I made a remark in FPN this week about the difference between rarity and desirability. It sank without trace. I suspect that it may not have been what the original poster wanted to hear, but it’s a valid point all the same. Scarcity of a particular model doesn’t always influence value. In fact, the rarity of some models or makes of pen acts in the other way; they’re so uncommon that hardly anyone knows they exist, so no-one’s looking for them and they will barely sell.

There are, of course, serious collectors who will pay whatever they need to pay to acquire a scarce pen to complete a series. However, as the average buyer knows little and cares less about many of these uncommon pens, there’s little competition for the privilege of acquiring them and the price remains low.

Take, for example, the distinctly uncommon Conway Stewart International 350. It’s close to the range of numbers occupied by the common black hard rubber Scribes, the 330 and 333, which it closely resembles in size and appearance. Indeed, some 350s even have the threaded barrel end in common with the Scribes. The main difference between them is that the 350 had a short production run and is seldom seen now, whereas the Scribes are very common, having been the basic clerk’s pen of industry. At times you’ll hardly sell a Scribe 330 or 333 (the colourful 336s are in a different league) but surely the International 350 must be more valuable by virtue of it rarity? Nope. Not in my experience.

It is worth noting, though, should an International 350 ever come your way that it may well be a better pen than the Scribe. Though there are exceptions, most Scribes seem to be nails. The few 350s I’ve owned have all had some degree of flexibility.

This whole area of scarcity and demand illustrates a difference between the British and American markets of yesteryear and collection practices today. It wouldn’t be too hard to name a dozen rare and very expensive Watermans, Parkers and the like, pens that are hotly pursued by many collectors and change hands, when they appear, for more than the price of a nearly-new Honda VFR1200F. I just can’t make a similar list for British pens. Yes, there are some moderately highly-priced Swans and Onotos around, but there are very few – if any – British pens that will have collectors re-mortgaging their houses. It’s not rarity that sells pens here. It’s utility, I believe, and colour. Stick with the Tiger’s Eyes, the Cracked Ices, and the Floral No 22s and leave those grungy old rare pens to me.

That looks like one of those puzzle pictures – “Is one of these things bigger than the other or is it an optical illusion?” Actually, they’re the same size and they’re Conway Stewart 75s. Though it’s not depicted here, there is a slightly shorter 75, and even a bandless one. Judging by the frequency with which it appears in eBay, the 75 may well have been Conway Stewart’s most popular post-war model. It was inexpensive, mostly because the trim was chrome plated instead of gold plated. In 1955, when the 60 cost three pounds and six shillings, and the popular 27 cost one pound six shillings and sixpence, the 75 retailed at a mere seventeen shillings including purchase tax. As the build quality was as good as that of the bigger, more expensive pens and the nib is comparatively large, this made the 75 a good deal back in the nineteen-fifties, and it still is.

This was meant to be a clever side-by-side photo of the two 75 nibs but one was out of focus, blast it, so you only get one! That’s an elegantly-shaped CS 3 nib, if you think of the broad, short 84 nib, or the narrow, somewhat wraparound nib of the 55 for comparison. That’s just about the way a fountain pen nib should look!

If you prefer white-metal trim, as many do, this may be the post-war Conway Stewart for you. After all, these pens were made soundly enough that they have survived intact more than fifty years in their thousands. They come in a rainbow of colours and will likely cost around half what you’d pay for a Conway Stewart 60.

Conway Stewart 479s turn up with some of the best colours of the pre-war pens. This one is in the pattern that Jonathan Donahaye called “red amber marble”. That’s a pretty good description. I’m not sure that these photos quite manage to fully capture the glowing colour, but they give you an impression, at least.

I’m one of those dull people who think pens are things that you write with, and if a pen writes well I do tend not to notice what colour it is, but even I look at that pen and go, “Wow!” It writes more than adequately well, as it happens, with a consistent fine line, but my goodness, isn’t it pretty!

This is one of the few occasions where I would consider buying a pen purely for its looks.

