From the early 1800s until the 1930s, China – the Central Kingdom – did a lot of trade with the west. Not all of it willingly, but a lot of it, in the various types of merchandise, materials and curiosities that Western audiences were very eager to acquire: Chinese silks, Chinese porcelain, Chinese tea, various oriental spices, and even Chinese silverware!
These various types of merchandise – furniture, porcelain, silks, silver and suchlike – were known as “exportware” – because they were deliberately made in China, for export (or internal sale in the Concessions) to Western markets. Today, such articles of exportware can be very valuable, and are often sought-after by collectors. A couple of weeks ago, I landed myself my own small piece of exportware – a lovely pair of Chinese export silver chopsticks.
This lovely pair of chopsticks, in solid silver, feature beautiful twisting grips that taper down to thin, cylindrical points, and have lovely carved rings set near the base of the grips, to show where one’s fingers should grip the chopsticks when in use. A set like this would’ve been purchased as a personal set, for individual use – either by the buyer, or as a gift for someone else. Fancy silver chopsticks like this would not have been cheap, but they would certainly have been treasured!
Sets like these are typical of those made in the late 1800s through to the early 1900s, and they’re sometimes identified as “travel” chopsticks. This is because, as you’ll have noticed – they are chained together at the top!
Chaining the sticks together is a deliberate act, and would’ve been done when the chopsticks were being made. It’s actually a far more common practice than you might think, and I’ve seen it done with several sets of antique personal-use chopsticks such as these, in the past. The whole point of the chaining is to prevent the sticks from being separated, and to stop them from being lost. This appears to have been common with personal silver sets like this – but less common with other sets – I’ve never seen this practice applied to antique chopstick-pairs which weren’t made of silver, suggesting that they weren’t valuable enough to warrant this extra effort of making, and then securing, a chain to the top of the sticks to prevent separation.
Using the Chopsticks
So, does the chain get in the way of anything? Does it make the chopsticks harder to use?
Honestly? No!
When held properly and used correctly, the back-end of a pair of chopsticks never moves more than a fraction of an inch, so provided that a proper grip is maintained – the chain will never pose an issue to effective chopstick use – and you’ll be able to eat quite comfortably!
If anything, the fact that the chopsticks are made of silver, is one of the main issues in using them. The silver is really thin, which can make the sticks fiddly to hold, and the tips are really smooth – which means there may not always be sufficient friction to grip the food – so basically eating noodles with these things is an exercise in futility…but anything else that isn’t slick or slippery, should be no more difficult than eating with any other chopsticks.
How old Are They?
The fact that they are export silver chopsticks would mean that a set like these are at least 100 years old. The wear on the silver and the discoloration just from regular use, is enough proof of their age already. On top of that, the heavy use has not only given the sticks a lot of wear and patina, but they’ve also meant that neither stick is 100% straight, either!
Rolling, pressing, and applying gentle pressure has eased out the worst of the warping, but they’ll never be 100% straight…maybe 95%, but that’s about it. This is the sort of wear that only comes from regular use over many, many decades of ownership, and I think it only makes them more quirky and desirable, as well as providing proof of their age.
You honestly never know what you’ll find when you’re browsing the flea-market.
I picked up this neat little walking stick about a week ago!
Normally I don’t buy walking sticks, but I do find them fascinating. For the longest time, walking sticks of one variety or another were popular all over the world, from China to Chile, England to America, Europe to Ecuador! A tradition dating back literally thousands of years, people carrying walking sticks has been done for all kinds of reasons – fashion, infirmity, self-defense, to complete an outfit, to make a statement, to fend off attack, or to assist in traversing rough terrain.
Walking sticks were at their height of popularity in the 1700s, 1800s, and early 1900s, when people were traveling and moving around more than ever.
A typical walking stick is comprised of three or four parts:
The Handle
The handle is the grip at the top of the walking stick. It’s either a curved crook, a T-shaped ‘derby’ handle, or else some kind of knob or grip. This can be as elaborate or as simple as you like – topped with brass, sterling silver, ivory, bone, glass, pearl, or even solid gold – if your pocketbook can stretch that far!
The Collar
The collar is the area directly beneath the handle. This serves a mostly decorative function, and is designed to make the transition between the handle to the body of the stick more pleasing. Collars were usually brass, silver, or gold. Sometimes, they were engraved with things like dates, names, dedications or inscriptions, if, for example, the stick was a gift or presentation, or if the owner wished to identify it in the event of loss.
The Shaft
The main body of a walking stick is known as the shaft. It can be made of almost anything! Wood, bamboo, rattan, bone, glass, or even ivory!
The Ferrule
The ferrule is the spot at the very bottom of the walking stick. Today, most ferrules are made of rubber or leather, but in times past, ferrules were often made of sterling silver, brass, or steel. The point of the ferrule is to protect the base of the shaft from contact with the ground. Constant striking and scraping would damage a stick very easily, and cause the shaft to crack, split, or shatter! To stop this, the ferrule took the impact of any strikes against the ground, and prevented the stick’s base from wearing out. If or when a ferrule wore out – it was easily replaced – without damaging the stick itself.
The Stick I Found at the Market
So what about this stick? What’s the story behind that?
Well, as I said, I picked it up at the market – cheap – because the handle was badly damaged. It was cracked and worn out, and had been broken at some point. It had been replaced at one point with a new walking stick header or topper, but this was only crudely attached – and came off easily – as you can see.
That being the case – why did I buy it?
Well, I was interested in it for a number of reasons…
One – the body or shaft was of an unusual material – it may not be immediately obvious – but it’s actually made – not from wood – but from bamboo! You might notice that the stick is not fully straight – it curves and bends slightly, due to the nature of the bamboo when it was growing – which makes the stick a little quirky!
Two – the stick had a silver handle – and I liked that. I’ve always liked silver, and that attracted me to it. But lots of walking sticks have silver handles – so what? Well – this led me to the third part of the stick which I liked…
Three – the collar! This was what really interested me in the stick – not the handle, not the fact it was broken, not the bamboo – but the collar. The reason I was so interested in it was because the collar (and presumably the original handle, at one point) featured all kinds of Chinese motifs on it, which I thought was really cute! Wrapped around the top of the stick was a silver collar – roughly an inch and a half wide – and it was festooned with trees, palms, and figures dressed in old, Chinese attire, and little Oriental-style buildings in the background in hills and streams…and I thought – it’s adorable! And so topical – for fairly obvious reasons!
So after solid haggling, I got it half-price, and walked off with it, swinging it through the air for fun.
Fixing the Handle
Despite my best efforts, repairing the – by now – at least twice-previously-repaired handle – was just not going to be easy. And yet – also surprisingly easy – all at the same time.
