Thread: Early Razors and Dating them.....or not

Originally Posted by Voidmonster

Clark & Hall are a pretty good bet, but they did make things with that stamp after 1820.

I always wondered about my once owned but long gone Clark and Hall "near twins" if at least the one on the bottom in the photo qualified as a very early razor.

Originally Posted by AntiqueHoosier

I always wondered about my once owned but long gone Clark and Hall "near twins" if at least the one on the bottom in the photo qualified as a very early razor.

It's hard to say, but maybe? It looks like one of the two has a sort of convex tang, which is a style that got less and less common beyond about 1820.

Maybe some comparisons and definite examples would be useful here.

First, a razor from the late 1700's to very early 1800's.



(also a damn fine shaver!)

It's a John Shepherd 'Wolf' branded razor. This style with very little division between blade and tang seems to have died out at the turn of the century, but it's hard to really know for sure. Either way, they definitely weren't made after 1820, because I've never seen a manufacturer that got started then who made one. (If someone can prove me wrong here, I really look forward to it!)

Next up:



William Teal and Joseph Hives. Both manufacturers got their start in the 1700's and then never show up in a directory again. Joseph Hives never showed up in a directory, and the only information about him comes from apprentice registries and this razor (I think I've seen one other).

The Teal razor might possibly be late 1700's. It came from a very old barn in the north east as part of a lot that included revolutionary war era guns, and we really just don't know what sort of variety there was in Sheffield-made razors in the late 1700's. I doubt very much they were all like the Wolf razor.

Features to note in these two: the blades are very smiley. Curved, even. Also, the Hives razor has that neat little bit of ornament around the tang which shows up in some of the Smith's Key illustrations.

On to ...



Rhodes & Champion. These you can be pretty sure of, as David Champion shuffled off into the hereafter in 1817. Oddly, that didn't stop Ebenezer Rhodes from selling the patented frameback he bought from Bennington Gill in 1824 as 'Champion's Patent'.

Rhodes needed money though, since he was using the razor business to bankroll his true calling as a writer. He put on a number of plays, but his most enduring work was 'Peak Scenery'. It's a book of prose descriptions of the landscape in Derbyshire. As riveting as that sounds to modern ears, it was about as popular in its time. Were it not for wealthy friends, Ebenezer Rhodes would likely have died in the poorhouse.



Which brings us to this pair of Clark & Hall razors. The one in the black pressed horn scales is almost certainly post-1820 (if my memory serves, the scale presser who made the fancy scales wasn't in business until 1822). The much grungier one below is probably from our target period 1805-1820, emphasis on the first ten years of the range. That blade style just doesn't seem to have been done by post-1820 manufacturers.

Also noteworthy -- the later Clark & Hall has a very London-styled tail. I hardly ever see those on Sheffield-branded razors (but regularly on Sheffield-made razors for London firms).

(continued in next post, I hit the image limit.)

(cont'd)



A Brittain, Wilkinson & Brownell and a rare Styring & Co.

Jonathan France was primarily a file cutter, but was a partner in the company with Brittain, etc. Apparently not enough a partner for him to get a masthead listing, but his mark was useful as this razor indicates. He died in 1825, but my gut instinct tells me the razor dates to 1815ish due to the number of design flourishes that weren't much fashionable into the 1820's.

William Styring, Joseph Hadfield, and Joseph Harrison made up Styring & Co, but the company was dissolved in 1811 when Harrison left.

There are a lot of razors in this basic style that I suspect are from roughly the same time period. Handle enough of these things and you develop a sense of it. It's utterly unscientific and not-documentable, but that's why it's useful to use examples with very solid documentary evidence (Styring, much moreso than France, here). As an side, 'Refined Steel' and the '& Co.' both seem to have seriously diminished in prevalence during the Regency period and, I think, ceased altogether by 1820. So -- 'refined steel' is a pretty good 'gut instinct' identifier for the period.



Here's an early Robert Wade razor compared to an 1840's Joseph Elliot. At first glance, they look very similar. However, the way that Wade razor is ground is subtly different. It's a shallower concaving for one, and the blend back into the tang is much more gradual, a sort of echo of the old tangless design.



Here's the same Wade with another Elliot of the same make & model and about the same time, except it's been abused to hell and back. If you pay close attention to the grind lines you can see the difference, but this is advanced level identification.




Here we move into iffy territory. I'm pretty certain the Wostenholm on the bottom is from before 1820. I'm pretty sure the G. Wostenholm at the top is from after 1820. This falls into the category of 'feel'. Pappy Wostenholm was definitely cranking out razors in the pre-1820 time period, and Wostenholm the Much Richer took over. Things are a little wiggly with the Wostys. It used to be Wostenholme, and it's not clear when that last 'e' got dumped. In any event, the Wostenholm that most razor aficionados think of started working for his dad in the early 1820's and became a Freeman in 1826. I would guess that striking razor at the top dates to then.

The one on the bottom was rescaled, so the scales can't be a good identifier. It's just the shape of the blade that makes me think pre-1820.

But enough of the wishy-washy and back to concrete examples.



The Greaves on top has also been rescaled -- it's an interchangeable blade set with 5 blades in a strop box, and you'll notice there are no sons involved, which means it dates to the first decade of 1800, and probably the first half of the first decade at that.

The other is also stamped with Acier Fondu and looks like a kissing cousin to the tangless design of the late 1700's, and that's about what I'd guess the date on it is.

I don't think that a lack of 'Sheaf Works' on a razor proves it was made before the Sheaf Works simply because I have post-Sheaf Works razors that don't mention the factory anywhere on them (specifically the Lexington Razor, which was made in the 1830's, the Sheaf Works is not mentioned on the blade, the scales, or even the paper artwork glued to the original coffin box).

And finally, something a little left-field.



Take my word for it, the stamp on the razor is 'Au Singe Violet' -- The Purple Monkey.

This is a French razor, a part of an officers kit. It was sold by Napoleon's goldsmith, Martin-Guillaume Biennais -- The Purple Monkey was the name of his shop. It was made toward the end of the Napoleonic Wars -- probably right at the end, which is why it still exists (IE, the officer it was given to did not freeze to death in a ditch in Russia). More likely than not the razor itself was made in Sheffield. The blade strongly resembles a particular design in Smith's Key.

Noteworthy: I have not disassembled this razor to clean it, nor am I likely to. The pins are silver, as are the domed washers, inlay, and very unusual wedge -- that rim of silver at the point of the scales is a part of the solid silver wedge. Also, the scales are cracked on the pile side and the previous owner very carefully backed and glued them with an incredibly thin piece of wood.

Thanks so much, Zak!
Most excellent!

The Ghost of Judge Lummus called....he wants his collection back!

Originally Posted by AntiqueHoosier

The Ghost of Judge Lummus called....he wants his collection back!

Of the razors pictured, only the Hives belonged to him!

(I think I only have two others)

Originally Posted by Voidmonster

Of the razors pictured, only the Hives belonged to him!

(I think I only have two others)

I've owned a fair amount of (presumed to be based on the markings) Lummus collection razors, and shamefully maybe only one or two still around in boxes somewhere, unseen for years now.

He was definitely an omnivorous collector, if the funny little dots are to be believed. The Hives I've got came from Robert Doyle who definitely did buy -- and auction off -- a chunk of Lummus' collection. The others came from eBay or trades. I'm not even sure I've still got them.

For one thing, Lummus ground the everloving hell out of his razors.

Well that was easy, first razor I pulled out the closest box haha! This one doesnt belong here however, Steer & Webster brass frameback. Back in the box with ya!