Well, almost.

Every now and again you come across a beauty that makes you draw your breath in sharply! This WHS pen, more than a century old and in superb condition is one such. These pens were supplied by Conway Stewart to various customers as an own-brand pen, but it is best known and most often seen as the W.H. Smith Self-Filling Pen. Conway Stewart didn’t actually make them, back in 1906, but bought them in from George Shand, a company later bought up by Jewel – such are the complications of the pen industry!

The pen is a simple syringe filler, perhaps not the best filling system ever devised, but welcome as a self-filler at a time when most pens were filled with an eyedropper. They appear with both generic warranted nibs and WHS nibs.

Just quite why or how this example survived in such perfect condition I can’t guess, but it’s as black as black can be and the patterning on the barrel is crisp and clear. Quite a wonderful accident of preservation.

The No 15, along with the short-lived No 16, appear to have been the economy lines in the range of pens that Conway Stewart issued in the early nineteen-fifties. The patterned ones were made from casein, and beautiful though they are, they are less interesting to me than the single-colour pens, which Jonathan Donahaye believed are made of celluloid acetate. I’m not sure how he came to that conclusion. Perhaps he had a better sense of smell than me, or maybe he accidentally set one on fire. Casein doesn’t burn well but a celluloid pen in flames is memorable.

I had a No 15 in the colour that Jonathan described as “deep brown” arrive the other day. As luck would have it, among my stock was a No 475 which he had described as “uniform chocolate brown”. Comparing the two, they seemed identical to me. I should have photographed the two together, but the 475 found a buyer and is at present winging its way to him, courtesy of Royal Mail. So it goes.

In any case, I would swear that colours, and hence in all probability the materials, were the same. The 15 and 475 also share “uniform forest green”. Is this enough to say that there is a relationship between these pre- and post-war pens? Both are at the economy end, neither have cap rings and both come in innovative colours and patterns that don’t occur elsewhere in the production of their respective periods. Is the CS 15 in some sense the successor to the CS 475?

The brown almost comes across as black in photos, so here it is with a black Swan.

The Conway Stewart 15 comes in two sizes, the larger at 12.9 cm being the same size as the commoner CS 75, and the smaller one half a centimeter less. The uniform coloured ones especially are an exercise in minimalism, being about as plain as a pen gets. The nib is smaller than that of the CS 75 and it has a different profile, being more wraparound in the style of the CS388 nib. Minimalist or not, it’s a handsome little pen, except for the clunky plastic stud that retains the clip. That does detract from the pen’s appearance, and it suggests that the pen was made to fit a price.

I like the CS 15s, though, and I’m glad to have finally found a deep brown one. I need a forest green and a deep blue to make the set. To be exact, there’s also a grey, but like all nineteen-fifties greys, whether by Conway Stewart, Parker, Swan or Wyvern, they tend to take on a yellow discoloration and are hence less attractive, so I might forget about that one.

This little Conway Stewart began life as a stylo, the Quail Stylo No 3 to be exact.  It was subsequently converted into a fountain pen using a short, thick feed and a folded-tip white metal French nib.  I suspect that it didn’t work well as the inside of the section is stepped, meaning that the feed didn’t fit as it should.

I searched Stephen Hull’s Fountain Pens For The Million and The English Fountain Pen Industry but found no reference to this stylo.  There is no mention of it in Jonathan Donahaye’s list either.  Of those listed, it most resembles the Pixie 113 Ink Pencil.

Does anyone know anything about this stylo?

There seems little point in posting an enquiry to Fountain Pen Network’s Conway Stewart section as all those with a good knowledge of the brand left some time ago.  Sad business.  I’ve posted to Fountain Pen Board instead.

The Quail Stylo attracted much interest.  A consensus of opinion has it that it’s a rebadged Conway Stewart Pixie 113 though the company for whom it was provided is now unknown.  Late twenties, early thirties, then, one of Conway Stewart’s peaks of high quality production.  For me, their pens never got better than they were in that era.