The original handle was just a flat plate across the top of the collar – this much I could tell just from looking at the stick – there was no attachment point for anything more elaborate like a crosspiece or a chunk of ivory, etc. This had been replaced at some point by a dome-top, which was all dinged up from use – striking against things and so on. This was wobbly and loose, and when I got it home, it eventually fell off altogether when the stick was unbalanced and hit the floor!
That was when I realised just how badly the replacement repair had been made! The replacement knob was just cheap, silver hollow-ware – basically a shell of paper-thin silver which had been stuck on the top of the stick – and stuck badly, too, if one good knock was all it took to break it off! And when I mean the silver was paper-thin, I mean literally paper thin – you could rip it in half with your fingers – and it was completely hollow underneath, to boot. All in all, a completely useless repair for a part of the stick which is designed to take the full weight of the user.
Fortunately, my little mishap did not damage the reason why I bought the stick in the first place – the beautiful silver collar.
Repairing the Damage
The real challenge came with repairing the top of the stick – and this proved to be surprisingly easy to do. I found some silver of a suitable shape, size and thickness in the box of broken silver scraps which I keep aside whenever I buy antiques. In digging through it, I found a large, sterling silver cufflink with a broken toggle. I broke the toggle off with a pair of pliers, and placed it over the damaged spot on the top of the stick – it matched up perfectly!
Mixing up some epoxy, I filled the gap left by the broken handle, with enough glue to completely flood any gaps, so that we wouldn’t have another cave-in. The overflow from this gap-filling would be sufficient to seat the new handle-topper over the damaged area, and make the stick resemble, more or less, what it would’ve looked like when it was new, back in the 1800s. It was just a matter of sticking it down, and adjusting the positioning so that the rim of the new header lined up with the uppermost rim of the decorative silver collar.
Some slight misalignment was inevitable (because of the aged nature of the materials involved, and the previous damage to the handle), but I’d say it was 99% successful! I found a suitable place to stand the stick upright, and left it alone overnight to cure.
Come morning – the stick was good as new!
The diameter of the old cufflink which I used as a handle-topper is SLIGHTLY wider than the width of the collar-top at its widest point. This means that now, the handle flares out ever-so-slightly, and tapers down towards the collar – which is a really nice effect. Plus, it allows you to hang the stick easily between your fingers without having to actually grip it.
The slightly off-kilter nature of the repair matches with the battered look of the collar underneath, and doesn’t make it look like anybody was trying too hard to be perfect with a flawless repair that would be jarring with the overall appearance of the stick. Last but not least – being able to use silver – a proper, solid piece of silver – to fix the handle meant that both the collar, and the handle were now made of solid silver which was not going to break off, crack, rip off or drop off anytime soon – and the stick should be good to go for another 150-odd years!
What do we Know about this Stick?
A stick like this is certainly no modern manufactured geriatric support aid. Oh no. Definitely not.
A stick like this has age, has use, and has been around the block more than a few dozen times!
Looking closely at the stick, there are several indicators of age, and also, of country or region of origin.
On top of that there’s the silver collar. It’s festooned and decorated with all kinds of Asian themes – people in robes with Asian features, Asian-style buildings and flora, and just a whole ‘Oriental’ vibe. This overt Oriental decoration points to it being made in Asia (if the shaft material alone didn’t suggest that!) – and most likely for export to the West.
The collar has no hallmarks on it – Asian silver in those days was rarely marked – and when it was, they wouldn’t have bothered with something as insignificant and small as a walking-stick handle! On top of that, there’s all kinds of minor damage to the stick. For example – the shaft has loads of cracks in it from where the bamboo has dried out (I filled and clamped some of these with glue, to improve the structural integrity of the stick) – and the silver collar has all kinds of little dings and chips from where it’s been handled – again – not something you can easily fake.
Last but not least – is the length of the ferrule.
The ferrule is the cap at the bottom of the stick, remember? And this can be used in dating the stick.
Later sticks, those made in the late 1800s and into the 1900s, typically had shorter, less substantial ferrules, while earlier sticks from the 1700s and earlier 1800s, had longer, more substantial ferrules.
Why?
Well – it was because of the state of the roads and transport at the time! Paved roads is something we take for granted today, but for most of history, very few roads – in town, and especially in the country – were ever paved. And if they were, they were paved with cobblestones or similar, which were hard-wearing, to the point of destruction! Because of this, earlier walking sticks needed thicker, longer ferrules to guard against the scraping and chipping on cobbles or bluestone pavers, and to protect against mud, ooze, dirt and water, which could rot the base of the walking stick. To stop this from happening, sticks were made with thicker-based ferrules with longer shafts covering more of the walking stick to give extra protection.
As paving improved and roads became less hazardous, walking stick ferrules became smaller and smaller, since less of the shaft had to be protected from mud, water and grime now, and the hard wear on the tip was less likely.
Since this stick has quite a substantial ferrule (nearly two inches!) it had to be an older one, since a more modern stick would only be about half an inch, to an inch at most.
All in all – a beautiful antique, and one with a fascinating past which we can only guess at.
These four little ivory fellas (yes, they are ivory) were my latest score at the flea-market, and they are a miniature representation of the famous “Four Wise Monkeys”.
Parodied endlessly in memes, cartoons, statues, and kitschy little nicknacks like this, the wise monkeys have been around for thousands of years! But who are they? What are their origins? What are their names? Where do they come from? Today, we find out.
Hey, Hey! We’re the Monkeys!
Before we begin, just who are the “four wise monkeys”?
From left to right, we have: See no Evil (covering eyes), Hear no Evil (covering ears), Speak no Evil (covering mouth), and finally – Do no Evil (covering crotch).
The Four Wise Monkeys date back thousands and thousands of years, and are said to be the embodiment of four virtues or beliefs to lead a peaceful and harmonious life – namely, not to badmouth others, not to listen to evil thoughts or deeds, not to speak ill of others, and not to commit unlawful acts. But where exactly do these four most famous of tenets come from?
The first-ever hint of anything relating to the four monkeys (or at least, of their four sayings) dates back to the second century B.C.E, and was written out as “Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety“, giving us, not only the four sayings, but also, the original order in which they were positioned.
But who was it who spoke so eloquently, so deeply, and yet, so succinctly? A Chinese philosopher of almost mythical status – that’s who! A man, who, even two thousands years after his death, is still remembered to this day.
A man named…Kong Qiu…but whom his students called “Kong Fuzhi” – and who is known to western audiences by the Latinised name – Confucius! Yes indeed!
