Swan Snakeskin SM100/85

I wonder if somewhere someone has a full list of Swan colour codes.  Such a thing would be very good indeed!  I work off the the number interpreting list that was developed in FPN some time ago.  It’s very good but it consists essentially of the pens people had at the time, so it’s incomplete.  It’s also my assumption that these colour names are not those that Swan assigned.

This one is a Swan SM100/85.  It’s the “85” part that I don’t have a good explanation for.  The seller of the pen described it as “ruby snakeskin” but that’s far from right.  So far as I’m aware there is no ruby snakeskin.  Garnet is the nearest to that colour and that’s very much brighter than this pen.

These photos were taken in natural light and what I’m seeing on my monitor is close to identical to the colour of the actual pen.  Very close.  In fact, I can see no difference.  Monitors vary, of course, so you may be looking at something slightly different.  The colours I see vary from dark brown to light brown to dusky pink.  So what do you call that?  Brown snakeskin?  85 is “mauve snakeskin” in the list.  Well, maybe, I suppose, in certain lights.  But not really.  For it to be mauve it would need a lot more purple than it has.  There’s no evidence of fading, either.  Faded pens always have the original colour on that part of the barrel shielded by the cap.  There’s no brighter part under the cap here.

These snakeskin and lizardskin pens have a tendency to plastic shrinkage, making them a challenge to disassemble.  Luckily, this one was an exception.  The section popped out with just a little heat.  It was a matter of moments to install a new sac and reset the nib which gone a little awry.  The chrome plating on the clip had seen better days – probably around seventy years ago – and I brightened that up, so far as possible.

The nib, as is so often the way with these pens, is an oblique stub with a little flex.  They don’t come any sweeter.