The Quail is on its way to become part of a very large collection of Conway Stewart pens.  In return I’ll be receiving a very interesting Conway Stewart associated pen which will doubtless appear here shortly.

You may remember that I said recently that I’d swapped the little Quail Stylo for a pen I’d long wanted.  This is it, the Combridge, another of those Conway Stewart Associated pens, to use Jonathan Donahaye’s term.  What it is, is a pen made by Conway Stewart for another company, on which Conway Stewart’s own name does not appear.  It’s one of several forms of re-badging.

Combridge was a large stationery business in Birmingham.  Their origins lie in the Victorian period, and they started out with the confidence and ambition of that period.  They expanded into postcard and book publishing, at least a proportion of the latter being devotional material.  As well as having their own branded pens made by Conway Stewart they sold Watermans and Swans. The company was wound up in 1994.

My Combridge Pen is a later one, I think.  Certainly the chrome clip and lever point to that conclusion.  There are earlier ones that have the Conway Stewart flange lever, and I’ve seen a very up-market version with two gold barrel bands and a cap band.

The nib in mine is a replacement.  Some, at least, have a “Combridge” nib, I believe.  Others may have a warranted nib.  Mine has a warranted nib but it’s graced with rearing unicorn, which I vaguely believe comes from Unique’s nib works.  I have no evidence and if you know better, tell me.

Some sellers describe Combridge pens as rare.  Not so.  Certainly they’re not as common as Conway Stewart 286s, but don’t be talked into paying a high price for their supposed rarity.  They sold well and are moderately common.

I have a particular affection for all of Conway Stewart’s woodgrain pens.

I don’t usually buy pens from Conway Stewart’s later output so I must have been dozing off when I bought this 57.  It happens.

I got around to assessing and restoring it today.  Actually, it was in pretty good order and didn’t need a lot done.  I had to put a new sac on, but removing the Pressac sac shield and refitting it was no trouble at all.  Other than that, I flushed the nib/hood unit until the water ran clear, cleaned the pen up a bit and that was that.

This is by no means the last of Conway Stewart’s pens and while it shows a decline in standards from the high days of the fifties and earlier, it’s not at all a bad pen.  There are the usual slight markings of use but that’s all.  To my surprise, the gold plating has held up well despite clear indications that the pen has been well used.

So how does this pen of Conway Stewart’s declining years stack up just as a writing instrument?  I think one might be entitled to knock off a point or two for the filling system.  The Pressac bears a superficial resemblance to Parker’s Aeromentric filler but it isn’t as efficient as it lacks a breather tube.  It’s just a squeeze filler.  The nib’s a nail but that’s OK – plenty of people like nails.  The clutch works well and the pen closes firmly.  The ink flow’s good and the pen sits well in the hand.  I could use this pen quite happily.  It wouldn’t be my first choice but it wouldn’t give me any problems either.  It’s on a par, I think, with the better Chinese pens that are being produced today, with its squeeze filler and nail nib, except that it harks back to a well-respected line of pens and it has a gold nib, which sets it a step or two above.  Also, the chain motif on the cap band might lift it another half a step further.

One other thing about this pen is that it’s a bit of stylistic grab-bag.  It’s a long, tapering pen like the 85L but it shows pretensions to something more modern.  The nib is fully exposed.  Why then does it have a long hood – which serves no practical purpose – rather than a normal section?  I think it shows two things: that Conway Stewart’s designers knew that the public wanted something new, but also that they didn’t have the money to tool up for a completely new pen, so they made this cheerless compromise.

The 57′s diamond clip is a reminder of past glories but the purposeless hood is an omen of things to come.

In 1955 Conway Stewart retired the long-running and very popular 388 and replaced it with the more modern-styled 36, using the same CS5N nib and keeping the dimensions roughly the same.

As well as the hatched pattern the 388 had come in marbled colours and black.  Only the hatched pattern was retained and a lined pattern in several colours was added.

