Captain ARAD, meet Captain Cox: A Haywood 7 day set in ivory.
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Oh friends. Oh, this set. This is the kind of thing that gets me out of the bed every morning. There are stories within stories in this set.
This will be necessarily incomplete because I have a mountain of research to do yet, but I'll get you through the basics.
To begin with, it took exactly 6 days to get from Plymouth England to Oceanside California. I've never gotten an international shipment so quickly (other than that clandestine absinthe that was shipped via courier, but that's for another time entirely).
Right there, in that first picture, is one part of the story. The cutlery part -- Joseph Haywood. Haywood was born back in the early days of the Sheffield explosion, 1822, and apprenticed young. There's a lot of in and around and about with uncles and mothers, but the end result is that in 1845 Haywood was selling his own goods. Edge tools, files, the usual Sheffield cutlery business. He also owned the mark for George W. Hinchliffe, who was probably his uncle. He moved around. The address listed here:
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Dates the set firmly after 1880.
And what a set it is. Despite not being very far up the hierarchy of fancy goods for the time, it was definitely not cheap item.
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I've wanted a razor with a worked spine like that for a long time, and now I suddenly find I have seven of them. And I'm going to have to hone all of them. Crap.
They're in the state I got them in, minus a mountain of dust and the little bit of oxidation I sanded off the days of the week (and there's a reason I do this -- I sanded oxidation off the DAYS OF THE WEEK! ABSTRACT CONCEPTS CAN BE SANDED!)
The box needed to be glued back together -- which was quick and easy to fix -- but the leather desperately needs to be reconditioned or somehow at least stabilized. I'm not very keen to do super fancy restoration on any of this, but I'll get to that soon enough.
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Haywood's teakettle logo charms me. I can't help it.
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I wish the velvet were in better condition, because that's a lovely shade of blue. Just imagine your own David Lynch joke here. It'll be at least as good as whatever I come up with, probably better.
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This set was loved. Note that one odd man out with the brass pin (Thursday, for those keeping score). That one was repaired, and I think the scales were replaced, but they're nearly an exact copy of all the others. It was a very good, very careful repair.
And speaking of the scales...
(cont'd)
