I have made some effort to ensure that this doesn’t become a purely Mabie Todd blog. Obviously, my own preferences show. Having looked at the statistics today, there are twice as many Mabie Todd posts as there are for Conway Stewart, the next largest, with Parker trailing sadly behind.

I enjoy all pens (except possibly Queensway, Scripto and the worst of the Platignums) but Mabie Todd pens, and Swans especially, stand out above everything else for me. There are no unpleasant surprises to sneak up on you when you work on a Swan – no glued sections or left-hand threads, no brittle barrels awaiting their chance to break. Everything comes apart as it should and reassembles without difficulty. Swan’s only peer in this regard is the pre-1950 Parker. Then there are the nibs: such is their elegance and grace of line that you can spot a Swan nib across the room. And they write so well whether they be the rigid Eternal, flexible, stub or oblique. I could continue this encomium of Swan (and those lesser fowls the Blackbird and the Jackdaw) indefinitely but I suspect you’ve had enough of the purple prose by now and you get the message anyway: I’m passing fond of Mabie Todd pens.

So I will continue to try to show some balance by the inclusion of the other estimable brands (of which there are many) but in the meantime here’s another Swan.

This is a Swan 3250 and the brass barrel threads indicate that it was an early example of the Swan post-war range. It’s not an outstanding pen except possibly in its condition, which is very good. A very deep red, it comes across as black in the photos. Not especially long at 13cm capped, it’s nonetheless a substantial pen.

This one’s good enough to be collectible and it’s an enjoyable writer too, a very precise medium with some flexibility and a snappy return. In its quiet way, it’s the perfect pen.

Oh, and a quick P.S. to whoever was searching for the info:  The Conway Stewart 12 is 13 cm which is quite a standard length for a fountain pen.  It’s somewhat slender.  The 12 has a stunning range of colours.  If you’re buying, check for cracks around the lever opening, which can be a failing in this pen.

It would be nice if Mabie Todd had used a little more consistency in assigning numbers to their different designs of pen. That said, they were less of a riddle than Conway Stewart or Burnham, but still a little confusing. The second design of Leverless Swans, which was issued in 1938 and remained in production until 1942, were mostly designated in the form L—/–, the rare L645/88 in green lizard skin celluloid being an example. Some broke the rules by having no number, of course, like the even rarer garnet lizard. And just to confound us completely, a few of the earlier, 1933 to 1938 design also bear the L—/– range of numbers!

 

There’s no L-range of Swans, then, just some Swans that bear the L-designation. That said, the later L-designated Leverless pens are some of the most beautiful that Mabie Todd ever produced. The lizard skin pens are well known, but there are also pens in subtle and lovely mixed celluloid colours like this L212-66. It is a sad fact that the most common colour for Leverlesses is black, and the comparatively few patterned ones that appear tend to sell quite high.

 

This pen, I suppose, must go under the general description “green marbled”, but if you think of what a Conway Stewart, Waterman or Burnham green marbled pen looks like, you appreciate how subtle and understated this pattern is.

That’s class.

There are some things I just can’t resist…

My guess, looking at the style of the case and the label on the bottle, would be that this dates to some time in the 1930s, but I’m no expert on these things. If anyone knows more, I’d be delighted to hear it.

This no-number Leverless looks to me to be one of the earliest, so it probably dates to about 1933. It’s a big pen: 13.5cm capped and a very long 17cm posted. These pens had quite a few price gradations and this one isn’t at the top of the scale, having only one narrow cap ring and a medium-sized No3 nib. It’s a serious and imposing pen, all the same. It has survived the passage of time well. There’s some fading of the black hard rubber cap top and turn-button.

The ridges that were once on the turn-button to make rotating it easier have worn down, and there’s quite a bit of plating loss and even pitting on the clip. The pattern on the cap and barrel is still there, though, and the barrel imprint is nice and clear.

It’s a superb writer, smooth and semi-flexible. It’s solid but not heavy, and even with that large cap, the balance in the hand is good. Though it perhaps holds a little less ink than a button-filler of the same size, you’ll still get several pages out of a fill with this pen, and when you do have to fill it, it’s easier than either a button-filler or a lever-filler. All your activity takes place at the end of the barrel, far away from that messy ink bottle.

These 1930s Leverless Swans, like Swan lever-fillers, have never been surpassed, whether for elegance, utility or durability.

The declining days of the once-proud Mabie Todd company were especially sad. Their fortunes did not revive in the post-war period and the company was taken over by the Biro Pen company in 1952. From then on it was known as Biro Swan and Mabie Todd was gone for good. Investment in the fountain pen arm of the company was low and little that was new was produced. As demand fell, so did production standards and quality control. Biro stopped production of fountain pens in 1958.

The main product in the later years was the Calligraph. At first a lever filler, it later used an improved Leverless filling system. A turn-button on the end of the barrel caused a cam to rotate, depressing an ordinary pressure bar. The end of the pressure bar located into a slot in the threaded section. This was an efficient system, but could be something of a swine to reassemble when re-saccing. This system has caused yours truly to (on occasion) utter words and phrases not usually heard in polite company.

I was aware that, towards the latter end, there was a further development of this system employed in Blackbirds, so I grabbed this pen when it appeared, not – I hasten to add – because I admired its quality, but so that I could take it to bits. It’s not that bad, actually, except for the clip which has rusted. Otherwise, the manufacturing quality is good.

The turn-button is now concealed beneath a blind cap, and it’s knurled aluminium. Quite smart, in fact. Is that an improvement? Probably not. It means you have an extra step to go through in filling your pen.

The pressure bar is now fitted with a cap, which aids in locating it securely into the mechanism. It helps to make reassembly rather easier and I achieved it without any oaths or imprecations, so that’s definitely an improvement!

