An ordinary, if rather pretty, Conway Stewart 286, you might think, but not quite. This one’s that rare thing, a Conway Stewart stub.

It’s a beauty, rigid, wide and giving easy line variation while it lays down a lot of ink.

Basing it on what passes over my bench, Conway Stewart made far less obliques, stubs and flexes than, say, Swan, but they could make a good one when they chose. The Conway Stewart approach to the stub is almost as if the tines were chopped off and the tipping material applied. Swan, when making a stub, used a high-shouldered nib with comparatively narrow tines, making a somewhat chisel-like shape at the nib-tip. This means that Swan stubs are often flexible whereas Conway Stewart ones are firm, or at least the ones I’ve handled are.