In the hierarchy of Mabie Todd pens the Jackdaw was the lowest in Britain, occupying the same place as the Swallow in America.  These were school pens and were made to a lower level of quality than the Blackbirds and Swans.  It’s rare, for instance, to find a Jackdaw that doesn’t have noticeably worn plating.  The nibs, though equally as good to write with as those fitted to the more expensive pens, were shorter in the tail and a little thinner.

For some Jackdaws that position is now reversed.  Collectors vie for ownership of the colourful Jackdaws made in the mid to late thirties which shared the bright patterns of the Visofils.  This glorious red and black Jackdaw is an example of these especially beautiful pens.  In shape it closely resembles the brightly self-coloured Blackbirds of the same period.

A collector of “bird” pens – Swans, Blackbirds, Pelikans, Eagle pens and the like – asked me once if the Jackdaw and Swallow had bird barrel imprints like the Swan and the Blackbird.  I had neither to hand at the time and couldn’t answer with any degree of certainty but here it is:

No bird imprint on the barrel but a splendid Jackdaw Trade Mark on the box and the paperwork.  I still can’t say about the Swallow, having only handled a couple and that a long time ago.

School pens get a harder time than any other.  The result is that these colourful Jackdaws are not at all common, more’s the pity.  Like the Visofils, they’re not often seen now.  That makes such a fine example as this all the more to be valued.

Here’s the pen I was waiting for, a Swan Leverless with an Eternal No 2 nib. I have a list of Swan patterns but there are gaps in it and this one’s not there. I would call it brown and gold with cream veins. Anyway, it’s a stunner and I’ve never seen this pattern before. The only detraction, and it’s slight, is a professionally engraved name on the barrel.

I almost didn’t get it. In fact I got it for what I had bid, less about a couple of quid. It isn’t so very long ago that when a pen of this quality came along it was going to reach somewhere in the £70 to £80 mark. Now, not only have prices gone up, there’s no kind of pattern to them. What sells for £90 one day sells for £160 the next. That makes it hard to know where to place your bid. You can’t arrive at a ball park figure. Ebay pen sales isn’t a ball-park any more; it’s a space without limits, populated by slightly crazy buyers. I’m not saying that this pen was overpriced – I don’t think it was – but, for instance, there was a red marbled Conway Stewart 15 in unrestored condition that went for more than seventy quid last week. That’s bordering on the lunatic. 15s usually go for around £30, and this one was just a run-of-the-mill example.

Be that as it may, I spent quite a while this morning studying that pattern.. You could lose yourself in it. Mabie Todd’s patterns outshone all the rest.

This is one of the earliest Leverlesses, from 1933 or 1934, I believe. The name that’s on the barrel is “Chas Gyford” – not a name that’s commonly seen. I did a search and came upon a likely-looking Charles Gyford. If that was the first owner he didn’t get to enjoy his pen for long because he popped his clogs in 1938.

There was a time, well nigh a hundred years ago, when this pen was the latest, bleeding edge technology with some of the cachet for the proud owner that today’s smartest new smart-phone might have. It’s hard for us to imagine that now. Even the very latest Pelikan or Lamy doesn’t share that brief glory because pens are no longer the most desired means of communication.

This is the Swan SF1, and the SF stands for self-filling, a revolutionary improvement in the convenience of the fountain pen. Now, not only would your fountain pen write page after page without dipping, when it came time to fill it the apparatus for so doing was an integral part of the pen. With a little assistance from you it filled itself! No more dripping ink into the barrel with an eye-dropper – if you could find one – and risking shirt and paperwork if you accidentally overfilled it and it spilled. Just immerse the nib, operate the lever and it fills itself.

The actual change in technology was such a leap forward that the company balanced it with conservative styling, retaining a strong resemblance to the eyedropper fillers that had gone before and were familiar to their customers. Sales were strong across the SF range and there are many hundreds of these pens still around today, many being used once again. That’s hardly surprising. This little SF1 will give you everything that a modern pen can and quite a bit more.

The quality of Swan nibs of any period has yet to be matched in a modern pen. These old black hard rubber pens give a pleasure in writing that is uniquely of its time: we don’t make nibs like that any more.

In the early days of Mabie Todd production in Britain, gold nibs and overlay pens whether plated or solid gold were still made in America.  British and American models were the same at that period, and this pen appears to have been overlaid on a Safety Screw Cap base.  They’re not particularly common in overlay form.

