Thread: Solingen Razor Factories, c1906

While looking for information on a particular maker, I came across this article which details factory conditions, living conditions and earnings of workers in the Solingen cutlery trades, including razor makers.

The coronation of King Haakon and Queen Maud of Norway are mentioned, so I suppose the article wasn't too far away from that date (1906).

The firms of Henckels and D. Peres are mentioned in the text.

BTW, Peter Daniel Peres was the first non-guild razor maker in Solingen and is famed for introducing the "black polish" to Solingen (after 8 years of attempting to crack the formula) - a combination including iron oxide and alcohol invented by englishman Robert Hinchliffe in 1760.

The relative wages of grinders, engravers, etc is quite interesting.

Regards,
Neil

Interesting read. Thanks for posting.

My dear Neil,

Thank you for taking the time to provide the Dovo information. Fascinating.

Regards,

Obie

That's a great piece of information, thanks.

Can anyone tell me more about Daniel Peres? Perez is Spanish while Peres is Portuguese. In Portuguese, when a name ends in "s" it means "the son of", while in Spanish they use the letter "z". So, Peres or Perez means "the son of Pero", which is an ancient name of Pedro (the Iberian equivalent to Pierre or Peter).
This gentleman carried a Portuguese name, I wonder if he was Portuguese, or descendant from Portuguese family in Solingen, how cool is that?

Only thing I can tell you about Peres razors is that I have one and I can't get it sharp to save my life.

I'd also be interested in a review of a Peres razor to see if this one I have is worth hanging on to / getting professionally honed.

Interesting article. I wonder how many of these jobs have now been replaced with automation?