The statement above is taken from Confucius’s “Lun Yu“, or Book of Selected Sayings – usually translated into English as the Analects of Confucius, or Sayings of Confucius – a series of sayings or proverbs recorded by Confucius, and by Confucian scholars during, and after his lifetime.
The Origin of the Monkeys
‘Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage‘. Thus spake the English poet Richard Lovelace, in 1642.
While that may be true – so is it also true that one series of proverbs from some old Chinese guy, do not immediately translate into a cutesy little catchphrase, which may or may not be uttered by four adorable little primates, sitting in a row.
And if that be true – then where did the four monkeys come from? Who are the famous ‘Four Wise Monkeys’? What’s their origin?
The answer? Japan!
In Japanese culture, the monkeys were originally three in number, and were known as Mizaru (see no evil), Kikazaru (hear no evil), Iwazaru (speak no evil) and finally – when a fourth monkey was included – Sezaru (do no evil). It’s because of this Japanese origin that the monkeys are traditionally depicted as Japanese Macaques – a breed of monkey which is – as the name suggests – native to Japan.
While the saying (or a variation of it) likely came from China, the addition of the monkeys or macaques, is almost certainly Japanese. So – where did that come from?
It’s believed that the first depiction of the monkeys comes from the Nikko Tosho-gu shinto shrine, in the Japanese city of…Nikko…as the name suggests. The depiction was in the form of wooden carvings on a doorframe – and these carvings are believed to be the first artistic representation of this kind. The shrine dates back to 1617.
Over time, the three (sometimes four) monkeys became synonymous with the Confucian saying, and the two were melded together as being one and the same, even though they started out as two entirely separate entities – the phrase coming from China, and the monkeys from Japan.
Back to the Ivory Monkeys
OK, so much for the history. But what about these four little guys themselves, what’s their story?
In all likelihood – they’re a tourist piece. Ivory carvings made from leftover chunks of scrap ivory used to make larger items, were very popular in the 1800s and early 1900s as cheap, kitschy little souvenirs. These were sold in countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and so-on, to Western tourists coming from Australia, the Americas, Britain, or Europe. Even back then, ivory was very expensive, so every last piece was used, and what was used, was used sparingly. That’s why even something this small (the little monkey-figures are only 1.25 inches tall!) was considered worthwhile to carve – purely due to the scarcity and expense of the material.
All in all, it’s a cute little piece, and I’m very happy to add it to my collection of antique ivory.
With the closure of one of my local antiques centers imminent, a lot of the local dealers have been trying to liquidate their stock, and this involved some of them taking it to the local weekend flea-market to try and sell it off at greatly reduced prices.
That was how I got my hands on this curious little device!
I love anything to do with writing, antiques, history, and silver, and when this little doohickey showed up and scratched all those itches at once – I had to buy it!
Never seen one before? I’m not surprised. They’re not exactly common.
This long, square, silver tube is a device known as a sealing-wax dispenser! It would’ve held a long, square stick of sealing wax, which the user could extend or retract using the sliding silver toggle on the side of the tube.
It was made in England, and has full English hallmarks on the sides, dating it to London, 1904.
The dispenser measures six inches long, and is perfectly square. Inside is a sliding metal collar which is used to grip the sealing wax when it’s pressed into the tube.
But you might ask – why does such a thing exist?
It’s simple, really. Dispensers like this were intended to make the process of melting sealing-wax easier. The extender-slide on the side of the dispenser allowed the user to advance the stick of wax and melt it with a candle or cigarette lighter, while also keeping one’s fingers as far away from the flame as possible – something which would become harder and harder as the stick of wax got progressively shorter. Burning your fingers on hot sealing wax is something you’d never forget doing!…I speak from experience.
Devices for holding, melting and dispensing sealing wax used to be very common in the 1800s and early 1900s, especially with the rise of official government postal systems which made written correspondence faster and cheaper. Along with wax dispensers like these, there were also wax-jacks, and even wax-melters, which had little spirit stoves and spoons for heating, melting and pouring the liquid hot wax.
Part of the reason for such an array of devices specifically for sealing wax was because of the nature of sealing wax itself.
A sterling silver sealing-wax jack
Unlike candle-wax, which is deliberately soft and pliable, for easy melting, sealing wax – traditional sealing-wax, anyway – has an entirely different composition. Along with the wax and the colourant to make it red, black, blue or whatever other colour (red is the most traditional), sealing wax has a third ingredient: Shellac. It’s this shellac which gives the wax its distinctive hardness and makes it harder to melt. This also means that it’s harder to break, which keeps the letter or parcel more secure once sealed. And if it is broken, then it’s impossible to put back together again, which tells the recipient that the parcel or document had been opened before its delivery.
But it’s because traditional sealing wax is harder, and harder to melt, that all these devices were invented. None of them are strictly necessary (you can easily melt sealing wax without them), but they make a tricky and potentially painful task much easier, and more pleasant overall.
While Montblanc is most famous for being a manufacturer of high-grade writing instruments such as fountain pens, rollerballs, mechanical pencils and…ahem…uh…b…ba…ball…ballpoints…for the longest time, Montblanc has also been a retailer and manufacturer of a lot of other things besides.
In more recent times, Montblanc has started exploring areas such as watches, jewelry, cufflinks, and even cologne, but while some people think that this is a relatively recent trend, with other such niche companies also expanding outwards (Victorinox which manufactures the Swiss army knife, is a good example), Montblanc has been making a lot of other things besides pens, for many decades – not something that most people are generally aware of, because all they ever really associate the brand with, is its pens.
Regardless of this, it does happen to be true, even if the non-pen Montblanc products are less well-known or well-advertised as its luxury writing instruments.
From pen stands to inkwells, rocker-blotters to desk-blotters, notepad holders and portfolio cases, the company produces a lot more than just pens! The fact that these items are not always as fully advertised as its other products means that you can sometimes find some weird, interesting, and different items for sale which have since fallen through the cracks of advertising history.
A good example is something I found on eBay about a month ago, which came to me all the way from the USA – a solid crystal paperweight-bowl, sold by Montblanc, probably at some time back in the 90s.
The difference between Montblanc’s accessories ranges, and its ranges of pens, is that unlike a good portion of its pens, Montblanc’s various ranges of accessories are not part of its regular product-lines. You could buy a brand-new Montblanc #149 in 1952, and you can buy a brand-new Montblanc #149 in 2022. But you can’t buy a Montblanc Meisterstuck inkwell brand new today, or the matching blotter new today. They’re simply not made anymore. You can get them as NOS, NIB condition, from stores which never successfully sold them to begin with – but that’s about the closest you’re ever going to get.
This is why so many of Montblanc’s more obscure products…are…obscure! They were produced for short periods of time, and then they’re just forgotten about!