Though it fits and writes well, the No 3 New York nib looks disproportionately big and I suspect this is really a No 2 or even a No 1.  Posted, it makes a very long, slender and elegant pen, its lines unbroken by either lever or clip.  All that interrupts the pattern is a discreet empty cartouche.  This is the last of the Swan eyedroppers; such clean lines will never be possible again, either with lever fillers or leverless pens.

Despite being metal-covered, the pen is very light.  It’s a pleasure to write with.  By this time Swan had adopted the ladder feed, so ink flow is well controlled.  The plating is worn at each end and there are a couple of tiny dings on the end of the barrel that must be tooth-marks, so it wasn’t always treated with the respect it deserved.  The Safety Screw Cap range was in production from around 1911 to at least 1925.  Its continuing popularity ensured that it overlapped with first of the lever fillers.   This pen might be a hundred years old but is probably a few years less.

A little bird told me that there was an exceptional sale at an auction the other day.  Here’s the story:

I was watching an auction on the-saleroom.com for a lot with a Ford Patent pen
and a Montblanc Safety, hoping other people wouldn’t notice (they did
unfortunately), but a different lot with two Swan pens sold for more than
£3500. The auctioneer was a bit shocked given their estimate. Here is the
lot:

http://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/keys–aylsham-salerooms/catalogue-id-2898070/lot-20567821

When you add in buyer’s premium and VAT, the cost must add up to about
£4500. I wondered if I am missing something – I have seen sterling silver
Swans sell for £600, but this auction price seems unusual. I had no idea
Swan collectors are so keen.

I confess that pens of this quality are mostly out of my league, though I have dabbled a bit on behalf of a customer some time ago.  A good condition hundred-year-old sterling pen was around £400.00 then.  Admittedly, these examples are reputedly pristine, but even so…

It’s unusual for the habitues of auctions to get into the sort of bidding war that we see on eBay, so I think that’s one of the less likely explanations, though it isn’t impossible.  I’m completely flummoxed – I can think of no explanation for the price these pens have reached.  On a minor note, the estimate that the auctioneers arrived at suggests they wouldn’t be the best people to be selling your precious pens.

So that’s the story.  Any thoughts?

It’s not uncommon to see in the pen discussion groups the opinion that the smaller Swan nibs aren’t worth bothering with and it’s only No 3 and upwards that are worthy of collection.  I don’t know what the thinking behind that is (prejudice? ignorance?)  but I’m quite happy that it should be repeated loudly and often, thereby leaving the No 1s and No 2s to me.  It’s among those sizes more than any other that I find the delicious stubs and impressive flexibility.

Take this unassuming SM100/60, a pen that will hardly fetch a second glance, and if it does so it’s usually to comment on its unusual black hard rubber lever.  However, have a look at the writing sample.

I can’t make the most of these flex nibs but there’s enough there to give an indication of its capabilities.  In the hands of a master I’m sure it will impress a great deal more.

These were not expensive pens, in fact they were about the bottom of the Swan range, and they are very often supplied with exceptional nibs – flex, stub or oblique.  In other words, Swan’s concern that the customer should be provided with exactly what suited him or her didn’t stop at the prestige models but extended to those on a limited budget – who, if they worked in a clerical capacity or were students, were often the people who used their pens the most.

So far as I can tell from the company’s adverts over the years, there was never an extra charge for supplying a nib to to the customer’s taste.  There’s something there that many modern pen companies can learn from.  Naming no names, there are several manufacturers of very expensive pens who offer no more than fine, medium and broad.  Others add extra fine.  One or two will “custom grind” a nib to oblique, stub or italic but that costs extra.  Seems to me they might be a little more obliging.  Perhaps they feel duty bound to provide the “nibmeisters” with a living.  No such critter existed when pens were just what you wrote with.

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.

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.

Once again I find myself writing in praise of the SM100/60, the 1930s/40s no-frills workhorse of the Swan range.  If durability is one of the ways by which we judge old pens, then this one leaps to the fore.  If simple usability should be another, then this pen shines forth even more, because I know of no pen of any date, old or modern, that makes a more reliable and pleasurable writer.

It seems a small pen at first glance, but at 12.7cm capped it’s about the same size as the Conway Stewart 388, and seems to fill the hand better.  The shape of the section gives a positive grip to the fingers and the pen weighs very little – almost nothing to a hand used to later pens. I could write all day with a pen like this.

The shape is timeless, moderately streamlined and functional.  Cap rings have been sacrificed to keep the price of this workaday model down, but it’s not without decoration.  The engine-turned wave pattern is attractive and stands out.  The black hard rubber lever gives the celluloid barrel an unbroken line.

