Swans with overlay don’t appear very often, and those that do occasionally turn up are, in my experience, usually US-made, as is this one. Overlay tends to cover the detail that identifies a model, but this one has SF2 stamped on the feed, so an SF2 it is, I assume.

After hunting around on the web for comparable examples, I came to the conclusion that this pen was made in the early nineteen-thirties. In style, it’s conservative and even retro, for its time, being clipless and built on an ageing pen model. It shows slight signs of wear here and there – where the cap screws onto the barrel and on the lever, but it’s generally in excellent condition. The nib is quite flexible and the pen writes beautifully.

By the time that this pen was made, the British and American branches of Mabie Todd had been separate entities for many years, but their output remains remarkably similar, in some models at least.

I note that this is becoming something of a Swan blog. That’s not really my intention, but I suppose it does reflect my own preferences. Also, I think I’ve written about the Swan 3261 before but as it’s the model I restore most, I think I can risk writing about it again.

The 3261 was at the lower end of the Swan price range. It’s a close relative of the pen I wrote about last, also designed in 1948 and produced from then into the early fifties. Judging by the numbers I see, it was probably Mabie Todd’s most popular pen of the time. It was fitted with some of the most delightful nibs too; stubs, oblique stubs and flexible nibs abound among 3261s.

After a long period when Swans were made only in celluloid, the 3261 and some of its larger siblings reverted to black hard rubber. Why this should be so remains a mystery. Perhaps there were large stocks of it which needed to be used up. Maybe it was customer demand, though this seems quite unlikely. It’s unlikely too – though I suppose possible – that among the other post-war shortages was a dearth of celluloid. Whatever the reason, I think we have cause to be grateful. BHR is warm and pleasant to the touch and it makes for a light pen, which I prefer.

These pens were exceptionally well made. In a sense, they’re over-engineered, with the brass threads and screw-in section. They’re not without their faults, though. Many of these BHR torpedo-shaped Swans have cracks in the cap lip. They fade, though in most cases the fading is slight, to a pleasant chocolate brown which only serves to remind us that this is a natural substance, which weathers in a natural way. The barrel imprints wear away much more than is the case with earlier BHR or celluloid Swans, and most show some wear on the gold plating, especially on the cap rings. Though it doesn’t concern the user or collector, repairers need to be careful with this one, as the peg that the sac attaches to is fragile and will break easily if care isn’t taken with the knock-out block.

When everything else has been considered, the final approval of any pen lies in whether it is good to write with, and the 3261 certainly is. Light and perfectly balanced, well-shaped for the hand and equipped with superb nibs, these are fine writing instruments. These torpedo-shaped pens were just about the last of the great Swans. We’re lucky that there are so many of them around.

Mabie Todd’s administrative headquarters and their main factory were bombed during World War II, which led not only to the loss of capital equipment and production, but also irreplaceable records were destroyed. This makes an overview of their pre-war, wartime and immediately post-war production a little hazy, to say the least, and dating of several models from around those times remains in debate.

We do know, however, that the company re-tooled for a new product range in 1948, and went on to release their new torpedo-shaped pens soon after. The Leverless pens in this style are usually dated to 1949. The change is purely stylistic; in every other respect this remains the same Leverless Swan that had been so successful for the company since 1932. Strangely, Mabie Todd reverted to Black Hard Rubber for some of these pens, the others being in self-coloured celluloid.

This example is in the middle of the range, a 4460 which has a No4 nib. The largest pens in the range have a No 6 nib. This is a large pen at 13.7cm capped, and it’s a good handful with a girth of 1.3cm. That’s longer than a standard English Duofold of the time, and thicker too, so all in all it’s a very substantial pen.

It was the cleanliness and ease of use of the filling system that sold the Leveless in its thousands, but people often have trouble with it nowadays. It is said that it doesn’t hold as much ink as a comparable lever filler, and that’s true, but the difference is insignificant. The dissatisfaction with Leverless arises from re-saccing by repairers who don’t understand the filling system, resulting in a pen that holds very little ink, or, at worst, will draw none at all. With the right type of sac, properly fitted, the Leverless will give no cause for complaint and will hold at least as much ink as a short international cartridge, usually rather more.