While it may not have reached quite the popularity of its predecessor the 36 seems to have caught on quite well, if the numbers still around today are anything to go by.  Like the 388 it’s quite a slender pen and shorter than some others of this date.  Just the sort of pen to be pushed as a lady’s pen, had it been made by, say, Parker, but Conway Stewart kept that sort of suggestion for the Dinkie range.

The CS5N is one of Conway Stewart’s better nibs.  As it’s quite curved in profile most examples are firm, as is this one.  It’s a medium with a hint of stubbishness about it, which makes it a pleasant pen to write with.

I like the Conway Stewart 84.  It’s quite a short pen but no thinner than most other Conway Stewarts of the time, so it’s quite comfortable to write with for most people.  Its time was the early fifties to the early sixties and it must have sold extremely well during those years, as it remains one of the most commonly found Conway Stewarts today.

The “rose marble with gold veins” pattern was one that was introduced with the 84, and it makes a beautiful, jewel-like pen.  All the signs indicate that this was a pen for the ladies but, so far as I’m aware, Conway Stewart don’t come right out and say that.  The medium cap band indicates that though the pen is comparatively small, it’s not intended to be an economy model.

The CS4 nib fitted to the 84 is a larger nib than that in some of the bigger models.  This one is semi-flexible.

Casein is peculiar stuff.  While there’s no denying that there are some problems associated with it, the depth and luminosity of colour that it offers can’t be matched by any other material.  It positively glows.

The problem that concerns most people is that they will not recognise it as casein, immerse it in water and destroy the pen.  This one is easily dismissed –  regardless of the material from which they’re made – keep your pens out of water!  There’s no benefit to be gained from exposing the externals of a pen to liquid of any kind.

What is more worrying is the insidious effect of exposure to varying humidity over many years.  The casein absorbs a little moisture when the humidity rises and expands slightly.  When the humidity falls, it releases the moisture and shrinks again.  Over time, this leads to cracking.  Craquelure is all very well on Old Master paintings but it isn’t so welcome in pens.  I’ve seen Burnhams disintegrate from this effect.  Perhaps because they treated the casein differently in some way, Conway Stewarts never get quite so bad.  Usually it’s more of a disfiguring surface haze.

I think it was Jonathan Donahaye who suggested that those casein pens that are perfect today after the passage of fifty or more years were probably undisturbed in a box in a drawer for all that time.  That seems a very likely explanation to me.

This Conway 15 pen/Conway 25 pencil set is in that fortunate condition, showing the high gloss that these pens all had when they were new.  It is an amazing material.  It can’t really be mistaken for any of the other pen materials.  The pen had been inked but it appears that it was not used.  It had the original Conway Stewart sac.  The pencil still has lead in it.

My husband delights in making me envious by describing British newsagents’ shops of old, with brightly-coloured Conway Stewarts hanging on a card awaiting sale.  This Conway 15 is so fresh, glossy and new that it might have been removed from the card moments ago.

One of several annoying things about the present-day Conway Stewart company is the Soviet-style re-writing of history they present on their website.  Though their only relationship with the original, long-defunct Conway Stewart company is that they purchased the rights to the name and trademarks, they claim the accomplishments of the original company as their own.  In addition to publishing this nonsense on their site, it has been posted in Wikipedia, that magnificent source of dubious information.

To counter this disinformation, Andy Russell  has made available, in .pdf format, a brief and accurate overview of Conway Stewart history.  Go to Fountain Pen Board, seek out the post “Conway Stewart – The True History” and you can download it from there.

Many thanks to Andy for putting the record straight.  The rebirth of dead companies is annoying enough to those of us who are interested only in the older pens, but at least the other re-born companies like Eversharp and Onoto have had the decency to mark a clear line between their output and that of their long-ago predecessors.  Only Conway Stewart have had the brass neck to rewrite history to lay claim to the work of other, and dare I say better men.

An interesting debate, and one that bears on the future of our hobby, I believe, is taking place in The Fountain Pen Board under Conway Stewart – The True History.  This is the debate that was suppressed for years in Fountain Pen Network.  I recommend it.  It’s worth a read.

