Pelikan Edelstein Mandarin Ink is a unique ink color produced by the renowned Pelikan Edelstein line of inks. Pelikan Edelstein inks come from the German word for stone, Edelstein, and reflects the color of the Mandarin Garnet stone, a beautiful orange color. This mandarin or orange color ink is a bright true orange, when using a large nib or cotton swab, but seems to be more of a muted pale orange with a finer nib when writing. This is a fun color to use with a journal or letter writing, but will probably not be used as an every day ink.

Pelikan Edelstein Mandarin Ink

We found the following characteristics when using this German ink, which we hope you find helpful:

Testing Factors

We used a J. Herbin Glass “dip” pen on Rhodia Bloc Paper for this review. The dip pen is equivalent to an extra fine nib.

Bottle Sizes

One of the best characteristics of the Pelikan Edelstein inks is the unique, beautiful 50 ml. glass bottle. The bottle is a weighted heavy inkwell type bottle, beautiful and classy enough to display on any desk or credenza. The bottle can lay on its side when the ink is running low, in order to obtain every last drop.

Cost

Pelikan Edelstein inks are on the high end side, retailing for $28.00. The uniqueness and desirability of the bottle as well as the ink makes Edelstein a top seller regardless of the high price.

Dry Time

The dry time using Pelikan Edelstein Mandarin ink was an outstanding 4-5 seconds, which makes using Edelstein ink an everyday ink possibility and popular with left handed users.

Bleed Through

Using Rhodia Bloc paper with Pelikan Edelstein Mandarin ink produced no bleeding. However, using cheap copy paper may produce some bleeding, as it will with most fountain pen inks.

Feathering

Using the glass dip pen produced clean distinct lines without any feathering detected.

Water Test

After a 3 minute dry time, we rubbed a wet cotton swab over sample ink marks, which produced slight color distortion, smearing and feathering, but compared to many other non-waterproof inks, fared quite well. Therefore, although this ink is not waterproof, water didn’t completely ruin the ink marks.

Shading

One of the best characteristics of this Pelikan Edelstein ink is that it produces some wonderful shading. The larger the nib size the more shading you will experience.

Conclusion about the Pelikan Edelstein Mandarin Ink

There are many orange inks available, such as Noodler’s Habanero, Noodler’s Apache Sunset, which are loved by many. Pelikan Edelstein Mandarin ink should be among the top of such orange ink favorites due to the superb bottle Pelikan provides, quick dry time and wonderful shading. The main downside is the high cost for this and all Edelstein inks, which most are willing to pay, due to these great characteristic.