The Edison Premiere Nouveau Water Lily is the Spring 2016 Limited Edition($149) for Goulet Pens and my first Edison fountain pen. Its one of the shapes in the Edison line-up that has always appealed to me so I was excited to have the opportunity to get this particular model. The long slender shape with bullet ends seemed like a very vintage shape but the colors of the acrylic resin material are pretty modern. The vivid pearlescent cerulean blue and pink swirls (AKA “clown vomit”) were an added bonus. I couldn’t resist filling the pen with an equally eye-popping Pilot Iroshizuku Kosumosu pink ink either. In for a penny…
The body has a lightly etched branding and the name of the pen and the limited edition information but is otherwise unbranded on the outside. The nib has the Edison light bulb logo etched on it as well as the stock swirls and the nib size.
The pen features all silver hardware and nib and I got an EF nib which ended up working really well with my miniature handwriting. In general, the overall look of the pen is clean and simple letting the colors of the acrylic resin steal the show. My only complaint about the pen is that the nib seems a little large for the slenderness of the the pen body. It seems a little disproportionate but that might just me. I’m used to vintage pens with smaller nibs overall.
Writing with the pen is quite comfortable and the pen shipped with a cartridge converter that had a generous capacity. The overall length of the pen did not require posting the cap and the pen was nicely balanced without the cap being posted. The cap can be posted if you choose to and its light enough not to throw off the balance.
The pen weighs 18gms capped and filled and is 6 inches long. Uncapped, it’s 5 inches and posted, its 6.75″.It weighs 11gms uncapped and filled.
I’m sad to say that the Water Lily edition is sold out already but Goulet Pens does a special edition Edison every quarter so a summer edition should be released soon. I kick myself for missing some of the previous editions now so I won’t make that mistake again.
DISCLAIMER: This item was sent to me free of charge by Goulet Pens for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.
love these pens and thanks for the review. you did write eye pooping at one point though so I wanted to let you know!
ROFL! Thanks for catching that, I fixed it.
I saw that one too. Literally LOL, and I’m going to smile every time I remember it today.
Describing something as ‘eye-pooping’ implies it’s so outrageous it induces an unpleasant physical reaction. That would apply to some things, but not this Edison pen.
It’s beautiful.
Nice review, thanks! I wondered about this pen design when it was announced.
A few of questions…
1. I write posted. I’m concerned that a pen like this with a tapered barrel will not post squarely. With other words; when you post the cap does it always post straight, or does it often post crooked so you have to fiddle with it to get it to post properly?
This problem usually occurs with tapered pens because the cap liner (if one exists), does not match the taper of the barrel. A cap that doesn’t post squarely every time amounts to a design flaw in my opinion.
2. This raises another question, does this pen even have a cap liner? Look inside the cap for a plastic insert.
If there is a cap liner, can you remove it?
With light colored translucent pens, you want to be able to remove the cap liner for a thorough cleaning. Otherwise, ink leaking into the cap will get trapped between the liner and the cap, ruining the appearance of the pen because the cap is translucent, and possibly permanently staining the cap as well.
3. My experience with pens made of light-colored translucent acrylic is that when you fill them with dark saturated inks or inks that don’t match the color of the pen, the ink shows through the section throwing off the appearance of the rest of the pen. In your review you used a very light unsaturated ink color, yet I can still see the ink starting to darken the section.
Have you tried a dark ink in this pen? If yes, did the section darken a lot?
Not questions, but a couple of comments…
Be careful what inks you use with this pen! Use only inks that are very easy to clean, are not water resistant, and known not to stain. Otherwise, the section may permanently stain, and the stain will show-through.
I find it disappointing that Edison Pens made no attempt to match the acrylic pattern between the cap and finial. That’s (somewhat) excusable with the barrel and section because the section screws in. But it’s not excusable in the cap, especially on a pen at this price point. These pens should be turned from a single piece of acrylic stock, so matching the pattern when the finial is affixed should be easy. I may be wrong and there is a good explanation for this, but I doubt it. It looks like they just didn’t make the effort.
Best Regards, David
I have a previous version of this pen (the red one), and while I love the way it writes the pen as a whole is really frustrating. It leaks something crazy into the cap and consequently I can’t ever really get it clean.