Thread: Escher – Artificial !

In the 1920’s the company Johan Gottfried Escher, Sonneberg was split in the companies J.G. Escher and Son und the company JGES (=Johan Gottfried Escher Sonneberg) KG.

After J.G. Escher and Son ran into insolvency in 1930 it was taken over by JGES KG.

JGES began around 1920 with the fabrication of artificial sharpening stones because the natural stones in the area of Steinach-Sonneberg were getting rarer and the demand after WW1 rised.

The following photo gives an overview of different water and oilstones, that were produced by JGES.





Special stones for sharpening razors were made of the saw dust from cutting the natural stones for several decades.




You can read on the boxes of these stones: ..... Made of yellow-green thuringian waterstone.




The hones are in fact not bad in usage even if they do not reach the natural yellow-green Thuringians of course. They are somehow softer and faster than the naturals.

The smaller concave stones were used by german soldiers in WW2.






There was also the effort to imitate the coticule stones which is shown in the following picture.





Since Escher also cut and prepared coticules during a certain time these stones may exist from coticule saw dust too. The smell is somehow comparable to a coticule, the honing performance not.

Fantastic historic info ! Thanks so much !!

That's good to know, I actually bid on a couple of those not knowing they were made from Thüringer sawdust, phew

Information like that is nearly as exciting as finding a hone. Thank you very much. It's getting better.

Two things I find very interesting .... that they went insolvent in the beginning of the worldwide great depression which began in 1929 and especially ,"because the natural stones in the area of Steinach-Sonneberg were getting rarer and the demand after WW1." I've heard of areas becoming 'mined out.'

In Northern Minnesota the Mesabi iron range ran out of hematite and the mines more or less shut down. Then in the 1970s a way to process the 'tailings' from hematite ,taconite, was developed and the mines flourished for a decade until they mined that ore out. So the mines where Escher quarried their famous sharpening stones apparently yielded so much and no more.

Interesting info, thanks for sharing. Now I want one if onlynfor the case of trying one

I will add mine. Interesting thing about it that the writting is in azhbuka (Russian).
Thank you for your info. Originaly I was suspecting that it was made out of coti powder. Do you have any information about variations between numbers and sources of the powder used for that particular type/number?

adrspach,

that's what I have posted, I think that this yellow stones were made of coticule powder (the stones made of y/g thuringian powder don't look yellow, but more greenish/gray).
The coticule-like stones were called Reform-Brocken (I cannot reallly see on your picture if this are the words stamped there too). In german old coticules are called "Belgischer Brocken". So "Reform Brocken" means something like -new, reformed coticule-.

I have got two different types and that's what I think the numbers refer to.
Number 5 is stamped fine, number 4 extra-fine.






I suppose different mesh sizes were used to sieve the powder and to fabricate this different types.

That is very interesting, thanks for the history lesson! Do these stones go for the same prices?

Thank you Hatzicho for confirmation. My one is the extra fine No4 version. Funny is that the box is written in Russian and stone itself in German.