Question for old-timers: what is "Waterman Blue"?

[Ceramicist]

1 hour ago, inkstainedruth said:

Of course now, catching up with this thread, I just started earworming Lauren Bacall singing "Am I Blue?" in the old movie To Have and Have Not (which is the film that started the whole "Bogart and Bacall" thing to begin with).  

Now trying to decide which movie I like better -- that one or Casablanca.... Certainly the on-screen chemistry between them is WAAAY better than it was between Bogie and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca...

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

You're diving down that rabbit hole!

[inkstainedruth]

Yes.  Yes I am.... 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Ceramicist]

15 minutes ago, inkstainedruth said:

Yes.  Yes I am.... 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

I know what that's like!

[InkyProf]

3 hours ago, boilermaker1975 said:

I never tried any Waterman inks. This thread has inspired me to add a bottle of serenity blue to my next order.

 

I am definitely not a minimalist about ink (there is no such thing as too many blues) but if I could only use one brand, it'd be Waterman -- and not only because I have a lot of vintage pens. I just filled a (modern) pen with Serenity Blue, admittedly to determine whether it was the nib or the (previous) ink that was misbehaving, and: yeah, that's a beautiful ink. It's even giving me red sheen from a fine nib. (And it's behaving like a charm.) I hope you enjoy.  

[boilermaker1975]

@InkyProf now I am really wanting Serenity Blue. I have a pen on order and I am going to see if I can get a bottle added to the order.

[I-am-not-really-here]

On 1/25/2026 at 7:41 PM, kestrel said:

I'm still looking for Male Kestrel Wing Blue.

Have you seen Birmingham Ink's Electron?

[Estycollector]

I have never had Waterman inks clog a vintage Esterbrook or other brand of pen. I had read early on that Waterman inks were safe and allowed vintage pens to work well. 

[inkstainedruth]

When I got my first Vac (the red Shadow Wave) I took it to the Indy-Pen-Dance table to get checked out.  And Mike Kennedy looked it over and said he thought that it was in working condition.  And I said, "You got ink?"  And he said, "I've got Waterman Mysterious Blue...."  And I ran that pen for something like 3 YEARS without any sort of maintenance or flushing -- just refilling it with WMB as needed.  And that ink looked SOOOOOO good coming out of that pen.  I just refilled it last night and had to go to the *new* bottle of WMB (and then dump the dregs of the old bottle into the new one because the old bottle was down so low that I didn't think I could get the nib and feed completely into the ink).

And up until then, getting that first bottle of WMB, I wasn't that interested in blue-black inks at ALL.  Boy, did THAT change my mind.... 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Ted Nashe]

On 1/26/2026 at 6:08 PM, inkstainedruth said:

Certainly the on-screen chemistry between them is WAAAY better than it was between Bogie and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca...

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

And that's the way it should be. In To Have and Have Not the romance between Bogie and Lauren's characters was just beginning; in Casablanca, the romance between the characters of Bogie and Ingrid  had ended in Paris, before the film had begun. It's only when she comes back into Rick's bar that he realises he doesn't want her any more. At the end of the film, he makes that phony speech to get rid of her and then strolls off into the fog with the policeman, breathing a sigh of relief. 🙃