few drops of dye-coloured water on paper. For this computational derivation, I applied a couple of filters that zoomed in on the main subject, and added a mosaic of colours, that I toned down to a more muted pallet. The end result is not too bad, but in this case I like the green original more. Conclusion Depuydt Green is an ink mix that really impressed me: it is a stunningly beautiful muted moss-green that works well with all kinds of nibs and papers, and that is especially nice for drawing. Fabulous!

InkShift – Pelikan Edelstein Tanzanite to Golden Beryl Just for the fun of it, I occasionally resume my project exploring what happens when you move progressively from one ink colour to another. My hope is that some of these "inkshifts" result in interesting colours that I can use to write/draw with. And besides... it's just fun to watch one ink colour morph into another one. A colleague of mine is entering retirement shortly, and I wanted to present her with a personalized greeting card for this occasion. For this, I am on the look-out for a moss-green style colour. And to make it even more personal, I decided to mix my own. So I turned to my ink-stash looking for some blue and yellow inks. I had a hunch that the blue-black Pelikan Edelstein Tanzanite would mix well with Golden Beryl to create a fairly dark green. Well, only one way to find out, and that is to do the inkshift experiment. In the span between the two starting inks some nice moss-green colours appear. Up to the 1:2 Tanzanite:GoldenBeryl mix there is still too much blue in the mix (not immediately obvious from the scan, but absolutely noticeable to the naked eye). The mixes with 1 part Tanzanite and 2.5/3/4 parts Golden Beryl are more or less alike. I decided to go with the 1:2.5 mix which looks like a nice moss-green colour. This mix is not too dark a green, and has good contrast between the light and darker parts, which translates to an aesthetically pleasing soft shading. And it doesn’t use up too much of the Golden Beryl, which is a useless ink on its own, but a great one for mixing. Above, you can see the progression of the chromas from Tanzanite on the left to Golden Beryl on the right (2:1, 1:1 and 1:2 mixes between the original inks) . It’s quite clear that Tanzanite dominates the spectrum. I continue to enjoy these ink morphing experiments. Fun adventures in ink-land, and more often than not you are rewarded with a mix that beats the original inks. Fun guaranteed!