EFNIR: Pelikan Edelstein Tanzanite

[InesF]

"This can't be a small ink, as I have found my place in the blue-black world with this specific Tanzanite" - unknown author of the present   

 

Thank you, @LizEF, for the ink review, for keeping the story going and for keeping our magical party busy! Always a Wednesday morning pleasure to switch the computer on and see a new EFNIR entry popping up! 

 

To my old and tired eyes, P.E. Tanzanite is more of a blue-grey (it's not dark in any not-firehose pen) and never before observed sheen with it. Maybe it is this rare appearance why some people see a blurple-grey on the paper? Whatever colour it is, at least it is a well behaving whatever-colour and always a joy to use. I feel lucky having a still 3/4 full bottle of P.E.T.   

 

Looking forward to next week's episode!  

[LizEF]

7 hours ago, lgsoltek said:

Blue-blacks tend not to be my kind of colour, but I remember being impressed by a gorgeous layer of copper sheen of Tanzanite a few years ago at a pen meet...

It does sheen nicely - not too much, not too little (if you're going to sheen, go ahead and sheen, but don't be so sheeny you infect everything in a quarter mile radius with sheen-flakes).  (Don't go yammering about the metric system - sheen uses imperial measurements! )

[LizEF]

5 hours ago, InesF said:

"This can't be a small ink, as I have found my place in the blue-black world with this specific Tanzanite" - unknown author of the present  

 

5 hours ago, InesF said:

Thank you, @LizEF, for the ink review, for keeping the story going and for keeping our magical party busy!

You're most welcome!

 

5 hours ago, InesF said:

Always a Wednesday morning pleasure to switch the computer on and see a new EFNIR entry popping up! 

 

5 hours ago, InesF said:

To my old and tired eyes, P.E. Tanzanite is more of a blue-grey (it's not dark in any not-firehose pen) and never before observed sheen with it. Maybe it is this rare appearance why some people see a blurple-grey on the paper? Whatever colour it is, at least it is a well behaving whatever-colour and always a joy to use. I feel lucky having a still 3/4 full bottle of P.E.T.   

  Blue-grey works for me - as a color, though why we reverse it is beyond me.  For example, if we had a green that leans blue (but isn't quite teal), we would call it a blue green.  If we had a blue that leans a little green (but isn't quite teal), we'd call it green blue.  But when we have a blue ink that leans grey, we call it blue-grey instead of grey blue.  (Of course, perhaps you see this as a grey ink that leans blue, in which case, blue grey makes sense...)

 

5 hours ago, InesF said:

Looking forward to next week's episode!  

Thanks!

[namrehsnoom]

A great review of my favourite Pelikan ink. This is my top Edelstein, with Topaz and Smoky Quartz as runner-ups. In my opinion, one of the best blue-blacks available - it’s that dusty grey feel to it that makes it a winner.

It’s been ages since I loaded up a pen with it. Which is going to change right now…

[LizEF]

41 minutes ago, namrehsnoom said:

A great review of my favourite Pelikan ink.

Thanks!

 

42 minutes ago, namrehsnoom said:

This is my top Edelstein, with Topaz and Smoky Quartz as runner-ups. In my opinion, one of the best blue-blacks available - it’s that dusty grey feel to it that makes it a winner.

A winner, for sure!

 

42 minutes ago, namrehsnoom said:

It’s been ages since I loaded up a pen with it. Which is going to change right now…

Hooray!  Bringing love to neglected ink bottles everywhere!

[inkstainedruth]

15 hours ago, lgsoltek said:

Blue-blacks tend not to be my kind of colour

I used to think that as well.  But there are enough really nice ones out there that my mind has been changed.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, inkstainedruth said:

I used to think that as well.  But there are enough really nice ones out there that my mind has been changed.

Resistance is futile!  We have a broad range of hues and saturation levels!  We'll get everyone eventually.

[inkstainedruth]

Yeah, what probably won me over was how well behaved Waterman Mysterious Blue is in a vintage Parker Vacumatic (the Red Shadow Wave) and also how GOOD it looks coming out of that pen....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[LizEF]

21 minutes ago, inkstainedruth said:

Yeah, what probably won me over was how well behaved Waterman Mysterious Blue is in a vintage Parker Vacumatic (the Red Shadow Wave) and also how GOOD it looks coming out of that pen....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

That's a good pairing!  Waterman Mysterious Blue is only allowed in the blue-black club due to tradition (as opposed to color).