I can’t believe that after all this time I still haven’t written about the Conway Stewart 388, but I just searched the blog and I’ve only mentioned it in the passing where it related to other pens.  Judging by the number of survivals, it must have been one of Conway Stewart’s most popular pens of all time, though its very long period of production, from 1939 to 1955 must help with that.  With its narrow/medium/narrow cap rings and only slightly streamlined shape it looks like a cut-down Conway Stewart 55.   Actually, it’s the other way round.  The 55 is a much later pen inspired by the smaller pen’s popular design.  It worked,  Both pens were big sellers.

This initially plain looking 388 is, in fact, rather special.  The nib is a firm medium oblique.  Admittedly, such a small nib is unlikely to produce much in the way of dramatic line variation but if you’re one of those people (like me) who hold the pen in a rotated position, this is the pen for you.  It will work with you in producing improved hand-writing.

Compared with Swan or De La Rue, Conway Stewart produced few special nibs but when they did produce one they spared no effort.  This high-shouldered nib tapers beautifully to a narrow, slanted stub.  It looks like a piece of jewelry rather than the practical instrument it is.

The 388 remained in the catalogues until 1955, long after its quite straight-sided style had been replaced by the post-war fully streamlined Conway Stewarts.  Perhaps in that year its sales finally began to tail away, because it went out of production and was replaced by the 36, which inherited its cap band arrangement and CS 5N nib.  A pleasant enough pen, the 36 somehow lacked the appeal of its predecessor despite the addition of a unique striped pattern, and judging by the number of survivals, it sold a little less well.

Edit: Andy Russell kindly provided an illuminating comment on this post which changes the chronology and hence the interpretation.  It makes such a significant change that rather than leave it as a comment which many might miss, I post it here as an edit.

“Hi Deb, as you know I’m not one to let a misconception about CS history pass unchallenged…..!

This is one of the areas where Jonathan’s history turns out to be wrong. Surprisingly, the 388 wasn’t actually first produced until after the 58! The 58 was first advertised in the trade press in 1949, the 388 was never mentioned at all until early 1952. This would most likely mean it was first produced in late 1951, probably as a replacement for the 55, and as something more akin to the size of the 58 for those who still preferred a more traditional, straight sided pen.

There is certainly no mention of the 388 in pre-war price lists (up to 1940), the closest model then would have been the 380. CS production was limited throughout the war and for a good few years afterwards, and the 388 doesn’t appear on any of the ‘restricted’ price lists up to 1948. The final date of production of 1955 is about right, though – it still appears on the list for December 1954 but not in December 1956. So, rather than being one of the CS models with a long lifetime, it actually had quite a brief existence! I suspect the low price was the main reason for its appeal – at 22/- in 1952 it compared very favourably with the more modern 58 at 31/6 and the 28 at 25/8.

The lineage of the 55 is rather clearer. The original model of this design was the pre-war 35 (itself a cut down version of the massive Duro 26). This was replaced with the 45 during the war years, a very similar model but with a reduced level of trim (single cap band) because of material shortages. After the war, the 45 was in turn replaced with the 55, with the original cap band configuration being reintroduced, though both models appear to have co-existed for a brief time in 1946. The 55 seems to have disappeared from the listings c. 1950, at about the same time as the introduction of the 58 which was obviously intended to be the clear ‘top of the range’ at that time.

Andy”

I’ve been trying to get my hands on one of these herringbone Conway Stewarts for years, but I always got outbid.  Until this week, that is.  Not only did I get a herringbone, I got a RED one, and one of the least common models too.

It’s not often I select a pen purely for its looks but I admit that’s what I did this time.  That being the case, there’s not much point in me getting into my usual discussion of the pen’s good and bad points as a writing instrument.  I’ve put a new sac in it; I have no doubt that it writes, probably very well, but when it comes down to it, this is a pen for looking at.  So let’s do that.