This pen is the celluloid version, and I suspect that it hasn’t been used very much, as it’s immaculate. The beautiful nib with its heart-shaped breather hole and long tines hints at flexibility. As you will see from the writing sample, it’s no superflex, but a moderate amount of line variation is easily induced.

It’s always a joy to find a sixty-year-old pen that looks as if it came off the production line yesterday, and that it should be one of this high quality is an added pleasure.

Grey is an unfortunate colour for fountain pens. It discolours, almost always. The pre-war celluloid grey/black marbles didn’t show the yellowing quite so much, and even when it did, the marbling reduced the unpleasantness of the effect. In the post-war period there was a fashion for self-coloured pens. Quite a few manufacturers, including Mabie Todd, Parker and Wyvern had self-coloured model ranges in the late forties and early fifties. All included grey as one of their colours, and all dropped it quite quickly and reduced the range to the burgundies, blues, greens and blacks that retained their original colours. Small wonder, because the self-coloured greys invariably discoloured, often very badly.

This is a Swan 3230, made between 1947 and 1950. Mabie Todd was still a maker of very high quality pens in this period, though I think the gold plating on these pens is thinner than it would have been fifteen or twenty years earlier, and there has been some plating loss on this example. It’s a well-made pen, though, comfortable and well-balanced in the hand – a real writer’s pen. The stubbish nib is a medium oblique. The pen is, of course, discoloured, with an obvious difference between the cap and the barrel. It’s by no means the worst I’ve seen – these pens can become a hideous muddy yellow.

Though it confers no obvious benefit, Mabie Todd went to the added expense of threading the sections of these pens, rather than making them a press fit. The brass threads and the two cap rings place this pen in the middle of the price range. As always with Swans, it’s an easy repair and it’s the work of a matter of minutes to return the pen to working condition. I pop in a silicon sac to prevent further discolouration. When tested, the nib is decidedly flexible. It’s a real pleasure to write with.

Like black pens, grey pens are often cannibalised to provide spares for more colourful pens that will sell for a higher price. That’s something I try to avoid. True, if a pen is extremely discoloured to the point where it looks repulsive, I’ll strip it for spares but otherwise I’ll repair it. After all, they’re not making any more 60-year-old Swans, and these pens are splendid writers. I’m not in the business of reducing the numbers available. Yes, it may sell for rather less than a more a colourful one but I didn’t pay much for it and it didn’t take a lot of my time to put it right. It’s not going to have collectors fighting over it, but someone who wants a thoroughly excellent writer and doesn’t care too much about its appearance will treasure this pen.

When was the first English Swan lever filler made? Authorities vary in their opinion; some give 1916, others say the first self-filler did not appear here until 1921. On grounds of style, I would favour the earlier date but I have no way of being certain. Technically, the SF1 and SF2 pens are very modern, and already bear many of the attributes that remained recognisably Swan throughout the brand’s existence: the long-tined nib with the heart-shaped breather hole, the ladder feed, the long, slender lever with a rounded end, the high quality of manufacture and the attention to detail. They differ from later models in style, in the number of turns needed to secure the cap (a full two and a half!) and in being clipless, though some later SF1s and SF2s had fixed clips.

To my mind, the SF1 is a little too slender for comfortable use in a modern hand, and it’s also a little fragile to repair. The SF2, though, is a large, robust pen at 14.4cm capped and a long 18.5cm posted. It’s as practical a daily writer as any more modern pen. Aimed to suit all pockets, the SF2 came in various guises, from the unadorned black chased or mottled hard rubber to those with gold-plated barrel bands, cap bands and even solid gold overlay. This one has a plated cap band and a plated cover over the end of the cap, a configuration I haven’t seen before. The plating is good quality and shows very little wear. Despite the metal on the cap and its great length, the pen is not overbalanced and it sits very well in the hand.