[inkstainedruth]

Well, I had some people at my local pen club convinced that it was a GREEN ink one time a few years ago.  And I was going, "Nope -- it's WMB!  I KNOW what's in this pen...."  

But on whatever paper that was, it sure looked green to me as well....  So maybe the name is well merited....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

[LizEF]

4 minutes ago, inkstainedruth said:

Well, I had some people at my local pen club convinced that it was a GREEN ink one time a few years ago.  And I was going, "Nope -- it's WMB!  I KNOW what's in this pen...."  

But on whatever paper that was, it sure looked green to me as well....  So maybe the name is well merited....

  I think the green-leaning formula is long gone.  The current one is a pale blue with a little grey.

[Mercian]

Hi @LizEF,
I like this review - and I love this ink.
I am glad that you appear to like it as much as I do - I was finally seduced into buying it by @namrehsnoom's original review and 'Shoot-out' with Montblanc Midnight Blue.

 

But I must ask you a question about your intended use of it:

 

  

On 2/4/2025 at 2:47 PM, LizEF said:

This is my kinda color!  Really enjoyed the writing experience, too.

 

On 2/4/2025 at 4:54 PM, LizEF said:

I'm going to try it in my Visconti Homo Sapiens London Fog next time it needs a fill.

 

On 2/4/2025 at 10:07 PM, LizEF said:

I'm using up all my Waterman Mysterious Blue cartridges because they had evaporated down to almost half volume, and I didn't want to clean my Carène before using it longer (it originally had the included Waterman Serenity Blue cartridge in it), so I just stuck a Mysterious Blue cartridge in and ran with it - no problems!   I plan to use them all up (on my second now - think there are 2 more to go). 

 

Now, I have no doubt that your Visconti is an elegant pen, but what about your Carène?
Is it not an elegant pen also? Indeed, a timeless, 'classy' pen? Is it not finished in a delightful dark blue lacquer? Is its grip-section not black?
As such, is it not the very epitome of a 'classy blue/black pen'?
Doesn't it deserve a chance to tango on your best paper with a similarly-'classy' blue/black ink?
To me, your Carène would seem to be almost made-for Pelikan Edelstein Tanzanite!

Pelikan even makes the ink available in long 'international' cartridges.
Then again, knowing the sneaky shenanigans which Waterman is wont to practice, those might not actually fit into the Carène - so the purchase of a lovely, pretty, delightfully-tactile, curvy bottle of the Edelstein would seem to advisable for you...

 

Slàinte,
M.

 

[Since you ask, yes; I am posting this comment in the hope of hitting the target that I am required to reach in order to retain my Evil Enabler status ]

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

Hi @LizEF,
I like this review - and I love this ink.
I am glad that you appear to like it as much as I do - I was finally seduced into buying it by @namrehsnoom's original review and 'Shoot-out' with Montblanc Midnight Blue.

  Beware of ink-reviewers!  Dangerous folks, they are!

 

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

Now, I have no doubt that your Visconti is an elegant pen

Have you seen the London Fog?  (Here's a link to an Anderson Pens blog about it.)  I'm thinking that blue and grey goes well with a blue-black...

 

Also, I'm looking for an ink to permanently reside in this pen, and that basically means either a blue-black or a murky green, and blue-black would go better, no?

 

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

...but what about your Carène?
Is it not an elegant pen also? Indeed, a timeless, 'classy' pen? Is it not finished in a delightful dark blue lacquer? Is its grip-section not black?
As such, is it not the very epitome of a 'classy blue/black pen'?
Doesn't it deserve a chance to tango on your best paper with a similarly-'classy' blue/black ink?
To me, your Carène would seem to be almost made-for Pelikan Edelstein Tanzanite!

You make an excellent argument. I still have 2 more cartridges to go. (Those long cartridges hold a lot of ink!)  My ink-gifter was generous,  so I'll have enough for a converter-full in the Carène as well as a fill in the Visconti.

 

2 hours ago, Mercian said:

Pelikan even makes the ink available in long 'international' cartridges.
Then again, knowing the sneaky shenanigans which Waterman is wont to practice, those might not actually fit into the Carène - so the purchase of a lovely, pretty, delightfully-tactile, curvy bottle of the Edelstein would seem to advisable for you...

Are you by chance a salesman by trade? I would definitely go for the bottle - after my run of reviewing all my cartridge inks, I don't particularly want to ever see a cartridge again.

