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Thread: Italian Razor?
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04-28-2014, 12:20 PM #11
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04-28-2014, 12:37 PM #12
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04-28-2014, 01:28 PM #13
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04-28-2014, 01:49 PM #14
Watch it or we'll force bottles of castor oil down your throat ........
(See Cinema Paradiso for reference)Be careful how you treat people on your way up, you may meet them again on your way back down.
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04-28-2014, 02:01 PM #15
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Thanked: 3164Yes, that seems quite likely.
A little more research into Caudano shows that the company was founded in 1894, and also explains the confusion on the various web posts regarding a 'G. Caudano' and a 'C. Caudano'. At its inception, the company was called 'G. Caudano & Company' and this was included into various alphabetical listings as 'Caudano, G & C' which I believe - I may be wrong! - has been taken to mean G. Caudano and C. Caudano by various other researchers, one of which I mistakenly quoted from B&B, whereas in all likelihood 'G & C' merely means 'G & Company'.
However, the original listings describe G. Caudano & C as 'manufacturing cutlers' - note the word 'manufacturing' which means they actually made cutlery. True, the term cutler covers many forms of edged instruments, such as knives, daggers, table cutlery, hollow ware and razors' but it could have been used to denote just table cutlery. That they won awards for and were mentioned for their premier displays of table cutlery is known, as well as 'scissors of all kinds' so 'manufacturing' must have meant just that in these two instances.
That it is just as difficult to make some forms of table cutlery, namely forks, and significantly more difficult and more involved to make scissors than razors is beyond dispute, so I see no reason that, at some point at least, they did make razors. After scissors, it would have been easy work.
However, they soon branched out. By 1915 they had a warehouse on the corner of Via LaGrange and Via Cavour, for household objects of all kinds, which was sold to Niccolini Damosso, Caudano moving to various addresses at different times in Via Piazza Carlo Felice, numbers 10, 28 and another in the 30s being significant.
They had become issuers of prolific catalogues, many of which still survive, and which covered household items, barber supplies, ironware, farm implements, plates and cutlery, coffee grinders and makers, etc - and were the subject of one researchers project on the 'first re-sellers' in Italy (ie a mail-order catalogue warehouse operation).
By this time they were selling mostly re-branded goods including german razors - not stamped by them as blanks, as these would have been too brittle to stamp and would have broken, but made especially for them by german razor companies such as Lauterjung & Sohn, makers of the excellent german PUMA razors. These were supplied to Caudano not in the usual wood-effect boxes, but card boxes, and with a white handle with Caudanos name stamped on the tang by Lauterjung & Sohn.
Regards,
NeilLast edited by Neil Miller; 04-28-2014 at 03:05 PM. Reason: typo correction
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The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Neil Miller For This Useful Post:
RustySterling (04-28-2014), WW243 (04-28-2014)
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04-28-2014, 02:07 PM #16
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Thanked: 3164What's that, Jimmy? WW243 falls in love with Alberto the cinema projectionist? Where's that castor oil....?!
Regards,
Neil
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04-28-2014, 02:24 PM #17
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04-28-2014, 02:25 PM #18
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04-28-2014, 02:33 PM #19
Neil, I may be thinking of Fellini's autobiographical flick ? Forget the name right now (senior moment) but there was one Italian film depicting the faciast government era and in one scene they forced a guy into a chair and poured castor oil down his throat. Quite a laxative effect apparently.
Be careful how you treat people on your way up, you may meet them again on your way back down.
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04-28-2014, 03:01 PM #20
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