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The L'Artisan Pastellier Callifolio inks I have stumbled upon are among the best regarding performance and of most interesting colours. Bleu Méditerranée is my favourite, although Atlantique and Equinoxe 6 are not far behind. Two different wet pens (BB and flexible F) on Leuchtturm. The shading, purity of the blue colour and the warm glow can be enchanting. It may not be suitable for official documents but I am ready to stand my ground. The ink is also extremely shy and well behaved and it stays on paper exactly where it should, without spreading and messing around. Bleu Méditerranée on Clairefountaine, Xerox Performer, Leuchtturm and Moleskine. The ink behaves exceptionally on all papers. Samples a and f were written with rather wet pens (BB and M/B). Surprisingly, the lines in the Moleskine notebook and on the Xerox copy sheet are still clearly defined and the colour stays pleasantly vibrant. Usually, colours on these two papers become flat and dull. The greater spread and feathering in b, c, d and e can be attributed to the extremely wet flexible pen which leaves puddles of ink. It took well over three minutes for the three-stripes to dry on Clairefountaine and Leuchtturm. Again, the performance of the ink on my super absorbent papers is way better than most I have ever used. It's rather an extreme setup but shows how brilliant the ink is and illustrates well the advantages of paper designed for the use with fountain pens. Callifolio Bleu Méditerranée is clearly exceptional but I can't really recommend it to everyone for two reasons: possibly insufficient lubrication and relatively low saturation. The ink appears dry and may make a pen feeling scratchy. Lower saturation will leave washed out colours in pens with more restricted flow. However, if someone likes the performance of Diamine Registrar's or Salix but strives for more exotic blue it's a great option.

This is my review of Diamine Mediterranean Blue. I decided to try a sample of this ink because one of my correspondents used it in a letter to me and I thought it was a very pretty blue. When I first wrote with it I thought it didn't come across as a particularly saturated ink and I expected it to look more saturated, especially as the pen has been filled with it for several days before I wrote with it. My Waterman Phileas has a replacement 18ct gold L'Etalon M nib fitted into it, and that was the only pen I filled with this ink I don't think it's going to look significantly different with a F or stub nib. It's a nice colour, and I quite like this shade of blue, but you might think it should look brighter than it actually does when you write with it. As usual for a Diamine ink, it's a well behaved ink. It shows slight shading. I found it flowed smoothly across the page, and had no problems with lubrication in the Phileas that I used. This ink exhibits no showthrough and no bleedthrough on my thick Xerox ColorPrint paper. The water test on the review form shows this isn't a waterproof ink, but it's quite resistant. Bearing in mind the paper I use is thick with a shiny surface, and I used a M nib, this ink only took 8-10 secs to dry. That's really quick on this paper It flows through the pen well and lubricates the nib well. I saw no skips or hard starts while I did swabs and dry time tests. It is currently available in 80ml glass bottles, 30ml plastic refill bottles or cartridges. Diamine sell it directly to end-users on their web-site. It's a reasonable price