Thread: +EBRO+ cutlers mark

Good reading there, Tim. Seems Ebro was sold to Kastor who used the Wostenholm name and had to quit.

Rare thing! Ugly, yet rare!

Originally Posted by 32t

Or I have seen mention of the EBRO River!

In Portugal?

Originally Posted by 32t

Yes an enigma.

A person or thing that is mysterious, puzzling, or difficult to understand.

This is about pocket knives but it claims that +EBRO+ was also made by Camillus.

https://www.allaboutpocketknives.com...ic.php?t=48850

Adolph Kastor also owned Camillus for a while, which is why they're saying EBRO was a Camillus mark. It's possible Kastor used Camillus branded razors with the EBRO mark, but it's more likely the compiler of the directory just lumped it all together, the way some sources claim WOLF was a trademark of Joseph Elliot (which is technically true, but you aren't likely to ever find any Joseph Elliot stamped razors with the WOLF mark -- the Elliots bought up a lot of old marks in the 1850's, and I've seen a few WOLF stamped razors that date to that period, but it's the only mark on them).

There was a period where cutlers were registering all sorts of weird marks because surnames had been banned and they'd run out of classics and city names. This ended up with marks like:

BY OF ME, HATBAND, I SAY, ISSA, Y SIR, SHAVEWEL(sp), NORKOPPING, FLAT BUSH, LIKE IT, CUT SHORT, ENBONTEMPS, FEED UPON, HUAUH, GOVENAZZO, KING HEROD, ME HAPPY, NO CREDIT.

From there it went to geometric patterns of letters and symbols.

There was a period where the Cutlers Company tried issuing sequential numbers as marks, but it's kind of hard to get people to remember that 1698 is the mark of William Kippax Bolsolver (a made up example). Somewhere in there you got things like the Greek crosses around EBRO.

EBRO doesn't mean anything beyond being a signifier of whoever owned the mark at the time it was stamped.

I see in the one thread that Durham Duplex bought the mark in 1925.....

Originally Posted by sharptonn

Seems the latter half of Neil's quote was about Wade and Butcher.

But Kastor and Williams worked for/at Wade and Butcher so it is all intertwined.