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im trying to find info for this maker and the middleton in my other post. anyone familiar with either? ill be restoring both and have no clue what the scales were like on this one so if anyone has another example from this maker id love to see it. I have seen others as well but none of the scales looked to be origina to the razors.
Cool! I suspect Scienceguy. Thaeris, and Voidmoster shall be along. They are really into those! :D
Post it in the stub-tailed shavers club!
will do, I wanted to shave with it before posting it there, haha.Quote:
Originally Posted by sharptonn
I'm away from my books and sources at the moment, so this is necessarily brief.
It's most likely William Hives, son of John, apprenticed in Stannington and freed in 1797. The blade dates to 1805-1815 or so. When I get back home I'll get some pictures of similar razors from the period in original scales.
are you kidding me? I mean.... are you serious?! you just have this stuff neatly folded into the wrinkles of your brain?! you are amazing, that's all I can say!Quote:
Originally Posted by Voidmonster
When you spend a lot of time concerned with early Sheffield history it starts to sink in...Quote:
Originally Posted by silverloaf
edit: here's a couple examples of what the scales might be similar to stylistically. I have a gut feeling they would have been slightly curved.
Attachment 165601
Hah. Well, my amazing brain wrinkles are slightly illusory. I'd dug up that information before I had to head out of the house for a while, then I posted when I could get a few minutes to spare. So it wasn't like I just knew about William Hives. I did have to look him up!
In any event, here's an actual razor and an 1815 engraving of a similar style razor:
http://theshiveringbeggar.com/wp-con...5784ca6743.jpg
(You can right click the image and 'view image' to see a high res version).
I believe the one in the book is scaled in tortoise shell.
Also, I had the date of his freedom wrong. Here's the full data:
William Hives, son of John (farmer) living at The Elm (a farmhouse on the outskirts of the parish) He was apprenticed to William Spooner -- a knife grinder -- of Stannington (a sort of suburb of Sheffield that produced a lot of famous folks, like William Greaves) and freed in 1794.
There's also a Joseph Hives, son of John, also living at The Elm, but listed as a Yeoman. That's almost certainly the same John Hives, and thus Joseph would be the brother of William. Joseph was also apprenticed, him to Joseph Roberts, general cutler (and quite likely the Roberts whose name is sometimes found on old, old Sheffield razors). Joseph Hives served his apprenticeship and was freed in 1790.
The chances are pretty good that the two brothers worked together. Looking over the records again, I think Joseph is the more likely name, as he was the older brother and apprenticed into the more general trade.
Zak, I stole you this beautiful picture :)
The entire book is available here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Thaeris
Unfortunately, the only copy that has any kind of information other than pictures is in the Sheffield library. There was a limited print run reproduction of that version made in the early 1970's, and you can sometimes find used copies cheap. That's what my picture there is from. However, the BnF version is full, hand-tinted color!
There aren't many in it, but it's the earliest pictures I've found anywhere of Sheffield razors.
Ah, Gallica :)
You have nice references ;)
Thx for sharing ! :)
I was really surprised to find it there!
Smith's Key seems to have been a set of engravings of old Sheffield tools intended to be used by dealers. IE, they could use Smiths' Key to find plates of the items they had for sale and they could buy those and use them when hawking their wares to retailers. But it's all a bit speculative, since the book itself contains zero information in it.
The copy in the Sheffield library has some letters between the publisher and the engraver (Joseph Smith), as well as an incomplete price-list, entirely of products made by Richard Cam and Marshes and Shepherd. But the book has MANY things that neither Cam nor M&S made, and M&S didn't exist when the book was first published. So it's all a bit mysterious. Still, hundreds of engravings of old tools!
There are a couple other catalogs like it, but I don't know of any way of seeing them short of visiting the Victoria & Albert museum in London (which I plan to do if it's remotely feasible). Supposedly, the Victoria & Albert museum has a similar catalog of tools from 1780.
In gallica you can also find quite a lot of old recipes using various "mots clefs", as "recettes parfumeurs" "formulaire savons" "bay rum"...
I'm sure there's also plenty of informations about old ways to work the metal, whetstone and many more...