It was by pure chance that I found this crisp, sleek, rather minimalist glass bowl paperweight on eBay, complete with the original packaging. It’s from Montblanc’s “LifeStyle” collection, which was from a few decades back. Considering that they’re not made anymore, I thought it’d make an interesting addition to my collection of writing accessories.
A bit of research confirmed that the piece was a genuine Montblanc item, and I was also able to find a pretty decent idea of the original sale-price…which sounded frightfully expensive for a fancy paperweight – even if it is trying to be useful by doubling as a glorified snack-bowl! Either way, I estimated that it was, even with postage – a 75% discount – so I decided to buy it. It would take a while to get here from the ‘States, but I was prepared to wait.
And the wait was worth it. The bowl is not, as the photos might suggest, a perfect square. The sides are not straight, and instead taper inwards towards the base. The Montblanc star logo, and the company name are engraved on the base and on one side, of the bowl. Not sure why it isn’t engraved on all four sides, but there it is.
The bowl is surprisingly heavy. It’s large for what it is, but still much heavier than its size would suggest. It’s originally advertised as a “paperclip bowl”, which sounds rather pretentious for something which is basically a glorified snack-bowl, but it is nonetheless a useful and interesting desktop accessory. And it’s certainly heavy enough to stop papers from blowing away – with or without paperclips, or chocolate bonbons – filling up the bowl in the middle!
The bowl itself is hemispherical in shape, and the entire piece is absolutely flawless. There’s no cracks, chips or other damage anywhere on the piece. A few marks from age and grime which were easily polished off, but nothing which marred the beautiful smooth finish of the bowl – and smooth is the key word here – it’s so well-polished that it literally slides across my desk!
Apart from the fact that it exists, that it was in such great condition and came with all its packaging, another thing which surprised me about the bowl was its sheer size! From edge to edge it’s about 4 inches across, and two inches high, so it’s not some insubstantial little trinket, and you could probably store a lot of loose change, or chocolate bonbons or…yeah, even paperclips…in here, if you wished. So while it would’ve been very expensive, and heavy, and rather simplistic, it does have the advantage of being good quality, and of being large enough to serve a practical purpose.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved weird, quirky, interesting antiques – especially anything related to writing – my main hobby.
It’s for that reason that I’ve always wanted to buy a roller blotter.
“A what?” I hear you say.
Yeah, like a lot of people, I didn’t know that roller blotters were a thing, either! But, apparently they are, and ever since I found out that these things existed, I’ve wanted to own one. Problem is, they’re not exactly common, and hardly any pen or stationery companies still make them, so getting your hands on one can be tricky.
The first time I saw one, it was this tiny silver thing on eBay – and god almighty the price was gigantic…probably because it was some vintage thing made by Montblanc. But ever since I realised that they were a thing that you could buy – I had one hanging around in my brain on the back burner as being something that might be neat to add to my collection.
And recently, that dream came true! I was poking around on the internet and found about half a dozen of these things for sale! Antique ones, made around the turn of the century, all with silver handles, and with rollers in various states of…uh…rollability. After scanning over about four or five different options and weighing up condition, price, size, postage, and so on, I finally settled on one! It was a great price, even with the postage on top of it, and it’s certainly a writing accessory that most people will never have seen before – so it’ll be a heck of an addition to my collection!
Of course, anything at that price is never going to be perfect, so naturally, a certain amount of restoration was required before the new blotter could be used. This mostly consisted of a bit of light sanding of the wood, and shaping of the metal to make sure everything was straight and true – and finally – wrapping the wooden roller with some blotting paper so that it could be used.
Affixing the blotting paper to the roller took a bit of ingenuity, to be sure. As there’s no way of sliding a cylinder of paper around the roller, or of affixing it into place, all you can do is cut a strip of paper, wrap it around the roller and then glue it in-place – but not onto the actual wood itself – if you did that, you’d never get it off again! And that might be problematic if you wanted to change the paper later.
What I ended up doing was using a tiny amount of sticky-tape to tape the paper down onto the roller, wrapping the blotting paper around, and then gluing the paper back down onto the starting point of the paper, thereby reducing the chances of the paper slipping off the cylinder.
It’s a bit more work than simply wrapping the paper around the base of a rocker-blotter and clamping it in place or whatever – but it works!
But does this whole roller-thingy actually work? Absolutely, as you can see from the photograph above! So long as the blotting paper is wrapped tightly and secured firmly in place so that it doesn’t unwrap or slide off the roller – it’s a perfectly workable blotting solution.
And it takes up less space on your desk than a traditional rocker blotter!
This is pretty neat, huh? I bought this on eBay about a month ago, as an addition to my collection of writing instruments. I’ve always wanted a drop-action pencil, ever since a friend showed me one in her own collection. One day I was browsing eBay, and found a few which were for sale, and ended up buying this slick, smooth-sided cylindrical deal from the late Edwardian era.
The pencil is in sterling silver, and is made by the famed English manufacturer, Sampson Mordan & Co.
Sampson Mordan – the man, not the company – was an 18th and 19th century English silversmith and inventor. In his youth, he was apprenticed to the equally-famous English locksmith, Joseph Bramah (of ‘Bramah locks’ fame).
Mordan didn’t become a locksmith, but he was fascinated by mechanical doohickeys, and ended up inventing, in the early 1820s – the first ever mechanical pencil! The pencil operated on a screw-type mechanism where by rotating the pencil advanced or propelled the shaft of graphite out of the tip of the silver housing, allowing a person to write with a pencil without getting graphite all over their fingers, and without having to constantly sharpen the point. Since the action of the pencil’s mechanism propelled the graphite out of it, they became known as ‘propelling pencils’.
Mordan made a HUGE name for himself as the inventor of, and chief producer of, graphite propelling pencils! Largely made in sterling silver and gold (he was a silversmith, after all), the Sampson Mordan silversmithing firm started cranking out all kinds of whimsical designs for pencils. In the 1800s, there was no such thing as a portable fountain pen, and the ballpoint was a century away – so having a compact, easy-to-operate writing instrument in your pocket that you could whip out at any moment was very useful. Mordan (and other companies) started manufacturing all kinds of novelty shapes and styles.
You could buy pencils which were shaped like rifles, golf-clubs, cricket-bats, wine-bottles, and polo-mallets! In sterling silver, or in a wide variety of gold.
One of the company’s greatest inventions came out in the late 1800s – the drop-action pencil holder!
Pencil-holders had existed before Mordan, but they were all slide-action. You grasped the barrel of the holder, and then with your other hand, you pulled the slide down the barrel, and the pencil inside slid out, held in place by the clutch-ring inside the mechanism. These were good, sorta, but the need to always have two hands free to operate them was always a bit of a faff!
