The one color among the much-anticipated Pelikan Edelstein inks that I very much wanted was Jade, which looked to me from the various pictures to be a soft yellow-tinged green that was different yet acceptable in polite company. I was thrilled to find that the color lived up to my expectations, it's a beautitful soft green with distinctly yellow overtones.
Jade is a very well-behaved ink, so polite and gentle you almost forget it's there. No ink creep on the nib, no skipping, flows very well, and while it almost made my Lamy Al-Star EF into a very wet writer the ink flow never quite reached that point. Just a bit wet, but not too much that it became annoying and messy. Drying time was average, neither incredibly short or long.
But the color is the main attraction for me. Jade is as close to a darker, more visible version of J. Herbin's Diabolo Menthe as I've seen; the latter is a touch more blue, but for me it's way too pale to use as an everyday writing ink. The above picture shows the two colors side by side, as well as the bottles. Jade is quite to my liking, and will definitely get a lot of play in my fountain pen rotation.
Finally, the bottle is a tie with Pilot Namiki's Iroshizuku as being one of the most elegant designs in glass. The picture above compares Edelstein's Jade on the right with J. Herbin's Diabolo Menthe on the left, showing off the Edelstein bottle's rectangular shape and larger bottle mouth. All four sides of the rectangle are slightly concave and give a nice, tapering look and feel to the thick glass, while the printing raised--also giving the bottle a distinctive feel and look.
The Edelstein Jade ink is a very pleasant surprise, with nothing usual or boring about either the color or the marketing design. I'm looking forward to trying the other colors I purchased, Topaz (a deep blue) and Mandarin (clear orange).
