Thread: Not mine, but an interesting set of Barbers

I saw these go through ebay a while ago and was wondering if anyone had seen any others like them. A set of three, one is stamped John Barber, while the others are stamped with Barber's mark but also 'Sheaf Company'. Also interesting is the addition of a slider on the bottom of the scales that tightens the pivot when slid toward it.

I normally would haven that too but have not updated my page for the last few hrs. Those are a very nice score. I hope someone on here got them! Very unique, the one with the slider..............
Truly collectors items. Possibly ivory but not positive. I especially like the one that says Sheaf.Company, very nice design on it! I know two of them say Sheaf.Company on the but I really like that one plus the groove with the slider is very intriguing on all of them. I just looked them up under sold listings. They were $999 but a best offer was accepted!

Very nice. I like that grove cut into the scales. It is simple and quite practical. Would make it easier to grip the slick ivory scales as well as giving them some decoration and the fact that if it tightens the scales it would lock the blade in place so you would have to worry about it sliding out unwanted.

Book shaped sets, I've seen some of them across the web. Some french members of our forum got one or two.

Do you want me to try to retrieve the pictures ?

I've never seen this kind of cut into the scales however.

Originally Posted by Thaeris

Book shaped sets, I've seen some of them across the web. Some french members of our forum got one or two.

Do you want me to try to retrieve the pictures ?

I've never seen this kind of cut into the scales however.

I've seen book shaped sets, it was really the John Barber / Sheaf Company association and the sliders that caught my attention.

That is "Sheaf Company Patent" perhaps referring to the unusual scales... very interesting to say the least.

When it was up on ebay this set caught my eye as well.

Some weird stuff with these three. The handles are all the exact same shape, but only one is penned. If they were originally sold together, you'd expect all three handles to be plain or all three to be penned. When you add that to the different blades and tang stamps.... I dunno. I can't decided what's original here and what's been swapped or customized. All the same, really unusual and really striking.

The best theory I have is that they were produced for a branch of the Oddfellows while the Oddfellows were illegal in England. Another useful detail about the set is that the spine of the 'book' is designed to look like a generic biography of Queen Anne of Scotts -- basically a book no one would be likely to want to pick up and look at.

The Oddfellows theory is tenuous at best (a sheaf of arrows figures into the order's core symbols). But members were sentenced to transportation during the 1830's, so it's not out of the question that someone would want a fancy set that could be hidden.

I couldn't find any reference whatsoever to a 'Sheaf Company'.

Just happened across this thread. I was the seller.
Got the razors in an estate auction in the UK about 18 months ago.
Can't say much more about them other than they were too unusual for me to use myself.
They went to a really good home - probably one of the world's biggest SR collectors who, from what I saw on the internet, had plans for a shaving museum. Don't know if this has ever been done but there we go.