Mabie Todd black and mottled hard rubber barrels and caps

[FredRydr]

My favorite Mabie Todd pens are made of black hard rubber with accents of mottled red & black hard rubber. I never kept track of their source. Do they turn up more often in the UK or North America? Were they manufactured on both sides of the Atlantic? Are they peculiar to certain models or years?

For example this SF230 in England:

[eachan]

Is there anyone who is equally knowledgeable about US and UK Swans? I'm reasonably good on the UK ones but handle about one US Swan a year. Though there were good UK Swans in every period (except maybe the last year or two) the SF range is the absolute apex for me.

[Robalone]

[QUOTE=FredRydr;364089]My favorite Mabie Todd pens are made of black hard rubber with accents of mottled red & black hard rubber. I never kept track of their source. Do they turn up more often in the UK or North America? Were they manufactured on both sides of the Atlantic? Are they peculiar to certain models or years?

For example this SF230 in England:

Fred, I’ve scoured the wonderful volume : Mabie in america by David Moak….. and from all that I can see the only 'red and black' swirly, woodgrain ish, pens were introduced around the very late 20s/ early 30s as the Eternal range . There were one or two slightly similar colours in their Swallow range.
The stepped '1915' clip was on many of the u.s pens , as with the SF ones from england .

I personally agree that the english SF pens were / are (!) some of the best ones M.T made, and I have several in the red woodgrain, and the Black with the red woodgrain under the gold band.

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[FredRydr]

What was the SF range?

[Robalone]

Hey, best as I can tell…..pretty much all the M T pens that were lever fillers , and maybe the leverless ones (?) had Self filling pen written on their barrels, but a certain number of their models were actually designated SF then a number. As in SF130-230

[Seattleite]

I have only come across a couple of these in the states and, I think, one in Canada. All were English. I doubt that any "mottle tops" were made in the US, as I don't believe that the US made anything other than one-piece caps in hard rubber during the time frame in question. Would it make sense to tool up for production of a cosmetic variant? Another thought is that the English and US mottled rubber rod stock is quite different in fabrication and appearance, with the US having pretty much a black plug on the end. To me, the charm of the mottled cap-top is the "squinting eye" pattern of the red/black laminations, which is characteristic of the English material. I don't think an American version would have been as interesting looking.

Bob