It would appear that one of the favourite methods employed by Conway Stewart for boosting their sales, especially during the 30s, was to produce special pens for commercial companies or stationer retailers. In the former case they would probably have been give-aways, while in the latter case they were often imprinted with names chosen by the retailer and sold as "special editions". Of course this is an advertising gimmick widely employed today, at exhibitions, trade-fairs, in hotel rooms, etc., and some people find this an interesting collection niche that involves zero investment.

But now, back to Conway Stewart: the avid collector, (me included) in his desperate attempts to collect as many numbered pens as possible from the Conway Stewart range, will soon come across a numbered pen such as a beautiful marbled bottle-green No. 479 pen with an imprint of some retailer such as, "W.H.Smith and Sons Ltd, Worthing, "The Tudor Pen".

The question one then poses is do you add the pen to your collection or not? Some don't. I do. And that’s why I have so many Conway Stewarts in my collection. Actually, W.H.Smith is a well-known stationers retailer even today and has branches in most towns throughout Britain. Each shop seems to have had its own special pen name and in my collection I have such exotic names as: "The Seal Pen", "The Borough Pen", "The Richmond", "The Fontibus Pen" - from Bournemouth, Middlesbrough, Worthing, Richmond (of course), Salisbury and Harrogate.

Here are some more names to spark the imagination: "The Clubman Pen", "The Combridge Pen", "The Devon Express" and "The Barnsley Express" (were these inter-city coach companies?). "The Falcon Pen" "The Brunswick De Luxe", "The Throstle Pen"; but I am beginning to bore you and the list goes on nearly forever.

So I shall take another tack and tell you a short Email story. About a month ago I received an email from someone who landed on my web-site during a "Google" search. This is rare because, in spite of my efforts, if you type in Conway Stewart in the appropriate space, my site first comes up at positions 77 and 78 out of 99,201 hits! However he typed in the word REPULSE because he is secretary of the "forceZ survivors association" of HMS Repulse built in 1916, which was sunk together with her sister ship the HMS Prince of Wales by the Japanese air-force in the Malacca straits during WW2. His website is a fascinating tribute to this battleship, her sailors and descriptions of her last battle – but I digress. He reached my site because I have on my list a pen imprinted HMS Repulse (unfortunately not mine), and on the box it says HMS Repulse bookstall Price 5/6. Actually he didn't remember that there was a bookstall on the Repulse, so this was an interesting addition to his ephemera page in tribute to the Repulse. This pen was not in my "Custom Pen" section, but in another section I call "Conway Stewart associated". These are pens that I know were made by Conway Stewart because they bear some of the hallmarks of CS manufacture, but they don't have Conway Stewart imprinted on them.

Another short story to finish my ramblings: At a recent pen auction of Cooper Owen in London, I was top bidder for a "job-lot" containing a number of Conway Stewart Custom, and Conway Stewart associated pens. The following day at the London Pen show, Alexander Crum Ewing, the auctioneer, kindly told me of the provenance of these pens, one of which was called the "Bantam Pen, P.S. & N. Ltd., Liverpool. They were all mint pens, some without nibs, that were found in the offices of the Mabie Todd company, and must have been held there to evaluate the competition in the marketing of Custom pens. Among these pens was a beautiful mint hard-rubber Relief No. 2L pen made for the British Esterbrook market, which strengthened my previous conviction that these earlier Relief pens with the pear-shaped clip-tip were also made by Conway Stewart.

Sorry, I tell a lie: I cannot finish without showing you a Custom pencil made by Conway Stewart. I do this in order to include an example of give-aways, which were so often throw-aways and consequently are now rather sparse on the ground. As you see it is imprinted " A lovely day for a Guinness". I have an identical pencil entitled " Guinness is good for you ".

Of course these are also of interest to the many beer-drinking enthusiasts and collectors of Guinness memorabilia. So there we are, a short insight into one aspect of the Conway Stewart saga. But how can I leave out the "Daily Mirror" give-away. Though this is a quality pen, it seems to be the only one that survived. And so my meandering continues….

P.S. If you have a spare moment, why not try-out: http://www.prog2kill.com/conwaystewart/.