Technically, I have one long international cartridge of Garnet, and that’s thanks to a nice fountain pen friend. Garnet was the Pelikan Edelstein Ink of the Year for 2014, and it is that rarest of limited edition inks: a limited edition ink that I let pass by without buying a bottle. Trumpets please.
Garnet is a red orange: too orange to be called “tomato” and too red to be called “persimmon.” Admittedly, I didn’t think it should be called Garnet, either. So when it came out, I was a little disappointed with the color. When I think of a garnet, I think of a dark red. I think of something like this ink.
But, as usual, it’s more that I’m sort of an simpleton, than that I’m right. Because when I looked up garnets, I found that they come in a wide variety of colors, including dark red, orange, yellow and even green. Oops.
This turns out to be the opposite of the Eskimos having many words for snow, doesn’t it? There is one word for “garnet,” which has to cover a wide range of colors.
And perhaps because I was puzzled by the ink color being different than I expected, I didn’t initially love Pelikan Edelstein Garnet. But in honor of January, I snapped that cartridge into my borrowed Kaweco Dia2, and I took Garnet for another spin.
And a new year is a good time for a new opinion, I guess, because Pelikan Edelstein Garnet has grown on me. I’m starting to really like it.
Like many Pelikan inks, Garnet is a relatively dry ink, so perhaps the Dia2 was a lucky choice to bring out its best. It might help also that I’m using Garnet in January, because the deep color of Garnet is suited to wintery weather. Garnet is warming. It strikes me as spicy, almost like a chili pepper.
Garnet has some shading, too, although that is more evident in a more dry-writing pen than this Kaweco. Garnet tends to look more orange in a dry pen and more red-orange in a wet pen.
It’s also possible that I like Garnet more this time because of Caran d’Ache Infra Red, which is an orange-leaning red that was one of my favorite inks last year. Infra Red isn’t actually similar to Garnet: Infra Red is lively and bright, whereas Garnet is darker and more serious. But perhaps Infra Red has made me more favorably disposed to red-orange inks.
In any case, my first January ink is quite nice. Happy January!
Fountain Pen Follies 
Garnet stones sometimes do give a deep orange flash when you move them about. The first impression is the deep red you mentioned, definitely, but the orange is there too – more obvious in some lights than others and depending on cut as well.
Either way, this ink looks great! It’s a pretty unusual red; spicy like you said, or rusty. It’s a good accent color for a steampunk palette, or an industrial one (my ink compulsion is having inks that match up into a palette so my page looks harmonious no matter how crappy my handwriting of the day).
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Your pen is beautiful. Thanks for a great review.
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This is an ink I’ve debated, seemingly, endlessly about getting and have yet to pull the trigger. Every time I’m about to I think, “Do I really need another ink?” I know I’ll fill one pen then it’ll sit unused for months.
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Fingers crossed for the flight. Our only consolation is that the weather forecasters are usually wrong when they predict bad storms — aren’t they?
Still, I should go to the grocery store to stock up. 🙂
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Hubby’s birthday is this month, wish the garner was my birthstone. Can you believe the cold and snow were expecting? Oldest is supposed to fly out tomorrow on business. Guess we will see!
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