There wasn’t much I could do with the clip, other than rub it down. The high-shouldered nib is actually quite good. The plastic is attractive, and it looks very like the plastics used on the continent. I suspect the building of this pen was contracted out to a German or Belgian firm, as happened with some other British fountain pen manufacturers. The barrel is imprinted “Blackbird – A Swan Product England” which is probably only partly true.

Taking it all in all, it’s not a bad pen. It hasn’t got the quality of a pre-war Swan, or even a 1940s one, but the machining is good and the plastic hasn’t distorted. The means of securing the clip with a metal stud is a step down from the usual inserted clips, but it’s the method Waterman used with success for years. If this Blackbird was the last of its kind – and I suspect that it is – it isn’t nearly as poorly made as, say, the last Conway Stewarts.

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.

In the late 1930s Mabie Todd made a range of small pens with stepped clips – or rather, two ranges of pens, because there was the Swan SM range and the Blackbird BB range which were practically identical, except for imprints and nibs. The only other difference was that, so far as I know, the Swans were self-coloured or snake or lizard-skin and the Blackbirds were marbled.

This is an example of the Blackbird version, but one that has been used well and has had a repair or two. The clip is a replacement, and it has a Swan No 1 nib instead of the Blackbird original. I could set this pen aside and wait for the correct clip and nib to come along in the fullness of time, as they undoubtedly will. However, I’m going to sell it as it is. These pens don’t fetch a particularly high price even in perfect condition because they’re small. The alterations that have been made obviously don’t affect the pen’s writing characteristics, which are very good. The Swan nib is an upgrade, after all.

It’ll make a fine daily writer for someone. Sometimes a pen is just a thing to write with…

There appears to have been renewed interest in eyedropper fillers after World War II. Macniven & Cameron made one and so did Mabie Todd, and there may have been others. I vaguely remember that there was a Conway Stewart version and think there may have been a Burnham. There are various theories for the reappearance of these primitive filling systems. Some believe that it was because of a wartime shortage of rubber. That may well be so but it doesn’t explain their continued production long after the war. It seems likely that they were made primarily for export to tropical and equatorial countries where sacs perished quickly in the heat, and a small market was found for them here in Britain too.

The Swan version was known as The Swan Safety Pen and went into production as early as 1942, and remained on sale until 1956. This is a later example in the torpedo shape, with no cap ring and and a black section.

A Swan image is imprinted in white on the cap. It’s a bit more wild than the usual sedate Mabie Todd Swan – in fact it’s a little like a dragon!

It works in the same way as a traditional eyedropper, but Swan have been quite bold with the design. The thread that seals the barrel full of ink is barely a third as long as a First World War eyedropper’s would have been, but to compensate those threads are extremely deeply cut. It works; the pen is completely ink-tight. All in all, though it’s an example of Swan’s last production, it’s a well-made pen.

These pens are not common but they do turn up now and again. There’s more than a hint of End of Empire about them, and with hindsight we know that they represent the sad end of the great house of Mabie Todd Swan, too.

There was a vogue for snakeskin and lizard-skin patterned celluloids in the latter part of the 1930s. Several manufacturers issued their versions of these reptile patterns in many different colours. Generally, the lizard-skin variety is the one made up of smaller blocks. These patterns were popular in Swan pens, and snakeskin appears in several models across the range.

This is one of the smaller Swans, an SM112B-84, measuring 11.6cm capped and bearing a No1 nib. It’s a thoroughly Art Deco pen with its Empire-style stepped clip. The clip is also unusual in being of the washer type, a method rarely used on Swans. The cap and barrel ends are black, and there’s a white Swan image on the cap top. The green of the pattern is especially intense. All in all, this is a jewel of a pen. It’s not just ornamental, though. The semi-flex oblique stub nib is a delight to write with.

These snakeskin Swans are not rare, nor even particularly uncommon, but they are much sought after for their beauty and make a good price. They can have their problems. The celluloid was not totally stable and some of these pens can be distorted in the middle of the barrel, giving a gaping lever slot. Almost always, the plastic has shrunk a little, gripping the section fiercely. It can take many applications of moderate dry heat to free the section up. Patience is the watchword: too much heat will distort the barrel and too much force will break it. The section is black hard rubber, so soaking is not advised. Dry heat works better anyway.

These gem-like pens are well worth the additional effort needed to restore them.

I had a talk with the data recovery people this morning, and it seems that the cost of restoring my image archive might not be quite as expensive as originally estimated. So I have all my fingers crossed at the moment, which makes it a little difficult to type… I’m sending them the disk today, and will wait with bated breath to hear whether the data can be recovered, and whether I can afford to have it done. Watch this space!

Anyway, back to the fountain pens! The Calligraph was a late model by Swan and it’s a little confusing in some respects. One would expect that a pen called “The Calligraph” would have a calligraphic nib. Mostly, they have perfectly ordinary fine or medium nibs; rarely they will be italic, as this example is, and sometimes they are oblique.

The Calligraph comes in two main forms. The earlier (and better) one is a lever filler, and the nibs usually have a large “C” surrounding the round breather hole. This is a good pen, and it’s the Calligraph you want to buy. The later one is a version of a button filler – the pressure bar is activated by turning the rotating button on the barrel end. It’s a good filling system, though finicky to repair. The problem with these pens is in the nibs, which are prone to cracking. They’re easily recognised: they have a D-shaped breather hole and a deeply-impressed Swan image on the nib. They’re not really bad pens but they’re not up to the previous Swan standard. I wouldn’t go so far as to recommend avoiding them, but you would be better off with the earlier, lever-filler version of the Calligraph, especially if you’re lucky enough to come across one of the few with an italic nib.