Mabie Todd Swan #4 England, 14ct Gold, 380g Flex (JOWO 6)

🥇 Grade: B+
🏠 Housing: Nikko Red Ebonite, JOWO #6
🔱 Nib: Mabie Todd Swan #4 England, 14ct Gold ("Swan 4 14CT Mabie Todd & Co LTD Made in England")
🖋️ Line Spec: EF/F – 6B | 0.20mm / 0.25mm – 1.89mm (9.45x)
🌡️ Flexibility Pressure: 380g Flex
📐 Dimensions: 47mm total nib length, 23mm overhang past housing
⚖️ Weight: 2.056g

Mabie Todd Swan held a continuous English presence from the 1910s, shifting its main gold nib production from New York to Birmingham and Liverpool through the mid-1920s. The English #4 ran as the larger flex size in the standard catalog, fitted to the Swan 44, the smaller Swan 54, and their Eternal siblings. Of the two common Swan flex sizes, the #4 carries the reputation for refined flex behavior; the #2 is the more frequently surviving size. The English imprint and stamp style place this nib in the late 1920s into the early 1930s, with the flex line running in parallel with the Eternal manifolds rather than after them. Seated in a Nikko red ebonite housing with a JOWO #6 ebonite feed, ready to write.

Fit note: nib overhang sits at 23mm past the JOWO #6 housing's 24mm length, with a 47mm total nib length. Verify cap clearance on smaller modern hosts before committing the nib to a body for extended carry.

The headline is a 9.45x flex multiplier driven by a stub character at rest — EF horizontal against F vertical (0.20mm / 0.25mm) sits in flexible stub territory before any pressure is applied, and 380g of moderate pressure opens the tines cleanly into a solid 6B at 1.89mm. The unflexed line already carries the contrast of a stub: sharper downstrokes, finer cross strokes. Expressive range comes on top of that. Flex behavior is smooth and controlled, with snapback returning to the rest position without overshoot, and the ball tip glides cleanly across the rotation without skipping or roughness on cross strokes.

Best suited to experienced flex writers, calligraphers drawn to flexible stubs with naturally occurring stroke contrast, and collectors of mid-production English Mabie Todd Swans where the flex line ran in parallel with the Eternal manifolds.

Tine alignment corrected, tipping smoothed, light burnish at the base to sharpen baseline contact and snapback. Heat-set into the JOWO #6 housing with the matched ebonite feed for clean flow from the first stroke. B+ reflects honest writing wear with crisp imprint legibility and full structural integrity.

Tested on Rhodia 90gsm ivory with Diamine Imperial Purple.