Edson in my Hands

This past week­end at Flax’s pen fair I was able to put my hands on the Water­man Edson Dia­mond Black. There is in fact some­thing real­ly amaz­ing abut the pen. I can’t put my fin­ger on it and it may just be the rush of antic­i­pa­tion, but writ­ing with the Edson was elec­tric. At first I could­n’t stop my hands from shaking!

I was in a big hur­ry to get back to Open Stu­dios, and only there at Flax to ask ques­tions of the Parker/Waterman rep, but see­ing as the Edson was right in front of me, I had to see how it com­pared to the hype — most­ly the hype in my own mind!

I was a bit sur­prised to see a sub­tle bluish tint to the pen. By sub­tle, I mean I was­n’t sure whether I was imag­in­ing it. It’s fun­ny what adds intrigue to an object. If the hint of blue was any more vis­i­ble, I think it would have turned me off to it. I don’t gen­er­al­ly like blue-blacks, in my ink or any­thing else. The blue seems to come up from beneath lay­ers, as though the col­or is strug­gling to see the light. The bar­rel does not look par­tic­u­lar­ly mys­te­ri­ous at a glance, or even at close inves­ti­ga­tion. It’s more the sort of thing that one catch­es from time to time. The pen’s design is both ele­gant and nuanced, aspects that often work against one another.

The feel of the Edson is again, nuanced. It’s a ter­ri­bly smooth writer, but it also has a bit of a bite to it. While smooth, it does­n’t have the almost lubri­cat­ed feel that some ultra-smooth pens do. It grips the paper and does not pre­tend not to notice the world around it. The nib is pret­ty stiff, as expect­ed. Mod­ern Water­man pens have very lit­tle flex to them. I gen­er­al­ly pre­fer a stiffer nib, but am begin­ning to be intrigued by the more flex­i­ble mod­els, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Nami­ki Bam­boo or the super-flex­i­ble Fal­con. As much as I appre­ci­ate the Edson, it may not be my next pen. Yet, if I’m going to buy one, the soon­er I do so the low­er the num­ber will be.

The Edson is a good-sized pen. It’s fair­ly large, although those that real­ly love large pens won’t find this to fit. I was sur­prised by the light­ness of the Edson con­sid­er­ing its size, but there was nev­er­the­less enough heft to sat­is­fy me, so most folks would prob­a­bly call it a brick.

OK, I just looked up the weight. It comes in at a claimed 46 grams. That’s got some real sub­stance to it, so it must have been a com­bi­na­tion of the bal­ance and my expec­ta­tion based on its size that gave me the impres­sion of light­ness. That’s got to be some nice bal­ance, but it also illus­trat­ed how mis­lead­ing raw num­bers can be.

This is a pre­mi­um pen, no doubt. Hav­ing writ­ten with it and seen it first­hand, it’s still on my list despite the pre­mi­um price tag. It will take some jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and I have not decid­ed to buy it, but hav­ing expe­ri­enced the pen I also haven’t ruled it out.