Though clearly well-used, the pen is in excellent condition. There’s very slight fading of the black chased hard rubber and there’s a little wear of the scalloped chasing on the barrel, though the pattern remains clear. The cap and barrel imprints are sharp.

The imprint at the end of the barrel reads “2S-F MED, denoting a No2 medium nib in a self-filler pen. By modern standards, the nib is at the fine end of medium. A delightful writer, it has a little understated flexibility, just enough to show some line variation.

Like its immediate predecessor, the Safety Screw Cap Swan, the SF2 has proved a durable pen and survives in great numbers. As a superb writer with the full range of nib styles, it is much in demand, and the variations in trim make it very collectible.

In a way that is similar to Parker’s development of the the Thrift Pens, Mabie Todd expanded their Blackbird Self-Filler range in the mid to late thirties. These were good, cheap (and often cheerful) low-priced pens. They’re average-sized (about 12.5cm capped), flat-topped, slightly tapered, bandless and have a heat-inserted clip set very high on the cap. Some vary in having a slightly pointed top. The trim is gold – quite thin – and the sections are black. They appear in black (5262 and 5260), red (5277), blue (5275), green (5276) and marbled blue (5242). That’s not a comprehensive list of models, but it’s enough to suggest the number ranges allocated to this pen.

The bright self-coloured red, blue and green pens are deceptively modern-looking, and at a glance one might take them for a seventies rather than a thirties pen. The dates usually assigned to these pens are 1936 to 1938. Either they sold very well in those three years or they remained in production longer, as these pens are very common. No doubt they were well-priced to meet the reduced spending power in the Hungry Thirties and were a success, especially as a school pen. They were built to a price, and unusually for Mabie Todd pens, they can suffer from barrel or cap distortion. Nonetheless, a good one (and they’re mostly good, despite slightly wonky barrels) is a great daily user. The nibs are often flexible, from slight to considerable in degree.

In the hierarchy of Mabie Todd pens, Swan was the top and Blackbird came next. There must have been a degree of crossover though, in price at least, at the bottom of the Swan range and the top of the Blackbirds. The decision to buy a Blackbird might not just have been made on price alone, but on actual preference for the style of the pen, because there have always been some pretty nice Blackbirds. This Blackbird Self-Filling Pen, made in the years 1914 to 1925, isn’t exactly an economy model. True, the barrel bands are plated rather than solid gold as they might have been from the middle of the Swan range upwards, but it is nonetheless a prestigious pen.

These no-number Self-Filling Pens closely resemble the BB2/60. They pre-date that model, but, so far as I can see, they overlap and must have been on sale at the same time by the 1920s. They’re not quite the same; the shape of the cap differs slightly, with the Self-Filling Pen’s cap tapering more elegantly toward the barrel. This particular example was well but carefully used. Though there is some wear on the rearmost barrel band, otherwise the pen is immaculate and the black chased hard rubber is unfaded. It is a large pen, measuring 13.5cm capped and 16.4cm posted. As usual with Blackbirds of this period, the manufacturing quality of the barrel, cap, section and feed is the equal of any Swan, but a saving is made on the nib. Blackbird nibs are shorter in the shank than Swan nibs and the gold is thinner. In use, they are superb nibs, almost invariably with some degree of flexibility, but a light touch is advised because with the thinner material it is possible to bend or crack the nib.

These early Blackbirds are among the great flat-top classics. Many are, like this one, clipless but some have inserted clips. I’ve even seen a couple with riveted clips, and I suspect that these were after-market add-ons. Big, but light and well-balanced, these pens make practical and enjoyable daily writers.

The dates given for the manufacturing run of the Swan Safety Screw Cap vary a little, depending on who you read. Some say it was introduced in 1910 and remained in the Swan catalogue until 1918, other give the dates 1911 to 1920. Be that as it may, this pen was made during an interesting period in the company’s history. The American parent company was declining during these years, whereas the British subsidiary enjoyed great success, and in 1915 it became independent.

