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Conway Stewart

1905 — 2026

A Century in Ink

The story of Conway Stewart, told from the company’s own archive.

1905 · London, the year the door opened

1905

The Door at 13 Paternoster Row

Two young men, one back room, five shillings a week.

In early 1905 two young Londoners took a first-floor back room at 13 Paternoster Row, a narrow street of printers and booksellers behind St Paul's, and began to sell fountain pens. Francis Charles Jarvis was 22. Thomas Howard Garner was 28, and the rent was five shillings a week.

“Fifty years ago the first entry was made in the ledger of a company which had taken a small, one-room office in Paternoster Row. It read F. C. Jarvis (loan) £25; T. H. Garner (loan) £25.”
The British Stationer, August 1955
A steep view down a very narrow street between tall commercial buildings, with awnings, hanging shop signs and pedestrians in Edwardian dress.
Paternoster Row, 1908. The office was one room on the first floor.
A sepia photograph of a young man in a three-piece suit seated at a desk, with a candlestick telephone beside him and a curtained window behind.
Francis Charles Jarvis, twenty-two.
A sepia photograph of a young man writing at a desk in the same panelled office, a candlestick telephone and papers in front of him.
Howard Garner, twenty-eight, in the same room.
A colour photochrom print of Cheapside in the City of London around 1900: horse-drawn omnibuses, awnings over shopfronts and crowds on the pavement

1905–1918

Wholesale Beginnings

They stop selling other people’s pens and start making their own.

By June 1906 the two men had a company, Conway Stewart & Co, with a capital of £50 and three rooms further up the same street. Turnover that year passed £2,000 across nearly 900 separate sales, and the next year it more than doubled.

The self-filler they sold from three rooms off St Paul's is long gone. The house that sold it is not. The Post pen

“This pen is retailed from 8s. 6d. to 21s., and the large number of inquiries and orders at the exhibition undoubtedly proves that the 'Post' pen has only to be shown to find a customer.”
The Stationer, Printer and Fancy Trades' Register, August 1906
A grainy black and white photograph of a small exhibition stand with a large painted signboard reading THE POST FOUNTAIN PEN, SELF FILLING AND SELF CLEANING, CONWAY, STEWART AND CO, 34 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C., with display cards and potted palms below.
The 1906 Printing Exhibition stand.
A full-width printed advertisement in heavy Edwardian type reading A Self-Filling Self-Cleansing Fountain Pen, the improved POST Fountain Pen, with a price line and the address 34 Paternoster Row, London, E.C.
The Post pen advert: six prices, 8/6 to 21/-.
Six early black fountain pens laid side by side, some with slim metal rods drawn out from the barrel end.
Six Post pens, filling rods drawn.

1919–1938 · London finds its colour

1919–1938

Colour Arrives

Colour makes Conway Stewart famous.

Until the 1920s pens were black, cut from vulcanite, a hard black rubber. Conway Stewart brought in coloured pens, and the record is blunt about what followed: the coloured types created a world-wide vogue. The colour came from casein, an early plastic made from milk, in shades named Lapis Blue, Jade Green, Grey Jazz and Pink Satin.

The Dinkie is not in the range today. The Duro, on the bench beside it in those years, still is. The Dinkie

“THE REGISTERED TRADE MARK of their successful line of miniature Fountain Pens”
The British Stationer, July 1929
A full-page colour advertisement headed Conway Stewart Pens and Writing Sets, All-British, showing marbled pens in reds, blues and greens, boxed writing sets and prices beside each, with the Shoe Lane address along the foot.
Christmas 1932: every pen a different colour.
A vertical chart of eighteen small rectangular colour swatches in mottled and striated plastics, each labelled with a code or a colour name.
Eighteen casein samples took the range out of black.
A sepia photograph of a large stone corner building with an ornate gabled roofline flying a Union flag, its facade lettered Conway Stewart and Co Ltd.
75-82 Shoe Lane, flag up.

1939–1948 · Searchlights over London, 1940

1939–1948

War Work

The war takes the machines; the house survives.

When the war came, the machines were turned over. The lathes were changed from plastic to metal work, and the factory made more than 20 million small parts, many of them accurate to one thousandth of an inch. It also made metal parts for insecticide sprayers, sent out for use in Burma.

“In the fountain pen industry the manufacturers are operating under a licence to make 25 per cent. of what they made in 1939”
The British Stationer, June 1943, letter from S. W. Jarvis, Managing Director
A printed plate headed Fountain Pen Works of Conway Stewart and Co Ltd, made up of four photographs: rows of women at lathes, a benching shop, a man at a centreless grinding machine captioned Gold Nib Manufacture, and a bank of engraving machines.
The works in 1939, nib grinding to engraving.
A sepia photograph looking across a wide expanse of cleared bomb ground and broken cellar walls towards a row of surviving buildings, one of them carrying the words Conway Stewart in large script across its upper storeys.
The house that survived, name across the front.
A black and white photograph of gutted roofless building shells and heaped rubble along a street, with a cathedral tower visible in the distance.
Paternoster Row, January 1941. The first street did not survive.

