Month: November 2013

A Match-Box Cover with Swan Advertising

I write-tested and tweaked 25 pens this morning and that’s enough for today.  They have still to be photographed and described, but that’s for another day.
Matchbox cover
Here’s an unusual bit of Swaniana – a match-box cover.  I don’t know why you’d need a cover for your match-box but it leaves us an interesting bit of ephemera.  Looking at the pen and box illustrated I’d guess at the nineteen-twenties or earlier.  As ever, Mabie Todd graphics are striking. The Swan reaches out of a circle which breaks the surface of the match-box cover to seize the pen.  One wing is partly concealed by the surface of the cover, the other lies over it – an impossibility that is made to appear quite believable.  The cover advertises Swan Fountpens.  So far as I can remember I’ve only seen the term “Fountpen” used to refer to Blackbirds, so that’s something new for me.

I can find no business information for R Johnston and Son, but they made (or had made) and sold picture postcards of the north-east of England, many of which survive and are collector’s items in their own right.

Turning The Corner

At long last we have the all clear – of sorts, in that neither of us is in hospital nor making regular visits to hospital any more. It has been an exceptionally tough time and it’s not quite over, in that we’re both still recuperating but becoming better and more able by the day.
I’ve been buying, so there will be some odds and ends to write about. Next task is to write-test some pens that have been sitting repaired on the shelf for weeks. Then photography, editing, descriptions and new uploads!

Thank you all for your prayers, good wishes, kind words and support.

Bringing this up to date.

As some of you will already know, it wasn’t enough that I should be ill; it was necessary, it seems, that my husband be hospitalized as well.

It has been a thoroughly miserable few weeks and it isn’t over yet, though I think the prognosis is good for both of us in the longer term.  For the moment, we’re limping along.  We can handle sales OK – a little behind in shipments but I’ll rectify that this coming week – but new uploads to the sales site will have to wait a while.  It’s annoying.  I have around twenty restored pens ready to go but I don’t have the strength to get the testing, photography and so on done.  It will come in time.

Many thanks for all your kind messages.  I hope to get back to blogging before too long.