Month: November 2011

The Conway Stewart No 45

It seems only fair and right that Conway Stewart’s prestige range – the Duro – should be as confusing as the less expensive pens. There are pens with Duro nibs that aren’t imprinted as Duros, and there are Duro pens that don’t have Duro nibs. To be fair, these latter are among the earliest Duros, and they have CS6 nibs which are pretty much indistinguishable from Duro nibs.

Not all Duro nibs are made equal, either. Most commonly seen is the Duro 40, but I’ve also seen Duro 20s and Duro 26s, and yet others that are Duros without any number. Most are long-tined, but high-shouldered and even oblique Duros exist.

What seems to have happened is that Conway Stewart dropped the name “Duro” for their most prestigious pens sometime in the early forties, and thereafter those pens, including the 55, 45 and 47 – all bearing Duro nibs – became “The Conway Stewart”. The 55 is by far the most common of these and I’ve written about it before.

Today I have a much less common 45. It has a single cap ring instead of the the 55’s three, but it is still a large imposing pen, designed to impress. It had a comparatively short run, from 1943 to 1946, and it was then superseded by the more opulent 55.

The Duro 40 is a large and impressive nib. Like most Duros, it’s rigid. Sometimes you’ll hear that the hard-as-a-nail Duros were produced to satisfy a need for a nib that would make an impression through several carbons, but that seems an unlikely explanation. The Duro is rigid because it was made from a thicker blank. There are other, less expensive ways to make stiff nibs, and the ones that would have been used to penetrate carbons were among the cheapest, like the Scribe range. No, the Duro, like Swan’s Eternal, is about status and conspicuous consumption. It was made to be noticed, and perhaps envied.

Funny how bling brings out the worst in us!

Mabie Todd Swan 200

Yesterday was a Good Pen Day. Many fountain pens were restored and the postman brought this little gem:

It’s a Swan 200, perhaps the least common of the family of Swan eyedroppers. It resembles the 1500 quite closely. It has a Mabie Todd and Co Ltd. imprint on the barrel, which dates it to 1915 or later, but as it has a New York nib which appears original, it’s probably before 1920. Be that as it may, the pen’s not far off a century old, but it doesn’t look it. It’s completely unfaded, the black as dark and shining as the day it was made, and the machine patterning and imprints are pristine.

The high-shouldered nib is a No2, and it’s both oblique and flexible. The pen is a real delight to write with.

Over the years I’ve bought and repaired a lot of Mabie Todd pens. Sometimes I feel that there’s nothing new for me to see – but there is! I’ve seen pictures of the 200 before but I’ve never owned one, and that this one should be in such splendid condition really is the icing on the cake.

Today is write-testing day, along with aligning tines and nib-smoothing. I’m working my way through twenty restored pens, which will take all day.