The drop-action pencil-holder, by comparison, was a big improvement!
The mechanism is very simple, and works entirely on gravity (so long as you have the right pencil size!). After seating the pencil firmly in the circular clutch-ring inside the barrel, you press the release-button on the back of the holder. The whole thing works on a catch-and-release system. Pressing the button both drops the button down, and twists it slightly. This releases the clutch-ring that holds the pencil, and allows it to drop down through the barrel and out the end of the holder, exposing the pencil, and locking the ring in place.
The holder with the pencil extended
When you’re done writing, you press the release-button again, and, with another in-and-twist motion, the clutch-ring is released from the barrel opening and drops back into the base of the holder.
Hence ‘drop-action’. That said, they’re also called gravity-action pencils, because they work entirely on gravity. Since the pencil could be operated entirely by one hand, it became very popular. Such holders were compact, portable, easy to use (which made them great when you were busy and needed to take notes) and economical, because they allowed you to use up the last few centimetres of a pencil before having to throw it out when it at last, wore down to a stub!
Pencil-holders like these started losing favour among writers after the First World War. When fountain pens started coming onto the market, the need to always carry a pencil around with you diminished greatly, and eventually, pencil-holders and propelling pencils started losing ground to the modern mechanical click-action clutch-pencil used today.
The hallmarks on the silver barrel. Originally it was just “S.M.” for Sampson Mordan, but after he died in the 1840s, it was changed to “SM&Co.” for Sampson Mordan & Company. SM&Co. ended in 1941, when the factory in London was bombed by the Nazis during the Blitz
Regardless, antique silver and gold drop-action and slide-action pencil-holders are still popular, and still collected today, for their artistry, their uniqueness, but also for their practicality – unlike the antique propelling pencils which relied on specifically-sized graphite leads or rods to operate – these pencil-holders simply require another pencil!
Such holders do have a few drawbacks – ONE – their small size means that only small pencils fit into them, so you can’t have anything longer than 2-3 inches – TWO – the pencils have to fit into the clutch-ring that holds the pencil-stub in place inside the barrel. This means you have to whittle down the pencil to fit in – THREE – modern hexagonal pencils are a bit fiddly. They still work, but it’s better to use pencils which are cylindrical, instead, since they slide in and out of the holder more reliably. You can use a hexagonal pencil if you want to, however you’d have to round-off the edges on the shaft first, to prevent them from rubbing on the sides of the barrel and jamming the mechanism.
The release-button and the slide-and-lock mechanism may also need some cleaning with a bit of oil for lubrication, but once everything does work, it works very smoothly, with a solid ‘click’ at each end of the slide, to indicate that the pencil has been locked into position.
The final drawback to these pencil-holders is that for them to function – they must be in really good condition. Any big dents or dings on the sides of the barrel will render the holder completely useless, since they would jam the sliding mechanism inside, meaning that the pencil would be stuck in the open or closed position. If you’re looking to buy such a pencil for your own use – always check for dents – even a small one can incapacitate a pencil with relative ease.
If, like the average human being, you consume nutrients on a daily basis, typically in the format of three main meals, then you’ll probably appreciate just how important the subject of this posting is to level of enjoyment that you derive from those three meals a day.
Spices and seasonings!
These days, we’re so used to having such easy access to spices and seasonings to instantly make our foods look, smell, taste or feel better or different, that most of us hardly give a second thought to where they come from, what they are…or even what they look like!
Since most people consume spices in powdered forms, it’s highly likely that, unless you’re a chef, or a really ardent foodie, you’ve never even seen most spices in their raw forms.
In this posting, we’ll be looking at the most commonly used spices present in the world – their histories, uses, origins, and native forms.
So take a palette-cleanser…things are about to get spicy…
A Brief History of Spices
Spices of any variety have been around for literally thousands of years, but antiquity is no guarantee of accessibility. For much of human history, and well into the 1800s, spices were one of the rarest, most expensive things that money could buy – especially in places like Europe, and the Americas. The reason for this was because most spices grew in the Middle East, and Asia, and had to travel phenomenally long distances – hundreds, thousands of miles – by ship, by horseback, by mule-wagon and other things, as a result – just to reach the market of its destination. The time, effort, trouble, and danger involved in all this transport was what made spices phenomenally expensive, and why anything but the most sparing use of said spices, was a show of real wealth and luxury.
Due to the long journeys involved, and the time taken, not all spices could be enjoyed fresh when they arrived in Europe. For example, ginger was almost always either dried, or powdered. Fresh ginger root was nigh impossible to obtain outside of Asia in an age before fast, industrial transport, as it would have rotted by the time it arrived in England from say, India, or China.
It was for all these reasons that spices were so expensive, and why any liberal use of them by anybody apart from the stinking rich, would’ve been rare. It wasn’t until the later 1800s when mechanical means of transporting spices in days or weeks, rather than months, did they become much more readily available around the world. Black Pepper
Black pepper is supposed to be the most commonly used spice in the world. And looking at any restaurant dining-table that you’re ever likely to come across, who would doubt it? But what’s its story?
Black pepper, or Piper Nigrum is actually a flowering vine, and the peppercorns that we find inside our pepper-mills are grown as clumps or strands of corns on these vines, which are native to the Kerala regeion of India. Peppercorn vines can grow up to 30ft high!!
The corns are harvested, dried, broken apart into individual pepercorn kernals, and then sold. While there are three types of pepper – black, white, and green – they all come from the same plant. The difference in colour is due to when, and how the vines of peppercorns are harvested and processed, which effects the end taste and colour.
Cinnamon
Aaah cinnamon. It’s good for cookies, cakes, rolls, and even kooky internet challenges. But what is cinnamon, really?
MMmmmm!! Cinnamon! God, I can smell it already…
Cinnamon comes from a tree which is native to Ceylon, India, and Burma. Specifically, cinnamon is the bark of the Ceylon cinnamon tree, which is native to the island and surrounding countries. The bark is peeled off, rolled into tubes, or ‘quills’, and is then dried. It’s these sticks or quills of cinnamon bark which we buy at the supermarket, and it’s these quills which are crushed and ground up into a powder for cooking with. The strong, sweet, pungent taste made cinnamon a valued spice for centuries, and the price of this rarest and most desirable of spices was astronomical in Europe during the Middle Ages.
Saffron
Sweet, pungent, aromatic, and with that beautiful rich red colour, saffron is, has been, and always will be – the King of Spices.
Since ancient times, saffron has been prized above all other spices. Above pepper, above cinnamon, above nutmeg, above just about everything else. It is the most expensive spice in the world, and one of the most expensive items by weight ever produced.
