Swan turned out a lot of pens with no number.  I’m not sure why that should be the case.  Maybe they thought it wasn’t especially important, or maybe there was another reason, unfathomable to us now down the long stretch of years.

Despite the lack of a model number this pen can be dated to the war years by the centrally-positioned swan in the barrel imprint.  It’s a big beast, 13.8cm capped and of course there’s that trowel-like No 6 nib.  Though there are spots of wear here and there the gold plating is generally good and the pen is free of  cracks, scratches and bite-marks.

 

The gold Swan emblem on the top of the cap is unusually clear and clean.  The barrel imprint could have been done yesterday, so sharp and clear is it.

It’s big and it’s dignified in its solid black.  The three rings and gold Swan emblem reinforce this suggestion of opulence under reserve.  This is the pen of a man of status (and in those days it invariably was a man) to whom the distance from those under him was important and should be made evident.  It marked him out as a leader in just the same way as did his bespoke tailoring, his Rover,  or even Bentley did.

Of course we believe ourselves to be more democratic these days, but we still enjoy the craftsmanship of a surpassingly well-made pen.

I’ve been having some glitches with the site.  Nothing dramatic and mostly intermittent, I believe, but unless I have examples to hit her over the head with, the developer refuses to believe there’s anything wrong.  I’d be grateful if those of you who have bought from me could give me some indication about how the functions of the site that I don’t see are working.

Does the site send you a notification when you create an account?

When you make a purchase, does the site send you a confirmation?  I don’t mean a confirmatory email from PayPal or a personal one from me.  It should be an automatically generated site email.

If you lose your password, does the button provided actually do anything?

On to other news: this came this morning.  I haven’t even cleaned it up yet, but it’s too pretty not to write about it immediately.  It once had a number on the base of the barrel but it has worn away.  What would the model number have been?  Well, it’s a Leverless so that’s “L”.

The nib is a Phillips one (Phillips were official repairers for Swan, and Swan stamped nibs “Phillips” for them, but they’re essentially the same nibs) and it’s a No 2 size, so that’s “2”.  The pen has two barrel bands and a band at the top of the cap, making it “3”.  The cap lip is unsupported, so “0”.  Finally, the colour is russet and jade, which is “63”.  So we have an L230/63.

Finally, I note that it has a “stacked coins” pattern on all the bands.

If there’s a more beautiful pen anywhere, I’d love to see it!

Here’s yet another of those colourful 1930s Swan Minors. This one’s slightly larger than the last, as it has the No 2 size nib and the whole pen is larger proportionately. The colour code is 58 which doesn’t appear in the FPN list, but I would describe it as green/gold/black. I think it’s quite a rarity – at least I haven’t been aware of it before now.

 

As ever with these outstanding pens, it will be sold on the website (though not immediately – I have a little work to do on it). I can’t sell it privately. Previously, with pens of this quality several people have wanted it and I have no fair way of deciding who should get it.

I showed it to my assistant but she wasn’t very impressed. “Come back,” she said, “When you have a calico one…”

At first glance this Blackbird appears very similar to those self-coloured nineteen-thirties pens in the 52– range that I wrote about here http://wp.me/p17T6K-7m.  It has the same shape, high-set heat-inserted clip, slight taper and very thin gold on the trim.  The last vestiges of a model number on the base of the barrel indicate that despite the resemblance, this is in a different range of pens.

The upper line might be BB2B.  The first and last two characters are visible.  The lower line looks like G3, but that fits no system of Mabie Todd numbering that I’m aware of.  Then I tried 63 as that looked possible but that number denotes a russet/jade mix.  Then I thought – against the evidence of my eyes – that it might be a 6 with a five turned slightly to the right,  Neither John’s nor the FPN list show a 65 so it might be that, but I have to say it doesn’t really look like it.

How does one define this pattern?  There’s a slight colour difference between the cap and the barrel due, no doubt, to a latex sac out-gassing there.  There’s some colour shift in the cap too, especially around the site of the inner cap.  The least affected part seems to be the lower part of the cap near the cap lip.  Here it’s a bluish grey with a paler grey and areas of black.  Perhaps another one will turn up with a better model number.

These very simple thirties Blackbirds are what we call school pens, though doubtless they were used by many others apart from school pupils.  The price was kept down by keeping the trim basic, but the quality is as high as ever.  The celluloid is decorative and in this case uncommon and the pen is now, as it was when new, an excellent writer.

Another of those pleasing three-ring Swans from the late twenties, this 130C/60 achieves its harmonious effect largely by the placing of the plated rings.  The distance from the middle ring to the cap top is approximately 1.5 times that of the two barrel rings.  Somehow that spacing is satisfying; it’s like a Golden Mean for pens.

The fact that the “SF” has been dropped from the model number indicated that it was made late in the flat-top period, though I would be hard pressed to put year to it.  “130” indicates a number one nib and one band at the crown of the cap and two bands on the barrel.  I think the third digit needs more work.  For the moment all we can say is that the zero is associated with models that have no ring at the cap lip.  The FPN list suggests that 60 indicated black hard rubber.  I think it just indicates black, because this pen isn’t made from BHR; more likely it’s celluloid.  That leaves the “C” to be explained and for the time being I can’t.  No doubt an explanation will suggest itself in time, but so far we believe that “B” means a short model and ½ indicates slender while “C” – more common that either of the others – remains a mystery.

This is a pleasant pen to write with.  It’s slender, but not so thin as to be uncomfortable.  The fine nib is springy rather than flexible.  The plating shows a little wear, indicating that the pen has been well used, but it was handled carefully.  There’s little in the way of surface scratches from use and the pen doesn’t look anything like its age.  The absence of what at this period would have been an angular fixed clip reminds us that clips were an extra, felt to be unnecessary by many buyers.

  Here’s another of those very colourful Swan Minors from the late thirties or early forties, an SM 100/59, known as Italian Marble or described more prosaically as grey/red/purple though when I look at it closely there’s quite a bit of pale green there too.

The wonderful colours Mabie Todd used in those years across the Minor, Visofil and Jackdaw ranges are, so far as I can determine, unique to the company.  I’ve seen nothing quite like them anywhere else.  Though I’ve been aware of it in illustrations, the Minor in Italian Marble is new to me.  It was worth the wait.  The colours are outstanding.

This one isn’t for sale.

I’ve had these gorgeous pens from time to time; looking back through the blog I see I had one as recently as March 2nd this year (http://wp.me/p17T6K-CV).   I always keep an eye out for another one because the colours are so beautiful.

This one has a nice flexible nib, too.  It’s a delight to write with, but if it had been my working pen back in the thirties when it was new I would have got very little work done because you have to devote a reasonable amount of time to admiring the pattern.  That would be a large part of the working day.

I can’t say much different from what I said back in March.  These are just the most wonderful pens.  One interesting thing: though they have quite a lot of jade in the barrel and cap, I’ve never seen one discoloured.  Admittedly, this version of jade isn’t as pale as some others.  Nonetheless it would not have surprised me if these colours were subject to damage from decaying sacs but it seems they are colourfast.