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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

Diamine Golden Honey (150th Anniversary II) The ink maker from Liverpool is one of the staple brands in ink-land. They consistently produce solid inks for a very reasonable price. In 2017, Diamine released the second ink series to commemorate their 150th Anniversary. I obtained my set shortly thereafter, but more or less forgot about them when my attention drifted to Japanese inks. About time to do the reviews. Fortunately, these anniversary inks are still easily obtainable, so if you like what you see you can still get them. Golden Honey has a name that fits the colour: a really nice yellow-orange that looks great on paper. Beware that you need to choose your pens/nibs wisely: the ink’s lubrication is fairly bad in dry writers with finer nibs. But that’s easily solved using a wet pen or a broader nib – in my case, the ink is a perfect match for my Pelikan M600 Vibrant Orange with F-nib. Shading becomes really prominent in M-nibs and above, but with really broad stubs it’s a bit too much for me. For me, the ink works best with M-B-1.1 nibs, where it presents its best side. The ink writes nicely wet (but beware of that lubrication issue in fine-nibbed dry pens), and leaves a well-saturated line, even with the EF nib. The colour is definitely an orange, but leaning to yellow in low-saturated parts. Colourwise, it’s almost an exact match for Papier Plume Sazerac, but in a one-on-one fight this Diamine Golden Honey turns out to be the better ink. The ink works well with both white and cream paper, but the white papers do enhance the looks of the ink’s beautiful shading. With low-quality paper, there’s a tiny bit of feathering and you can expect a fair amount of show-through and bleed-through. To illustrate the colour span of Golden Honey, I did a swab on 52 gsm Tomoe River paper, where I really saturated portions of the paper with ink. Golden Honey has a broad dynamic range, evolving from a wispy almost yellow to a nicely saturated orange. This translates to strong shading when writing, but because the contrast between light and dark parts is nicely balanced, the shading never becomes too harsh. Nice! On the smudge test – rubbing text with a moist Q-tip cotton swab – the ink showed some – mostly yellow – smearing, but the text itself remains crips and clear. Water resistance is totally absent – some residue is left on the page, and with some detective work you might be able to reconstruct your writing (but don’t depend on it). Looking at the bottom part of the chromatography, I had expected better water resistance - but no. I’ve tested the ink on a wide variety of paper – from crappy Moleskine to high-end Tomoe River. 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 a Lamy Safari M-nib fountain pen The name of the paper used, written with a Lamy Safari B-nib A small text sample, written with the Lamy Safari M-nib Source of the quote, written with an F-nib Pelikan M600 Drying times of the ink on the paper (with the M-nib Safari) The multi-paper writing test shows that Golden Honey handles most papers well, looking good on both white and cream paper. There is a small amount of feathering on low-quality paper, but nothing really extreme. With cheap paper, you do get a lot of see-through and some bleed-through, making it nigh impossible to use the backside of the paper. Drying times were about 5 seconds on absorbent paper, and about 15 seconds on most other papers (with my M-nib Lamy Safari). Because scans don't always capture an ink's colour and contrast with good precision, I also add a photo to give you an alternative look on this Diamine ink. To my eye, both scan and photo capture the colour well, but the scans definitely exaggerate the shading (too much contrast between the light and dark parts). Writing with different nib sizes The picture below shows the effect of nib sizes on the writing (written on Rhodia N°16 80 gsm paper). All samples were written with a Lamy Safari. I also added a couple of visiting pens: a Pelikan M600 with F-nib, and an Esterbrook Estie with Journaler nib. Golden Honey looks definitely better in the wetter-writing visiting pens. My Pelikan M600 Vibrant Orange with F-nib captures its sweet spot: nicely saturated and just the right amount of shading. Related inks To compare Diamine Golden Honey 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. Papier Plume Sazerac is almost identical, and Super 5 Delhi Orange comes close (and has the advantage of being waterproof). Inkxperiment – The Doors of Eden As a personal challenge, I try to create interesting drawings using only the ink I’m reviewing. I find this to be a fun extension of the hobby, and these single-ink drawings are great for exploring the colour-range nuances that are present in the ink. I love doing them! Inspiration for this drawing comes from Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “The Doors of Eden” – an SF masterpiece that explores the concept of parallel Earths. In each world, evolution took a slightly different path, with species other than homo sapiens coming out as top predator. And now these worlds are touching and merging… which shouldn’t happen and threatens the fabric of existence. I started with an A4 piece of watercolour paper that I divided in panels representing the parallel worlds. Each section gets a mini drawing, identical in theme but slightly different – referring to the diverging paths evolution took on these worlds. Our own Earth gets slightly bigger panes. The painting builds up from heavily water-diluted Golden Honey, and then adds layers with more and more ink added to the mix. Final details were made with a fountain pen and pure Golden Honey. The resulting drawing shows the broad range of tones that can be extracted from this Diamine ink – simply great! You might also notice that on the absorbent watercolour paper, the colour in the panels gets a fairly one-dimensional, almost cartoony look. Overall, I really like this Golden Honey for this artsy type of activity. 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. Starting from the original “The Doors of Eden” drawing, I first converted it to a black-and-white picture with exaggerated contrast. I then applied an “old photo” filter, and added a sepia-toned gradient to the result. Finally, I used a “pixel sort” filter to blur the boundaries between the different worlds. Conclusion Diamine Golden Honey is a lovely-looking yellow-orange, that I can recommend for both writing and painting. A happy colour, that is the perfect match for my Pelikan M600 Vibrant Orange with F-nib. Just be aware that it doesn’t like dry writers, and you’ll be good. If you enjoy orange inks, this one is most certainly a must-have. Technical test results on Rhodia N° 16 notepad paper, written with Lamy Safari, M-nib Backside of writing samples on different paper types

An inky friend sent this sample a while back and now I've gotten to a review. This is from the Diamine Flowers set, which seems to be difficult to find now in the US. Anderson seems to have this ink in small bottles. Several UK sites seem to sell 30 ml refills, so if this is an ink you like, it is possible to get more. The ink didn't do well in my Edison Premiere, while not feeling dry, the flow wasn't good enough to get decent color. I'd have to slow down my writing to do so. In a Pelikan with a broad nib, that few of my inks can tame, this one fit the bill. I got a rich orange line. So the old saw of matching pen and ink applies here. Still a bit of a light color, but sometimes delicacy is called for. Not water resistant at all. Pens: Edison Premiere (M-steel), Pelikan M205 (B-steel) Papers: MvL=Mohawk via Linen, TR=Tomoe River, Hij=Hammermill 28 lb inkjet, Rhodia=Rhodia 90g ivory. Camera: iPhone 7