I really need to learn French. :)
I've heard that's not that simple :hmmm:
I myself wish I could read latin. I'm working in my university's library (of medecine and pharmacy), and there's a huge collection of books from late XVIIth and XVIIIth.. Late XVIIIth they were using french (and they're SO COOL to read, like a narrative story), but late XVIIth, they were still using latin, and I'm so curious about what was written in them...
I found an old book about the art of shaving (or the art of making soap, I don't remember) in Gallica, from late XVIIth, in old french. I'll have to find it back so I can share it with you. :)
Got it : "Le Parfurmeur françois"
Not exactly about making soaps, but interesting anyway.
Various books and recipes :
Bay Rum
"Lotions contre le feu du rasoir"
Making brillantine page 71, with perfumed formules
Formules shaving soap
Manuel du savonnier 1852
Manuel du parfumeur 1825
Sorry for going outside of the main subject :w
I'm actually better with Latin than French, but that doesn't mean I'm any good at Latin. :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Thaeris
Mostly, I know profanities in other languages... But then, in Dutch my name is profane! :D
At one point in my life I could read / write / mostly speak Latin. I've mostly lost it now but really should try to get it back...Quote:
Originally Posted by Thaeris
A little bit of a necro-post here, but since this old thread is one of the ones that turned up when I was doing an image search on Hives razors, I thought this would be a good place to stick this.
So I now have two of these razors, and ScienceGuy has one, and I’ve found images of an unmodified 4th, so I can say, definitively, that there was a very particular style of scales used on them!
Attachment 291598
Sadly, my newest one is in pretty bad shape, but the scales are good.
Attachment 291602
This one is ScienceGuy’s, and his picture.
Attachment 291599
This one I found on the web.
Also, for fun, when I was cleaning up my newest Hives razor, I drilled out the pins and accomplished something I’ve never done before...
Attachment 291600
I drilled entirely through the pin, but it still held the razor together!
Attachment 291601
Needless to say, those pins are an odd size and a good deal larger than 1/16th (or 5/64th for that matter).
But that’s beside the point. The point is Joseph Hives made his razors with, seemingly, a single style of scales.
And also I now know it was Joseph Hives who made them.
He was born 1774 in Ecclesfield (a bit north of Sheffield).
In 1790 he apprenticed to Joseph Roberts, a cutler in Sheffield for the customary 7 years but ended up buying his freedom in 1803, just before marrying Jane Powell.
So that apprenticeship is a little unusual in that he started late at age 16. It was also a little irregular the he bought his freedom years after his apprenticeship should have ended, but that sort of thing happened here and there. Time has just swallowed up the reason why it happened. Maybe he was a slow learner, or he liked working for Joseph Roberts, or he spent a lot of time sick... There’s no way to know at this distance without finding direct records of it, and that’s pretty unlikely for such a minor figure.
1803 is a very reasonable year to assume for the earliest razors he made.
He died in July, 1808, which put a bit of a damper on his production.
So that’s a very, very short career.
Here's one that I restored, I kept it for a while it was a great little shaver.
https://i.imgur.com/KPq1SS5.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/ClrBGwX.jpg
Ah yeah! Yours turned up pretty high in the search list. I'd guess it was made toward the end of his run. The 'Warranted' part just ... sorta kinda feels like a later refinement.Quote:
Originally Posted by celticcrusader
Any idea what the original scales were like?
Zak, the scales it came with were not original they were a black celluloid completely wrong shape much later period, that was one of the reasons I changed them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Voidmonster
Very interesting razor! Where do you guys find these relics? I've probably been to at least 20 different antique stores and the only old stubtail I've found is a rescale/regrind.
You didn't know that? You should visit more often! ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by silverloaf
The original thread was a long time ago!Quote:
Originally Posted by JP5
I get them mostly through ebay, or online auctions. I've gotten some really cool stuff just by being friendly at the folks selling stuff.
https://storage04.dropshots.com/phot...510/190839.jpg
Above is my Hives razor, The back scale had a big chunk missing, I replaced that with a new one I made to match from black horn. The washers are from Austin Kennedy as the originals were almost gone.
Most weeks I walk past Joseph Hive's grave in Ecclesfield Churchyard I think of the razor above and all the owners it must have had in it's 200+ year history.
And there's yet another in the same highly beveled scales. It really looks like Joe didn't go far for scales!Quote:
Originally Posted by 782sirbrian
