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Early Razors and Dating them.....or not
Examples from the presumed 1810s-1820s era. The Greaves is the only one I dated more positively to 1816-1826, and undoubtedly many folks would look at the tail and say it dates toward the latter of that range..... well perhaps. The patent temper being the Greaves' ugly twin brother many would attempt to label with a date earlier based on the tail but who can say for certain?! Thats a lot of assumption based on a small detail and it happens with regularity anytime a razor with an unknown date range for the maker, or for a razor with an unknown maker for that matter. The Barlow Travel razor, similar enough blade shape, tail and scales to those in the same 1810s-1830s range but I don't know any of the dates of operation and which Barlow, James or John and prior to sons etc to be able to date this one. Lots of conjecture on the forums and lots of "that blade is shaped like mine here" whereas dates of operation tell a more accurate tale than blade style don't they?
My rant may be mistaken as complaining if don't clarify the reason for this post. How grateful we all are here for those who know how to dig deeper and who share it regularly! Neil before he passed, Zack, Martin, Scienceguy, just to name a few who regularly share/shared freely. Thank you All!
Early Razors and Dating them.....or not
(cont'd)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.