cheetahmeatpheonix

Originally Posted by Voidmonster

I've done a bit of research into these razors and there's some unusual stuff.

The name's a good place to start 'The Ottoman Egyptian and Royal Windsor Razor'.

I'll just cut to the chase and say that, most likely, it refers to the Royal Windsor hotel of Cairo. It was originally built in 1893 as baths for the royal Ottoman family and turned into a British Officers club shortly thereafter. I don't have any details on how that transition happened but I doubt it was nice.

What's interesting there is that it strongly implies these razors were made after the Madrid Agreement, and thus would be stamped 'England' if they were made for export, so they were probably made to be used at the hotel.

The other thing that's interesting is that, of the three that I've seen, one has a misspelling on the blade. That's pretty unusual, and leads me to my vague suspicion that these razors are counterfeit W&B. IE, not made by Wade & Butcher. In Lloyd's 'The Cutlery Trades' he mentions that the Cutler's Company of Hallamshire spent a lot of effort going after counterfeits and specifically mentions Egypt as one of the places they were pursuing. That's all pretty circumstantial though and I wouldn't count it as anything more than an interesting possibility. More likely, the fakes were obviously shoddy, and these clearly were not.

Still, that misspelling is very strange.