Saffron is the stigmas (the little antennae-tip-things) that grow in the center of the Saffron Crocus flower. Their bright red colour make them stand out vividly against the purple tint of the flower-petals, and it’s these little stigmas which saffron growers hunt down.
Saffron stigmas and a purple saffron flower
The problem is that each saffron flower only grows three stigmas. And they only grow for about a month every year. To get enough stigmas to dry out to make ONE gram of saffron, you need 150 flowers.
So to get enough saffron to sell it in commercial quantities, you would need entire fields of flowers.
The problem is, because they are flowers, you can’t just harvest saffron any old way. It must be done BY HAND. The delicate stigmas won’t stand up to the aggression of machine harvesting, or even rough hand-tools, so every single little red follicle must be picked manually.
And as I said – it takes 150 flowers to produce ONE GRAM of saffron. So to get one kilo of saffron therefore takes about 150,000 flowers.
Imagine if you had to pick 150,000 flowers in just four weeks. By hand.
Now imagine how much goddamn money you would want for all that effort for something so tiny.
Now you know why saffron costs as much as it does.
Saffron has been harvested the same way today as it has been for centuries. Once it’s harvested, it’s dried, and once dried, it’s packaged, and sold. Saffron has been used as a fabric dye, as a medicine, but most notably as a food flavoring for everything from desserts and tarts in Europe, to curries and rice-dishes in Asia. Is it worth its weight in gold? Not quite. But of all the spices on this list – it’s the one the gets the closest!
Sugar
Mmmm sugar! Sweet, sweet, delicious sugar. Mankind has had a love-hate, mutually destructive relationship with sugar, and it’s one that goes back centuries. Although not actually a spice, and rather a sweetener, I’m including it here as it is a flavour enhancer, nonetheless.
Sugar has been known about for centuries, for thousands of years, although it was little understood at the time. Early cultures called sugar ‘white honey’, since honey – the most common sweetener for much of history – was the only substance that most people could compare it to.
Sugar was originally produced from the sap or juice of the sugarcane plant. Sugarcane was difficult to grow, had to be harvested by hand, and was extremely labour-intensive to process. It had to be crushed to extract the juice inside the cane, then the juice had to be boiled to extract the sugar, and then the sugar had to be refined to remove the impurities. The sweet, dark, sticky syrup that comes from the extraction and refining processes is also used as a sweetener – we call it ‘molasses’.
The biggest drawback to early sugar-production, however – was where it was done. Sugarcane really only grows in tropical regions such as Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean. This meant that the places where sugar could be grown and processed on a large scale were small, and the distances it had to travel to reach its desired markets were immense!
Sugar plantations in places like the Deep South of the USA, and in the Caribbean in the 1600s, 1700s and early 1800s were largely slaveholding plantations, where the backbreaking work of harvesting and extraction was done by African slaves. It wasn’t until the late 1700s and the early 1800s that farmers discovered the ability to extract sugar from sugar-beets as well – which were easier to grow in a larger variety of areas – which caused the price of sugar, once so hard to produce and transport – to plummet – and for sugar-consumption in the U.K. alone, to rise by orders of magnitude just within the lifetime of Queen Victoria.
Mace & Nutmeg
Mmm. Nutmeg. Used on almost everything from the Middle Ages onwards, it’s popular on desserts, baked goods, savory dishes and so much more! But what is it?
Believe it or not, mace and nutmeg are (almost) the same thing! Or at least – they both come from the same plant.
Nutmeg comes from the seeds or nuts of the nutmeg tree, which is native to Indonesia.
So much for the nutmeg! Mace, on the other hand, is the outer covering, husk, or ‘aril’ that surrounds nutmeg seeds. To get nutmeg and mace, the seeds are harvested from the tree, and then the aril (outer covering) is peeled off the seed. The husks are dried for several days, changing colour in the process and these dried husks are what becomes mace.
To use nutmeg, all you have to do is to grate or crush the nutmeg to use it in cooking, baking, or flavouring food. Nutmeg was extremely popular in Europe and America, but its price and rarity meant that it was used sparingly.
An antique, sterling silver nutmeg grater. Both sides of the box are hinged. When not in use, the nutmeg nut is stored inside the box, and when it is being used, it’s grated over the rasp and the powder collects inside before it’s used, then the nut is put back into the box and the whole thing is closed up for storage
The spice was so prized that it was even stored inside purpose-made nutmeg boxes, which usually had built-in rasps or graters used to scrape off the necessary amounts of powder from the physical nut, so that it could be used to flavour food. Often made of solid silver, nutmeg grater-boxes are some of the most expensive antiques for their size in the world, and were usually made in all kinds of whimsical shapes and styles.
Ginger
Everybody loves ginger! From roast meats to curries, from sauces and soups to…gingerbread! Yay!!
Ginger is the rhizome or root of the zingibe officinale flowering plant. It’s use in food and medicine goes back centuries and centuries and centuries, and was first mentioned in text by the legendary Chinese scholar Kong Fuzi...does that name sound familiar? In English, it’s translated as…Confucius.
Yes. THAT Confucius! Confucius says!
And Confucius says – a lot! In particular, he said that he ate ginger with almost all his meals, that it was a digestive aid, and that ginger was imported to China from the South Pacific. In particular, from Oceania, and specifically – from Indonesia and the islands surrounding it. Ginger’s pungent taste made it a popular flavouring, and it has been used in Asian cooking (and traditional medicines) for literally thousands of years. Ginger made its way to Europe in the first century A.D., and was mentioned in the writings of Ancient Roman statesman, Pliny the Elder – who – unlike his nephew – Pliny the Younger – did not survive the 79A.D. eruption of Mount Vesuvius near the Roman town of Pompeii.
Unfortunately, ginger root could not be transported fresh to Europe all the way from Southeast Asia – it would never survive the journey without going mouldy – so the spice was often dried, or even powdered, before transport, so that it could arrive in places like Italy or England in a usable, if not exactly fresh – state. Ginger’s most famous use in European cooking is in gingerbread! The dense, sweet, sticky paste made from flour, ginger, nutmeg, honey and citrus peel was often so viscous that it could be shaped into almost anything – like gingerbread men – or, if your dough was strong enough – even a full-blown model gingerbread house – just like Hansel and Gretel. Gingerbread, just like almost anything sweet and/or spicy in medieval times, was a luxury, and only royalty or nobility could normally afford to enjoy this treat, since the ingredients that made the gingerbread…eh…gingery…cost such astronomical amounts of money.
