Thread: Any experts on French Razors out there?

I'm no expert, and razors could be bought with the name of the retailer, just like many another thing in those days, but there most certainly were numerous French razors of high quality. Here is the link to the Coupe-chou Club. It is entirely in French, but even if you don't speak it, you can do a search, and any translation website will tell you enough to know if you have a French razor.

Coupe-Chou Club

There seem to be psychological reasons for many people to have a deep suspicion of French engineering operations in general. But in a good many areas of technology, the facts do not bear this out. They seem to have a great flair for ergonomics, and what could be more relevant to the straight razor than that?

Google Maps can be a big help. Angers and St. Aignan are towns in France, "fils" means Son, and "No." meaning Number, with the o in superscript, might be in Spanish or Italian, but is more likely to be French, and not German or English. Two initials back to back is often found in French, and F as the second letter could easily be "frères", meaning brothers. As the second it could be "Français" for French, or "Fabrique" for factory. Manufrance, for example, was the Manufacture Française des Armes et Cycles de St. Etienne, so FF could easily be Fabrique Française de Something Else.

Hi Caledonian,
Check the post I just did before yours, you can see clearly the mark of the maker and it's the same as the receipt and it's indeed a french razor. I'm french and I participate to the coupe-chou Club forum and it's one of the member how gave me the info.

Originally Posted by Nanook

it would be a Thuillier-Lefrant from Nogent en Bassigny and would be around 1920-30.

According "La Coutellerie, La Fabrication Ancienne & Moderne, 1904", in 1862 M.Thuillier-Lefrant, Nogent was in business yet.

There are some excellent lesser know French straight manufacturers.

Rameau
A. Doupeaux
David Issard (no link to Thiers Issard that I've been able to find)
Vincent
Fontenille
Dumas
Sabatier
Aubril
P. Frittsse

I found another interesting document here an ad from the maker. It says that the company was founded in 1828. The letter was written in 1930 and it says that the company has been in cutellery for over 100years and that they ere making razor blade (interchangeable like in the ad I think) for 25 years.
Rasoirs et lames Phenix | KMP Pub : Publicités anciennes - 44810 Heric

Originally Posted by Nanook

I found another interesting document here an ad from the maker. It says that the company was founded in 1828. The letter was written in 1930 and it says that the company has been in cutellery for over 100years and that they ere making razor blade (interchangeable like in the ad I think) for 25 years.
Rasoirs et lames Phenix | KMP Pub : Publicités anciennes - 44810 Heric

Nanook, thank you so much!

Originally Posted by johnmrson

Sabatier

I've seen a few of those names, but the one that surprises me is the venerable Sabatier. It doesn't surprise me that there are Sabatier rasoirs, the problem is that there were two families named Sabatier in Thiers who managed to spin off something like 24 different coutelleries entitled to use the Sabatier name.

Thiers-Issard own **** Elephant Sabatier and still make superb kitchen knives.

Here's another site that might interest you. This is a list of all the cutellery maker in the region of thiers in France and many other french region. It's in french but it is mainly name, let me know if you need help for the translation.
Les Marques des Couteaux de THIERS

Thank you again Nanook