Swans with overlay don’t appear very often, and those that do occasionally turn up are, in my experience, usually US-made, as is this one. Overlay tends to cover the detail that identifies a model, but this one has SF2 stamped on the feed, so an SF2 it is, I assume.

After hunting around on the web for comparable examples, I came to the conclusion that this pen was made in the early nineteen-thirties. In style, it’s conservative and even retro, for its time, being clipless and built on an ageing pen model. It shows slight signs of wear here and there – where the cap screws onto the barrel and on the lever, but it’s generally in excellent condition. The nib is quite flexible and the pen writes beautifully.

By the time that this pen was made, the British and American branches of Mabie Todd had been separate entities for many years, but their output remains remarkably similar, in some models at least.