Cloves
Mmmm!! Cloves! Popular in Asian and Western dishes for centuries, cloves are the dried flower-buds that come from the tree Syzygium Aromaticum – a type of myrtle tree. The tree is – you guessed it!…native to Indonesia! They weren’t called the ‘Spice Islands’ for nothing! Cloves are used in sweet and savory dishes, and clove extract (or ‘clove oil’) is a popular natural medicine, which nowadays is being explored to understand its potential medicinal effects and uses.
Star Anise
Aren’t star anise cute!? These spiky, usually eight-sided spices come from a tree in southern China and have been used for medicine, cooking, flavouring and even cosmetics – for centuries. The name comes from its star-like shape, and because its flavour is similar to the anise flower, from which we get aniseed – another popular flavouring agent. In fact, because star anise tastes so similar to actual aniseed, it’s become a popular flavouring agent in baking, and cooking, and is widely used in things like toothpastes and perfumes, as a cheaper alternative to aniseed.
Cardamom
Originating in India, cardamom is a spice related to ginger, and is grown in the form of pods or seeds of the cardamom plant. Today, it’s more often found in Malaysia and Guatemala than India, but it remains a popular spice in Indian (and other southeast-Asian) cuisines.
Apart from its culinary uses, cardamom is also used as a drug or medicine – it can even be smoked! As medicine, its most common use is as a digestive aid, but it can also be drunk in tea-form to lower blood-pressure, or to help treat fatty-liver disease – sounds mighty useful for something that you might use when you’re busy baking desserts!
Vanilla
Yes, believe it or not, but that thing which flavours your custard tarts, ice cream and other desserts – is a spice!
Raw, dried vanilla beans
Vanilla comes from the pods, or ‘beans’ of the Vanilla Orchid, which is native to Mexico. Believe it or not, but on the “spice rarity scale”, true vanilla flavouring is actually the second-rarest and second-most-expensive spice in the world!…which one is first? That’s right – Saffron!
But how could a spice that’s used in all kinds of desserts, not to mention incalculable quantities of ice-cream – be so rare!?
Like saffron, it’s because real vanilla is bloody hard to grow!
See, for the vanilla beans or pods to sprout, the vanilla flower which produces them, has to be pollinated. If this was left up to nature, it would take forever, and we’d never get the chance to ever enjoy the stuff – but fortunately for us, there are other ways to stimulate a vanilla plant. The first method was discovered in 1837 by a Belgian botanist named Charles Morren. His research led him to the realisation that the vanilla orchid is pollinated by the rare melipone bee, which is native to South America. The problem is that waiting for bees to pollinate the flowers could take forever! Morren tried to speed up the process, but was unsuccessful, and his method failed to bear fruit!…or in this case…uh…vanilla pods.
Surprisingly, the person who DID discover how to grow vanilla wasn’t Belgian, and wasn’t even a scientist! He was a 12-year-old African slave-boy named Edmond Albius! Like Morren before him, Albius discovered that you didn’t need cute little bees to pollinate vanilla flowers – that it could be done by hand. The problem was that Morren’s method was too haphazard to work properly. Albius’s breakthrough was using a stem or stick, or even a blade of grass, to manipulate the flower so that the pollen from the stamen inside the flower could be transferred to the stigma – thereby pollinating the flower!
Nearly two centuries later, and vanilla orchids are still pollinated in this exact same way as little Edmond had done, way back in 1841! The method is easy, and quick, but because it’s so delicate, it’s an operation which can only be done by hand – this is why real, true, authentic vanilla pods are so rare, and expensive – because every single flower has to be fertilised by hand.
Conclusion
And this concludes our foray into the delicious world of spices. Are these all the spices in the world? Certainly not, but they are among the most commonly used. These days, people are so used to getting their spices in powders and packets, containers and bottles, that they tend to forget what they look like, where they come from, or even, how rare and difficult they used to be to obtain. Hopefully this posting has been an informative, entertaining and educational look at how our spices came to be, where they came from, and why they were once among the most valuable commodities in the world.
In the past couple of years, I doubt anybody reading this has had cause to use their passport very much, if at all. Those little red, black, blue and green books have been locked away in drawers, cabinets, strongboxes and safes, secure, snug and out of sight…for the foreseeable future, at any rate.
But where do passports come from? How did they come to be? What’s in them and how have they changed over time? Today, we’re going to take a look at the history behind that little booklet of stamps, scribbles and stickers which follows you every step of the way on your world tours and overseas jaunts.
So please have your document open to the information page with the photograph clearly visible, and let’s begin.
The First Passports
Passports in one form or another have existed for centuries, and early forms of passports date back as far as ancient China, among other places. In Europe, King Edward V is believed to have introduced the first type of ‘passport’ that we might recognise today, in the 1400s. By Tudor times, a century later, the Privy Council was in charge of handling these documents, and it was also at this time that the word ‘Passport’ first started being used, originally two words, as in ‘Pass Porte’, from the French ‘Porte’, meaning gate or doorway (ie – a pass to go through the city gates).
A passport from Qing-dynasty China in the 1800s
Passports were originally quite rare, because few people traveled any great distances, and literacy was low. It wasn’t until the 1800s with the rise of steam locomotives and ocean-going liners that passports started becoming issued on a wide scale. So many people were now moving around that while passports were required, the laws governing their examination, use and checking, were pretty lax – there just wasn’t any point in trying to rigidly enforce the rules when it would cause such a massive backlog at train-stations and shipping ports. For example, on the Orient Express, any passengers boarding the train would surrender their passports not to border-control, but to their carriage steward!
As the train stopped at each crossing along its route, border-guards would seek out the steward in each sleeper-car, examine the passports, stamp them, and then leave again. Checking on the passengers wasn’t considered important, since you already had the documents in front of you to read.
Up until this time, a passport could look like almost anything – early British passports, for example, were just a single sheet of paper! How did they come to be the little booklets which we know today?
A single-sheet passport, from 1815
The modern passport was not designed until a little over 100 years ago!
As I said – laws and regulations surrounding passports were pretty relaxed in the 1800s, and rarely (or at least, only loosely) enforced. This culture changed in the 1910s because of the First World War. After the war, the League of Nations – the predecessor to the U.N., held a conference in 1920 to officially set down the standards for what a passport was, what it had to have, how it operated, and what it would look like. Follow-up conferences in 1926 and 1927 tightened up the definitions, and for the first time in history, what a passport was, did, and would look like – were written down on paper, and internationally agreed to.
Types of Passports
Broadly speaking, there are only a few types of passports: Individual passports (the most common kind that you probably have in your desk right now), official passports (for government officials, etc), and diplomatic passports (for those in the diplomatic service). Previously, a fourth type – the family passport – also existed, where the details of an entire nuclear family might be written down in one document, with a group photograph of all the people mentioned on the information pages. However, these are no longer in use.