In conclusion, this was an expensive pen.  If not the most expensive I’ve bought, close to it.  How did it arrive?  In a padded bag with a single turn of re-used bubble-wrap!

I had a productive morning fixing pens.  I covered most British manufacturers and most filling systems.  Keeps me interested.  There were several Swans and it occurred to me that there was a period after the war when Swans became irritatingly over-engineered.  There’s the brass barrel threads, which admittedly look nice, but can be hard on cap threads.  This is one of the not infrequent occasions where plastic is better than metal.  Then there’s the lever-fillers with screw-in sections.  What’s that about?  What does a screw-in section add to a lever filler?  A friction-fit section is equally secure and makes re-saccing much easier.  Many of these pens come my way with a sac twisted up inside them like a piece of string that the kittens have been at.  Where a press-in section would take an 18 sac, you have to drop to a 16 and keep it quite short to ensure that it doesn’t snag on anything.  So what, long-dead Swan engineers, were you thinking of?  EMWTK!

I don’t often get Conway Stewart sets.  They tend to be priced a bit beyond my restricted budget, but I managed to snag this nice black CS12/Nippy No 3 set the other day.  The box is nice and fresh too.  The pencil, strangely, shows wear to the gold plating whereas the pen doesn’t.  It’s usually the other way round.  I’m very pleased with it, though.  It ,looks great for a set that was made at least fifty years ago.  I love the pattern on the box.  Conway Stewart knew how to present a pen and pencil set back then.

As I was so busy I asked my assistant for assistance.  She replied that she couldn’t do much with the tools with no thumbs and re-saccing’s not the job for her either, not with those long, sharp, latex-puncturing claws.  “You’ve got my moral support, though, boss,“ she said, “but keep the noise down ’cause it’s nap time, m’kay?”

I was almost convinced that I have written about this hideous pen before, but I have assiduously searched the blog and there’s nothing there so here goes:

The pen closely resembles the Flowline nylon-tipped pen which was introduced in 1972, and doubtless this one is of the same date.  Essentially, the pen expands with slightly curved lines from both ends until they meet in the complexity of the lower cap and the barrel.  Very seventies, one might say, afflicted with the same style that was applied to everything from cars to transistor radios.  Still, it’s functional, isn’t it?  Well, no.  The raised, ridged area at the bottom of the cap looks as if it would be useful in unscrewing the cap – except that the cap doesn’t unscrew but is friction fit.  Unscrewing merely removes the barrel and leaves the nib/section unit inside the cap.

Goodness knows what compelled the “designers” to use that military drab colour.  Full-on khaki would be attractive by comparison.  At a stretch it could be described as olive green by the kind-hearted but at least the ugliness of the colour is consistent with the rest of the pen.  The cap pulls off to expose an imported steel Smoothline nib, about which one might say that it’s no worse than many other cheap after-market nibs.

A lot of plastic flashing is also revealed on the section.  Unscrewing the barrel shows that it is a cartridge filler.  Like most other pen manufacturers of the time, Conway Stewart intended to cash in on the sale of over-priced ink in dedicated cartridges, so nothing else fits this pen so far as I’m aware.  Conway Stewart cartridges of the right date do turn up in eBay sometimes, a little evaporated but useable.  That’s always assuming I’d want to write with this pen, or be seen with it.  Stop it – I’ll split my sides!

So that’s it, except I failed to mention the rust – yes, rust, not wear or tarnish – on the clip.  This, really, is where the company that once was Conway Stewart touched bottom.  No matter how hard you might try, you can’t really make a worse pen than this, qualitatively, aesthetically or practically.    If  you would like this pen to complete your collection, or maybe just to stamp on it, send me the postage and it’s yours.  If, against all good advice you decide to keep and use it, don’t wear it in an external pocket where it can be seen, or men may spit at you in the street and women will slap your face for inflicting such ghastliness upon them without provocation..

