The Swan Visofil was introduced in a fanfare of publicity in 1937 and it was clearly seen by the company as a major part of their future but it was not to be. Visofil production was a casualty of the Blitz, so far as I can tell, but it is instructive that whereas the company moved heaven and earth to reintroduce the Leverless and Self Fillers, the Visofil never reappeared. That may have been the government’s decision. They took control of wartime production and, across the industry, the emphasis was on fewer and more simple models. It may also be, though, that Mabie Todd were not entirely grief-stricken at the necessity to drop a model that was expensive to produce, fairly fragile, and had not reached sales expectations.

Comparatively uncommon now, the Visofil is eagerly sought after by collectors, and small wonder. When restored, it’s an excellent filling system, the pen comes in some of Mabie Todd’s most beautiful colours and the trim is decorative.

This is the smaller purse or vest pocket version in Italian Marble, a V111/59, I believe. It’s a wonderful colour mixture and unique to Mabie Todd, so far as I know. As well as in their prestige Visofil models, they used this colour, and some of the other Visofil patterns, in their low-cost Jackdaw school pens. The No1 nib is an oblique stub with some flexibility.

My thanks to Eric Wilson for restoring this pen.

Pen companies are happy to announce their new models, but they neglect to tell us when they stopped making a particular model, darn them! So it is with some confidence that I say that Mabie Todd brought in the Swan Safety Cap range in 1911, but it’s a more shaky guess that they ceased production in 1920. That was the year they introduced lever fillers, making the Swan SSC obsolete. However, I expect they remained on sale in shops for a time after that.   When the Safety Screw Cap was launched, Mabie Todd made much of the the screw-on cap which was intended to stop the pen leaking into your pocket. Advertisements also drew attention to the ladder feed, an innovation which the company kept until the end, and to the gold bar over the centre-line of the nib which delayed drying out.    This pen, I believe, is one of the later ones, made after they stopped installing the gold bar over the nib. It’s a No 5, and while it retains all the features of the smaller Safety Screw Caps, it’s an altogether more chunky pen. While still quite long posted, it doesn’t share the long slender proportions of, say, the Safety Screw Cap No 2. Indeed its length both posted and capped is much more like a modern pen. Quite worn by long use, the pen now shows little sign of chasing and the barrel imprint has almost gone. The decorated cap band still looks good despite obvious signs of plating loss. The large nib is a No 4. One might expect a No 5 pen to have a No 5 nib, though I can’t be certain that this was the case. The No 4 nib may well be a replacement, but it’s in proportion with the rest of the pen and it looks good there. It’s a semi-flexible medium. 

The one thing that the UK arm of Mabie Todd shied away from for a very long time was making overlay pens. So far as I’m aware, no overlays were made in Britain before World War II. Overlays were always a small part of pen production and it probably made economic sense to share one facility for their production.

I don’t know whether this was a pen produced in America purely for the British market, or whether it was also on sale in the USA. These pens are not rare, though they’re moderately uncommon, and they turn up not all that infrequently in either clipped or clipless versions. Here’s a similar one with no clip and a different engine-turned pattern: http://wp.me/p17T6K-b5

Without a little more information, dating these pens with any exactitude is impossible. Any time between 1920 and 1930 will do, and even a year or two after 1930 doesn’t seem to me to be impossible.

Is there a pattern-book for engine-turning somewhere? It would be nice to put a name to this pattern but it’s beyond me. The pen’s not quite perfect; there’s slight plating loss at top and bottom and on the ball of the clip. There’s also a tiny area of loss where the exposed edge of the section meets the plating, a common area for attack by the harsher inks of long ago. That said, in its red leather (or probably leatherette) box it’s a real stunner.

My guess would be that under the gold lies a Swan Minor No2, one of the most deservedly popular pens of its day. As always, it writes beautifully.