Thread: James Johnson razor

JOHNSON,JAMES
FitzwilliamStreet, Sheffield
1818-1853

Does anyone have any other history of this maker.

Nice razor!

James Johson was born in 1803, was in business from about 1818 to 1854, went bankrupt in 1855 and died in 1869.



Silver Steel came about from the experiments of Michael Faraday (scientst) and James Stodart (famous razor maker in London - he made the steel samples to Faraday's directions), circa 1819. Some famous makers were sent samples by Faraday but the commercial sales of silver steel razors was quite short-lived, say from 1824 (Stodart had died in 1823) to 1834. After that the name was retained, but there was no silver in the alloy.

Johnson also made other things like butchers knives, etc, and he also used cast steel.

Interestingly, for a brief period of time (1850s?) he was in business with Warrington Slater of Slator Bros., the razor company that used the beehive symbol as their mark - Beehive Road was around the corner to where Warrington lived. Warrington was a bit of a wild one, and got his hands dirty with property speculation, etc, and around 1900 he got done for fraud (building side, not razor manufacturing).

Regards,
Neil

Thanks for the great info. This is one of my favorites. Shaves butter smooth and can't even feel it at work. Something different about the quality of the silver steel I like. Plus it feels great in my hand original horn scales and all. She looked a little drab when I got her, but she cleaned up real nice without having to remove the scales.

The oldest razor in my collection is a JJ Cast Steel. Sweet shaver, indeed!

I dont know any more then what has already been posted though.