This ink used to belong to my mother; it was given to her by my dad along with a Waterman pen in the early to mid 1990s, I believe. I remember using it when I was in high school, and I inherited them both along with a bottle of Levenger Amethyst several years ago.
I don’t know whether this is the same ink as Waterman’s current Mysterious Blue, since I haven’t used it yet, but from the samples that I’ve seen, the colors don’t look similar.
My Waterman Blue-Black is a dark, saturated purple-leaning blue, but it’s always possible that some of this is the result of color-shift and evaporation over time. I’m not bothering with any sort of dry-time testing because the ink is so old, but it’s not a quick-dry… it seems to be right around 1 minute on Tomoe River paper, and there’s no water resistance.
I was a little surprised to discover that the ink was giving me a slight purple-black sheen, though not enough to be visible during normal writing.
Otherwise, the most distinctive feature of this ink is its smell, which is camp-fire smokey. Odd.
Ultimately, this “review” won’t really be valuable to anyone but me, since the ink is so old and not produced anymore, and may not be typical of what else is out there. Still, it’s a nice ink; it still writes well (medium flow) and the color is beautiful, and it’s an important ink bottle to me.
Anyone else have an ink bottle that is particularly meaningful to them, for reasons beyond the contents of the bottle? I’d love to hear about it.