A Big Swan

[eachan]

This is one of the bigger Swans, made around 1948, so during the last hurrah of the fountain pen before the ballpoint took over.

The nib is quite a chunk of 14 carat gold. Many of these large Swans have "Eternal" nibs which are invariably firm.

This isn't the biggest Swan. There's one with a No 8 nib, a mighty beast indeed. We had one a few years ago but they are very uncommon and becoming very expensive when they do appear. The one we had was in an earlier style. I'm not even certain they made a No 8 in this later, torpedo style.

They used to say that the best of the Conway Stewarts was the doctor's pen, the Swan was the bank manager's pen and the Onoto was the lawyer's pen. But they'll say anything...