The Safety Screw Cap marks a considerable advance towards the modern fountain pen. It had, in fact, a modern-style screw-on cap with an inner cap. The section widened at the nib end, and closed firmly against the inner cap, giving a reliable seal which prevented leaks into the pocket. Gone, too was the hard rubber over-and-under feed of the pen’s predecessors, replaced by a ladder feed.* For a time, the Safety Screw Cap featured a gold bar over the nib, often referred to as an overfeed. That’s not its purpose, though, as it doesn’t supply ink to the nib. Rather, I think, it was a device intended to prevent drying out. Other manufacturers employed a similar solution at the time.

The Safety Screw Cap came with either a No1 or a No2 nib, and was quite a large pen, measuring around 13.2cm capped and 16.4cm posted. I say “around” because, like many other pens, there was slight variation between examples. Nibs were, at first, still made in New York, though by the end of the period of its production, the British company made its own nibs. Like its predecessors, the Safety Screw Cap came in various states of trim. The unadorned black hard rubber version is most common, but examples are seen with gold barrel bands and partial and full overlays.

There is a vest pocket or purse version, though it turns up very infrequently. Measuring 11.7cm capped and 14.7cm posted, all those that I have seen have been made in America. That’s not to say there wasn’t a British-made example, just that none has so far come my way. It makes a neat little pen, beautiful in its understated way, with its crisp wave-pattern machining.

*To be scrupulous, the Safety Screw Cap may not have been the first model to bear the ladder feed. I’ve seen several Swan 1500s with ladder feeds. These may have been retrofitted, but there does seem to be a lot of them…

Here are two Mabie Todd lever-fillers in black chased hard rubber, one a Blackbird, the other a Jackdaw. Neither was assigned a model number and they’re the same length and thickness to the millimetre. The Blackbird’s cap tapers a little more than the Jackdaw’s and there’s less chasing on the Jackdaw. The Jackdaw has an unusually short lever. They’re both from the period around 1914-25, and are clipless, as was often the case in those days. We tend to think of the clip as an essential part of the pen but it wasn’t always seen that way. In advertisements as late as 1928, Conway Stewart made much of the fact that their washer-clips were easily removed!

I usually think of Blackbirds and Jackdaws as economy versions of the more expensive Swans. The trim is rather more likely to be chrome than gold, and on later Jackdaws even the chrome plating is quite thin. The nibs have shorter shanks, saving on gold, and they’re generally thinner than Swan nibs too. In technical terms, though, they’re pretty much the same pen, though not in this case.

Swans, and all the other Jackdaws and Blackbirds I’ve seen, have ladder feeds. These two pens don’t. In both cases, the visible face of the feed is smoothly curved. They’re not spoon feeds, like a Waterman, either. They simply have feed channels, and, as such, are decidedly primitive feeds. They’re not replacements, as they’re marked “Blackbird” and “Jackdaw”. I re-sacced and tested the Jackdaw, and the ink supply kept up with a generous semi-flex medium nib very well.

Though these pens arrived in my repair queue around the same time, they came from different sources. I haven’t seen a Jackdaw of quite this type before – the short lever is highly unusual and very attractive – but the Blackbird is of a common type, essentially the same as the BB2-60. All the other examples I’ve restored had ladder feeds.

Pens like these are at the lower end of Mabie Todd production, aimed at clerks and school students, but they have their points of interest and they’re excellent writing instruments, every bit as good as the most expensive models. They had to be, of course. Fountain pens were the primary writing instrument, and those who could afford to pay least were often those who had to write most.

Neither of these pens shows much wear. The Blackbird still has its original sticker. It’s hard to read now, but it looks like the pen cost seven shillings and three pence new. The Jackdaw’s nib has been replaced with a Blackbird one at some time.

Now that I’ve found Mabie Todd pens with non-ladder feeds, I’ll probably be finding them all the time. That’s how these things go…