1949–1962 · London at the Jubilee

1949–1962

The Golden Jubilee

The busiest years the company ever has.

In 1950 and 1951 the whole works moved east to Copperfield Road in Mile End, its reception lit by lampshades shaped like two large gold nibs. The original staff of two men and a boy had grown to nearly 400, and twenty-four nib grinders worked four to a bench. One finisher remembered the thrill of repairing a pen sent in by someone famous, such as Winston Churchill.

The oversize pen that topped the Jubilee list, at the head of the range again. The No. 100

“Today, nearly half the total production is exported”
The British Stationer, August 1955
A black and white photograph of a long factory room with rows of women seated at benches under tall windows, each working over a tray of pen parts, captioned Conway Stewart finishing department 1951.
The finishing department, 1951.
A black and white photograph of Winston Churchill in uniform and peaked cap, cigar in his mouth, raising two fingers in the V sign.
A finisher remembered repairing Churchill's pen.
A trade advertisement headed The All-British Conway Stewart, the words the Pen with the Marvellous Nib beside a large drawing of a 14ct gold nib standing on end, with prices 14/- to 46/6 in the corner.
The nib did the selling: 14/- to 46/6.

1963–1975 · Apollo 11 leaves Earth, July 1969

1963–1975

The Long Dusk

The world reaches for the Moon, and for the ballpoint.

The company had money and no appetite for change. In April 1963 it reported the previous year's profit at £11,000, with £80,000 cash in the bank. Two weeks later a bid arrived valuing Conway Stewart at £191,000, roughly 30% above the market price of the shares, and it was promptly accepted.

Film scene: Henry Jones Sr., played by Sean Connery, uses a lever-fill fountain pen to squirt ink at a tank operator

1989

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Henry Jones Sr. downs a tank gunner with a squirt of ink from his fountain pen.

The scene has its own pen in the range today: the Indiana Jones pen

1994–2014 · London, the name comes home

1994–2014

Revivals

The name refuses to disappear.

For nearly twenty years the name belonged to nobody in particular. Don Yendle, who had been assembling pens in a converted primary school in a small village in south Devon, acquired the Conway Stewart trademarks in 1994 from an entrepreneur in Dubai who bought and sold trademarks.

The oversize pen of the 1997 revival, and the one the workshop is still known for. The Churchill

“the 109-year-old company”
Insider Media, 5 September 2014
A colour photograph of Jacques Chirac and Tony Blair in black tie talking with Queen Elizabeth II at a formal reception, with a large floral arrangement behind them.
The 2005 G8: the leaders presented with No 58 sets.
Three uncapped fountain pens side by side with identical pierced foliate metal overlays over black barrels, differing only in the colour of the metal.
Simpole's filigree centenary pens.
Three capped fountain pens laid horizontally one above another, the top in mottled amber and brown, the middle in dark ebonite with a gold cap band, the lowest in pale green marbled casein.
Three pens of the revival.
A black Tommy Shelby fountain pen resting on a handwritten notebook page, beside a presentation box stamped By Order of the Peaky Blinders.

2013

Peaky Blinders

Three pens named for the Shelby family: Tommy, Arthur and Polly Gray.

The story of the release is on the blog: the Peaky Blinders release

A film still of a man in a grey checked suit standing in a tailor's fitting room, in front of a lit display case holding brogues, spectacles, watches and a row of black and gold fountain pens.

2015

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Conway Stewart pens pass through both Kingsman films.

The pen is in the range today: the Churchill Classic Black

A film still of an actor playing Winston Churchill in a pinstriped suit and bow tie, cigar in mouth, standing before a large wall map.

2017

Darkest Hour

Gary Oldman's Churchill writes with a Conway Stewart Churchill.

The pen on his desk is in the range today: the Churchill Classic Black

2016–today · London today

2016–today

Emsworth

Still made by hand, an hour from where it began.

When the Plymouth factory closed, Bespoke British Pens Ltd bought what was left of it: the stock of components, the technical drawings, the domain and the trademark. Assembly of pens from those original components began in early 2015, first on the Isle of Wight and then at Emsworth in Hampshire.

The pen of this century is still made by hand. Choose yours. Made by hand

1905 — 2026

The Journey in Ink

Nine addresses. One line of ink.

Every home the company has had, from a back room in the City to the coast at Emsworth. Tap the names to meet each one.

LondonCrumlinBedwasPlymouthEmsworth