More than most pens, even among Swans, the SM100/60 provides many exciting nibs.  This little beauty is a stub with a very gentle oblique profile.  It’s semi-flexible and a delight to write with.  I think I may make this my daily user for a while.  That’s one of the many joys of what I do – I get to use ’em all!

What have we here?  It’s a small box, like a reduced version of the traditional wooden pencil-case.  Though the lid slides into its runner perfectly there’s no end-stop to prevent the it sliding out the other side, hence the elastic band.

Inside lurks a pen.  Even at a glance it’s clearly quite a beautiful one.

Here it is in all its glory, a Swan SM1/57.  The nib has been replaced or perhaps an unusual choice was made at the time of purchase.  The nib it has now (and it fits snugly) is a No 2 stub, gently oblique.

On the underside of the box lid is inscribed “RAF Cottesmore 1948.”  Cottesmore in what used to be the county of Rutland opened in 1938 as a training airfield.  During World War II it was employed as a US Airbase.  It returned to RAF use as a training aerodrome in 1945.  It had an illustrious career thereafter and is now in the hands of the army.  I can’t say what planes were being trained on there in 1948 but this pen clearly belonged to a trainee or a trainer of that period.  More probably a trainer, as these colourful pens appear to have gone out of production during WWII, when the company had to concentrate on making a limited range of pens.  This pen, while in excellent condition, is not pristine.  It has been used a lot and may well have accompanied its owner long after he left Cottesmore.  We can pinpoint it there in 1948, though, and we may be entitled to imagine that it was the possession of a World War II fighter or bomber pilot, now passing his skills on to the Cold War generation.  Of course I may be entirely wrong and it belonged to the orderly who cleaned the latrines.

He had good taste in pens, anyway.

Edited to add: John Brindle kindly emailed me to add the following information:  R.A.F. Cottesmore :  From 1948 to 1954 it became No. 16 Operational Training Unit, later renamed 204 Advanced Flying School, operating Mosquitoes and Oxfords.

 

And another edit.  This one from Paul Martin:

Hi Deb. RAF Cottesmore closed in the early 1970’s, being then manned only by a skelaton staff. I joined that small band of airman as  a young LAC in 1977, and was still stationed there when it reopened in 1979 as the Tri-National Training Establishment for the Tornado aircraft. Although those who know me  know I now live in Surrey, I still retain a home in Rutland (hence my ebay handle RutlandPenPeople)…. and can assure everyone that Rutland is very much still in existence, even if the RAF camp has now been over-run with pongo’s (thats RAF slang for the Army)

What, you may ask, is that poor thing?  It is, or once was, a Mabie Todd Swan 3161, smallest of the post-war streamlined Swans in black hard rubber.  It has no identification on the barrel and the surface of the barrel and cap is scored with longitudinal scratches.  What happened to this remnant of a pen?  Did someone hurl it into the wood-chipper?

What we have here is what a section of repairers regards as a justified response to the surface oxidisation of black hard rubber; abrade it until you reach a level that is still black.  In the process you remove the barrel imprints and, of course, you do not succeed in eradicating the oxidisation – it’s still there under the clip and around the brass barrel threads where it’s difficult to get at..  You’ve also left a ploughed-field surface.

But hold on, Deb, I hear you say (if you are an abrader of pens) this is an especially bad example, carried out by a mutt who didn’t know what he was doing.  If I (a much more skilled and sensitive pen-ruiner) were to do the job I wouldn’t continue rubbing away with the roughest grade of micromesh until the oxidised surface was gone.  I would judge it so that I would work from roughest to smoothest in many stages, removing the very last atoms of oxidisation with the finest sheet of micromesh, leaving a surface as smooth and black as the day the pen was made.  Of course the imprints would still be gone, and a new surface would be exposed to begin the process of oxidisation all over again.  How many times can you abrade a pen before you rub a hole in the barrel?

This vandalism needs to stop.  Most oxidisation is not unsightly and it can be improved by gentle polishing.  Even handling the pen improves it appearance over time.  The pen is much better in its original condition than peeled like this.  The supply of good quality old pens like this is nowhere near as strong as it was even a very few years ago.  What gives anyone the right to spoil one of the remaining pens in this way, to make it “look better” or, more likely, in the hope of making a few more bucks?  The retort that I regularly see is that the pen is mine and I can do with it as I please.  Legally true but morally malignant.  Anyone who believes that this sort of behaviour is defensible is no pen repairer and no friend of pens or the people who genuinely appreciate them.