Thread: Swaty Made in USA ?

Made in the USA stamped Austria ???? that makes things a bit confusing

Like Jimmy I have seen the Pike Swaty's made in the USA

Originally Posted by gssixgun

Made in the USA stamped Austria ????

Hey could be? A very good friend of mine produces a lot of maple syrup here in New york state that he sells to a farmer in Vermont,
and its bottle by him and sold as Vermont Pure!

Originally Posted by Martin103

Hey could be? A very good friend of mine produces a lot of maple syrup here in New york state that he sells to a farmer in Vermont,
and its bottle by him and sold as Vermont Pure!

Well it could have been but it would be trademark infringement and, if I'm not mistaken, against the law to mark a product as being made in one country when it was made in another. Besides that, it makes no sense to me that they would tout the hone as being made in the USA and mark it Austria. I suppose the illustration was to show the 'old' hone and the new product would have been marked USA.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Well it could have been but it would be trademark infringement and, if I'm not mistaken, against the law to mark a product as being made in one country when it was made in another. Besides that, it makes no sense to me that they would tout the hone as being made in the USA and mark it Austria. I suppose the illustration was to show the 'old' hone and the new product would have been marked USA.

If you have the authorization from the Original trademark owner, it would be feasible that they were made here with their original markings.
Whether they did or not i dont know, possible but more then likely not.

The writing looks the wrong way round on that hone...

The Swaty company dates from 1879. When the father Franz died in 1888, the son (Francis/Franz/Franc depending on the origin of the material you read about him) carried on, still in Vienna (diferent zone though) and eventually in Slovenia/Jugoslavia - hence the 'four line' longer swaty with Jugoslavia on it.

Both Pike and S R Droescher imported the hone - here is an excerpt from a 1913 Pike catalogue:



They were both sole agents - at different times, of course. S R Droescher also imported other hones like eschers.

I have read that some of the Swaty family came to New York where they made hones with material imported from Austria. They later moved to Moravia, Iowa, a place that seems to have been home to a number of barber-hone producers.

Swaty also carried on in the Jugoslav area, eventually merging with a firm called Comet to become known as SwatyComet :



So there must have been a very large variety of Swaty hones of one sort or another!

Regards,
Neil

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

They later moved to Moravia, Iowa, a place that seems to have been home to a number of barber-hone producers.

Now that is interesting. I wonder if the American Hone Co was competition or was the former Swaty ? BTW, Pike also imported Eschers for a time. I used to have a barber's delight marked Pike/Escher on the box. While the stone had the normal Escher labels.

IIRC, the American Hone Company moved to Moravia, IA from New York, lock, stock, and barrel. There are various threads about it; here's one I found: American Hone Company

I got my Frictionite00 in the late 70s. I was an oboist in Jr. High and it came as part of an inexpensive reed-making kit. It sat unappreciated in a toolbox, in the same tray as an unappreciated coticule, for a couple of decades. I was in Iowa, and thought it was cool that the hone came from Iowa, too. Moravia is out in the country in south-central Iowa, an obscure little place.

Given the political turmoil in Austria at the time and with the Austrian civil war was coming in just a couple of years I wonder if the seller of these in the USA may have used some literary license in making the made in the USA claim. Certainly it
would not have difficult to modify the molds to reflect USA but since these hones were already popular they did not want to
remove the name "Austria" for fear of losing sales.