TWSBI’s latest release is its Cerulean Blue Eco; now there’s nothing new about this Eco that you haven’t already seen on earlier models except the cap and the piston knob are a really nice sky-blue aka cerulean blue.
Now I own a lot of Eco’s (at last count I ran out of fingers before I ran out of Eco’s) but I don’t buy every one TWSBI releases, but, having said that, this one appealed to me; there is just something about the blue that I liked so I ordered one and after a brief holiday with the Post Office it arrived.
While it was on holiday I pondered the tricky subject of which ink to load it with and naturally this led me reach the conclusion that I would need to go ink shopping and rather conveniently Cult Pens had an offer on and after some careful shopping I had ordered five bottles of Private Reserve (one of these was free) and one bottle of Dominant Industry; all of which will appear in future posts.
Of the six new inks I had ordered Private Reserve’s ‘American Blue’ was the winner; so, I duly loaded the Eco with it and started testing it.
Now it’s at this point in my story that the Eco takes a back seat and I move on to talk about the ink.
American Blue is a bright sapphire (medium) blue ink. As a colour it is really well saturated and despite this, I found very little difference in the final colour when I did the stripe test with three layers of ink; the swatch test showed the colour deepening a little but you have to allow for the fact that a swatch test uses more ink over a greater area, so it’s only indicative.
The blue, generally, remained consistent whether I was testing the colour or writing with it.
The writing test was done with the brand new TWSBI Eco with a Broad nib and I got no shading or sheen from this ink, but it did feather on the paper I used (Muji Planting trees paper); as this normally doesn’t happen with this paper I can only conclude that this is a very wet ink, however, it dried, at room temperature, in twenty seconds which was much faster than I expected. There was a little bit of show through but nothing that would make the reverse side of the page unusable.
Based on the results I got I would recommend using a Medium or possibly a Fine nib to get the best results from this ink.
Now a quick FYI; the bottle is approximately 60mm wide and the top is roughly the same. Which is great for filling a pen but also makes ink accidents real easy so all I’m saying is go carefully when filling a pen.
Finally, are the pen and ink worth your pennies?
I think they are, the Eco is a good reliable pen that holds plenty of ink and American Blue is a nice blue to add to a collection and with Christmas around the corner either or both make great gifts.
Disclaimer: The pen and ink were purchased at retail price at my own expense. The opinions expressed in this review are my own; and I am not connected with either the retailers or manufacturers in any way.
The Indian Marmalade Company 