Hi David. As for the "Rider" snake, when I attended the very first pen show in New Jersey in the 80's I was by the front entrance when a collector asked about getting a table. I was helping George and Stuart at the time so I brought him in and found him a space. I asked him what kind of pens he had and he produced a tray with no less than 15 or so bhr overlays without nibs and in some cases without sections and feeds. They were demonstrators for the Heath Co. silver work and each was on a J.G. Rider barrel. I formed a syndicate (Dan and Mike) and we bought the entire collection except for one pen which he had converted and was using daily - the Snake you have pictured.
The other pens were all identical to the Parker overlays of the same period - early examples of Heath's work which were eventually bought by Parker for their pens. I have seen the same workmanship and Heath mark on Swan pens of the period and Waterman pens. So I don't know if technically, this is a Rider snake or a model of the silver work placed on the Rider barrel. As for our syndicate there were numerous duplicates and triplicates so we did not have to arm wrestle to split up the trove.
Hi Don, Interesting history. If these were- primarily- Heath demonstrators (of a sort, demonstrating the overlay craftsmanship) that just happened to use Rider pens as substrate, I can understand the use of quotes on "Rider", but I keep open whether this enhances or lessens the cachet of the pen. It is possible (but seemingly unproven at this point) that the pens were not planned catalogued Rider pens and were rather just incidental Riders, which takes away perhaps a bit of the "Rider-ness" of them. On other hand, if these were made just as a tray or three by Heath for use by Heath, then likely far fewer exist than if Rider offered the pen routinely for sale for years. Verily, ambiguous terrain. And, again, we don't know that Rider did not sell these Also, in Columbus I tried to broker the sale of one of the rarest snakes in existence - the Heath Snake but not the kind used by Parker. It has a fully covered cap with gold filled metal. The background is a tree trunk of sort with the snake winding down the cap and up the barrel. The barrel is mostly fully covered except for the section and the bottom of the barrel. A really beautiful pen and yes, the snake have the same green eyes as on the Parker. This pen did not have the famous Heath mark anywhere but it did sport a Heath nib and we know that Heath did make pens on their own. Mike Fultz never owned a complete Heath snake but he did have a cap for one. In my opinion the snake pens with the fully covered caps and barrels are far superior to the plain snakes on black hard rubber.
If I am successful in getting the seller to reduce his asking price the buyer will be more than happy to let me photograph it for the pen community.
Yes, I know the pen... annnnnnd.... I shot it back in 2002. I made mistake at start of this thread citing my familiarity with snake pens by LE Waterman, Parker, "Wirt" and now Rider. Instead of Wirt, I meant to indicate Heath. And, as you noted, Heath is considered the source of fancy overlays for many old pens.
Here we see an LE Waterman sterling double snake taper cap, Parker snake, Heath gold-filled snake. Note the Heath is fully covered with that tree-bark background, similar more to Waterman than Parker, with the Rider that started this thread resembling the Parker.
I have high res images of the Heath, but this shot is an old lower-res montage.
regards
David