Thread: Would appreciate some dating help.

The Clapperton is a mystery. It mostly looks Sheffield, and if it is Sheffield, it's probably from 1815-1830 or so, but I can't find any records. It doesn't show up in any of the directories or apprentice registers, so who knows? Maybe it was London-make?

The Paris razor is a lot easier to sort out.

That one is definitely Sheffield (just like razors marked Senegal, Lisbon, France, etc). It was made by a man with the improbable name of Paris Justice. He made spring knives and razors and ran a pub named the Golden Ball. Apprenticed to John Jervis in 1738 he was freed in 1744. He seems to have died in 1797, the same year he was listed in Gales & Martin's Sheffield Directory. Technically Justice's mark was the word PARIS below a Maltese cross, but those old die-strikes are often a bit weird, and it looks like that one was quite a bit off-center.