I wrote about the 85L before, back here: http://wp.me/p17T6K-cI, where I suggest that the 85L is a successor more to the 84 than the 85.  Be that as it may, the 85L is a pen that stands out among the other models of its time (late fifties early sixties).  It a little longer and slightly more slender than the other Conway Stewart pens of  the period and it comes in some outstanding colour patterns like this bright blue with gold veins.  Judging by the numbers that turn up nowadays it was a very popular pen back in the day and it remains so with buyers today.

I’ve been going after boxed pens and pen and pencil sets whenever I can.  The prices can be a little steep but they’re worth it, especially when they and their box are in such good condition,  It’s almost like getting a nineteen-fifties pen new.  In comparison with real new pens of similar quality, they’re very cheap, in fact.

And, of course, they write better…

Thank you for the suggestions.  Keep ‘em coming!

One question that perplexes me that would likely be within your realm of expertise regards the pens by Conway Stewart. I wonder just what is the REAL difference between the various models? I understand that like car manufacturers, the pen company is pressure-bound to come up with ever newer “improved” models in order to maintain their competitive position within the industry. But what REALLY is the difference between a #27 and a #28? Is it just a slight variation of length of the barrel or the cap? Is there a double cap band instead of a triple band? Is the lever a bit lower or higher on the barrel? For me, these are not really differences. There ought to be something more SIGNIFICANT to qualify as a GENUINE difference between the various models. But is this really the case. I am not restricting my question to just the models 27 and 28, of course. I am referring to all the various models over the years in this one company. I would grant that going from hard rubber to celluloid to casein represent significant changes in the pens – or going from lever filler to button filler to piston filler or clip to ring-top but is there anything else ? The same question would apply to the other companies as well…
Stuart (scratching my head across the pond)

This is a matter of perception, really.  If you compare one pen of the same period with another, the differences do appear contrived and trivial, but the short answer to your question is that the difference between the No 27 and the No 28 is the price point that they are produced to meet.  We may think of Conway Stewart’s product as being this pen or that; they would have seen the entire range as their product.  It was their aim to provide pens that would suit the taste and pocket of everyone and they chose to do that (as did many other manufacturers) by producing pens of different size and trim with a range of nibs.  Within the grasp of the financially hard-pressed parent buying for a school pupil were the No15s and 16s, small with no cap band and a small nib, whereas at the other end of the income scale were the more opulent Nos 27, 58, 60, and 100 with much more gold trim, larger size and big Duro or No 5 nibs.  Between these extremes are a host of pens separated from each other only by a few shillings, if that.  However much you could afford to spend, there was a pen of the size, colour and trim that you wanted.

I have used post-war pens to explain this point, but exactly the same pattern emerges in the study of nineteen-thirties Conway Stewarts.  The company made a price differentiation on the basis of appearance and size, not how they wrote.  They were not alone in that, of course.  Most producers did pretty much the same.  Though Conway Stewart, like other British pen companies, didn’t make innovation a selling point they did innovate from time to time.  Though they produced excellent piston fillers and stud fillers in the pre-war period and the Speedy Phil after the war, it was always the traditional lever filler that made up the vast bulk of their output.  You can only differentiate one lever filler from another so far.  That lies with the customer rather than the manufacturer, to a great degree.  The British pen-buying public distrusted innovation for its own sake, and preferred to stick with the tried-and-trusted lever filler or button filler.  Neither Conway Stewart’s Speedy Phil nor, in an earlier period, Swan’s Visofil sold in anything like the numbers that had been anticipated.  Hence the policy of creating what was essentially one pen and dressing it up in slightly different clothing to suit different requirements.

Immensely successful though they were, Conway Stewart didn’t capture all the economic groups that they aimed at.  At the very top, whether of the professions, the forces or industry, Swans and Onotos were chosen rather than Conway Stewart 60s and 100s, hence the comparative scarcity of these more opulent models.

Today, collectors and users alike can be grateful for the number of different models Conway Stewart produced.  There’s still something for everyone and we all have our favourites, despite the fact that they’re all pretty much the same pen.