 

2 hours ago, Mercian said:

[Since you ask, yes; I am posting this comment in the hope of hitting the target that I am required to reach in order to retain my Evil Enabler status ]

Consider your target hit. A bottle of this seems inevitable...

[inkstainedruth]

On 2/6/2025 at 7:15 PM, LizEF said:

  I think the green-leaning formula is long gone.  The current one is a pale blue with a little grey.

Well my original bottle wasn't super old.  And on most paper it really did look like a blue black.  But on some paper someone had with them that night, when people were trying the pen out, it really leaned more green -- to the point that everyone else there was *convinced* that it was a green ink.  And of course I was going, "Nope -- I KNOW what's in this pen!" (It was probably the Red Shadow Wave Vac, because that ink has been its steady diet since I first got the pen and had it checked out...).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[LizEF]

17 minutes ago, inkstainedruth said:

Well my original bottle wasn't super old.  And on most paper it really did look like a blue black.  But on some paper someone had with them that night, when people were trying the pen out, it really leaned more green -- to the point that everyone else there was *convinced* that it was a green ink.  And of course I was going, "Nope -- I KNOW what's in this pen!" (It was probably the Red Shadow Wave Vac, because that ink has been its steady diet since I first got the pen and had it checked out...).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

Well, paper can do that, as evidenced by the newer inks designed to look different depending on the paper.

[inkstainedruth]

Yeah, I thought the name "Mysterious Blue" was pretty apt after that....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Mercian]

On 2/18/2025 at 8:12 PM, LizEF said:

Have you seen the London Fog?  (Here's a link to an Anderson Pens blog about it.)  I'm thinking that blue and grey goes well with a blue-black...

 

Also, I'm looking for an ink to permanently reside in this pen, and that basically means either a blue-black or a murky green, and blue-black would go better, no?

 

I hadn't seen that pen before

It is, indeed, lovely.
And its swirls of blue and 'silver'-coloured 'furniture' definitely make it an excellent pen to pair with Edelstein Tanzanite

 

For some reason (because I have experienced London when it's foggy), I had assumed that the pen would be mostly grey. Which of course just goes to re-demonstrate the validity of the old saw about what one does when one assumes anything.

At least I knew that its appearance would not be an attempt to re-create the infamous 'pea-soupers' of London in the 1950s - the fogs that used to occur during temperature-inversions, in the era when most homes and industry in our capital city still burned coal for heat.
I knew people who lived through them. Visibility would drop to mere feet or even, occasionally, inches. People would walk right past their own front doors, or miss their street, and have to retrace their steps - by feel!
More importantly, these toxic grey-yellow-ochre miasmas of sulphurous coal-smoke mixed with cold water vapour could last for a week or ten days at a time, and they would kill-off thousands of people who had cardio/pulmonary conditions

[LizEF]

1 hour ago, Mercian said:

At least I knew that its appearance would not be an attempt to re-create the infamous 'pea-soupers' of London in the 1950s - the fogs that used to occur during temperature-inversions, in the era when most homes and industry in our capital city still burned coal for heat.
I knew people who lived through them. Visibility would drop to mere feet or even, occasionally, inches. People would walk right past their own front doors, or miss their street, and have to retrace their steps - by feel!
More importantly, these toxic grey-yellow-ochre miasmas of sulphurous coal-smoke mixed with cold water vapour could last for a week or ten days at a time, and they would kill-off thousands of people who had cardio/pulmonary conditions

Yikes!  Yeah, let's not re-create that!  We suffer from inversions here where I live because of the mountains - they sometimes hold in the smog, depending on the strength and direction of the wind, and how long it's been since rainfall.  Doubt it's as bad as you describe, though.

 

Anywho, I think both pens are good candidates for Tanzanite, so I'll try it in both and see which pen likes it best!  Oooo, a different sort of shootout!

[inkstainedruth]

This is making me think of the stories my mom told me from when she graduated from college and moved to the Pittsburgh area from West Virginia.  She said her landlady told her to not leave the windows open at night and my mom said to her, "But I won't be able to breathe!"  And then realized (given how bad the smog was back then, from the smoke from the steel mills and such) that she could learn to sleep with the windows shut at night JUST FINE.... 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[yazeh]

And this was how, every time, @LizEF used London Fog, the smell of sulphur filled her nostrils, and she couldn't see the paper because of the fog. @Mercian the great druid, could Careen the Viscount-E, in the right direct