An old passport from the Colony of Gibraltar
To differentiate between these various types of passports, each one is usually a different colour, and colours vary by country. Passport colours are usually standardised, and common ones include blue (for example, Australia, the United Kingdom and the USA), red (for example, Malaysia, China, Japan, etc), and green (India, Morocco, and most Muslim countries). While most countries conform to this, not all do – for example, New Zealand passports are black!
A Dutch diplomatic passport
The reason for these standard colours is pretty simple – so that passports can be easily recognised. But also, so that different types of passports can be told apart. For example – which passport is your individual passport? Which one is your diplomatic one? It’d be kinda embarrassing if you had to fly somewhere in your diplomatic capacity and you brought the wrong passport along, because they were both the same colour…whoops! It’s for this reason that, in the United States, for example, individual passports are blue – but official passports are red!
Can you imagine being a passport control agent, and having to remember all these things??
Passport Control
Aaah, passport control. You either love it, or hate it. Some people enjoy it, getting to see all the stamps and stickers fill up their little books – inky souvenirs of their travels around the world, and others are frustrated by the seemingly endless questions and forms. But even here, things have changed over time. The most notable one is in passport photographs.
Early on, passport photographs were not standardised. It was common for men, women and children to wear almost anything, and have almost any expression, while having their passport snaps taken. In fact, it wasn’t uncommon for a passport bearer to simply stick in just any photograph of themselves that they had lying around, so long as it looked like them. Old passport photos show men wearing hats, ladies wearing glasses, kids smiling…what changed?
More stringent passport-photograph regulations are a relatively new phenomenon. For much of their 20th century history it didn’t matter so much, but as more people began traveling – especially after the jet-age of the 1950s and 60s, being able to compare a passport photo to the person holding it became more and more important, since the process had to be done as fast as possible. This is why, in more recent times, passport-photo regulations have become much more strict, so that anything that obscured the face, or anything that obscured a normal, blank facial expression such as hats, scarves, glasses, and cheeky grins – were out.
Thus ends this rather brief look at the history of passports, the one document that we’ve probably used less than any other over the past two years. So while yours might still be gathering dust and cobwebs in a desk-drawer somewhere, at least now you know where, when, and how they came into being.
Checking your Papers – Sources
Information for this posting was gleamed from the following locations…
If you wait around long enough, whatever you want to add to your collection will eventually appear.
And such was the case in December last year, when, after years, and years, and years of searching, I finally landed a beautiful set of cutthroat razors to add to my collection!
I’ve always loved using straight razors, ever since I bullied myself into learning how to use one when I first started shaving. Forcing myself to learn how to use one was one of the greatest little personal achievements of my life.
Ever since then, I’d always wanted to assemble a collection of antique razors. My first dream was to secure a coveted “seven day set” – a cased set of seven matching razors – considered by many to be the pinnacle of straight razor collecting. Such sets are extremely rare, and phenomenally expensive (at time of writing, average price on eBay for an antique set is about $1,000 – $2,500+AUD).
Their great rarity is mostly due to the fact that unless they’re perfect – nobody wants them. A cracked scale, a chipped blade, a broken box – anything but the smallest and most inconsequential of defects causes the desirability, and therefore value, to plummet.
I was lucky enough to land a seven-day set for peanuts, which I purchased from a friend a few years ago. It’s remained one of my most treasured possessions ever since – mostly because I could never afford the price of another one!
The next thing I wanted to add to my collection was a two-razor set – a matching pair of cutthroat razors in their original case. These aren’t as well-known as the fancier, larger, more expensive seven-day sets, but they existed as a more affordable, but still elegant, shaving solution for the man who wanted a nice set of straight razors, without the enormous expense of an entire weekly set.
To understand just how expensive a seven-day set is (and always was), in the United States in about 1900, a full, seven-day set cost, on average, $25.00. A two-razor matched set using the same materials and razors, cost just $7.00-$8.00 – 1/4 the price! This at a time when the average wage was about $15.00 a week. So while seven-day sets remained as status-symbols, the cheaper two-day sets or matched pairs could be in reach of most middle-class men, if they knew how to count their pennies.
S. Hibbert & Son – Sheffield
The company which made my set was S. Hibbert & Son, a cutlery firm based in Sheffield in the UK.
S. Hibbert was Samuel Hibbert, who ran his little cutlery firm with his son, Charles Hibbert, in what was at the time – the cutlery capital of Great Britain. Sheffield was famous for anything with a blade – knives, swords, scissors, pocketknives, cutlery knives, straight razors, surgical equipment…if it cut, stabbed, shaved, or sliced – it was made in Sheffield. Or at least, it was until the 1980s, when the cutlery industry finally collapsed, unable to compete with cheaper Asian imports.
S. Hibbert & Son was established ca. 1890, and remained a father-son venture until 1898, when Samuel Hibbert died, leaving the enterprise to his son. Charles saw his family firm survive into the 20th century, and the firm lasted until Charles’ death in April of 1938.
S. Hibbert & Son would’ve been just one of dozens of little cutlery houses operating in Sheffield at the turn of the 20th century. Such firms were plentiful and competition was fierce, especially when there were a lot of much larger, more famous companies around, like Joseph Rodgers, Southern & Richardson, and George Wostenholm & Sons, to take your business away from you!
A Breakdown of the Set
A General Overview
The set is pretty typical of the kind manufactured in the U.K. and the U.S.A., and in Germany…and in most other cutlery-producing countries around the world at the turn of the last century. The razors are a matched pair, originally both with ivory scales. One razor had its scales broken and these were replaced with matching celluloid scales when the razor was repaired at sometime in its life. It’s interesting to note that celluloid was invented in the 1850s as a replacement for ivory, so it’s interesting to see the two materials side by side.
The razors are housed inside a wooden box lined with leather on the outside, and silk and felt on the inside. The main body of the box is hinged, with a spring clasp, and has two sets of ridges on either end for holding the razors in place.
The razor blades themselves are hollow-ground, and in great condition for being, at a guess, 130 years old! They’re both punched with the maker’s marks on the shanks, and – this is a nice feature – the spines of both razors are decorated with leaves, and engraved with “1” and “2” – just to prove that they really ARE a set! It’s a cute little additional feature, and I think it makes for a nice extra bit of decoration. It’s certainly not something that you would find on all sets of this type, so it’s nice to have.
Another nice feature is that the razors have been manufactured with what are called “Spanish” points – meaning that the end of the blade is slightly concave, instead of being straight or outwards-curving. Spanish-point blades are pretty rare in modern times, and they’re usually a feature found on antique blades like this.
Faults and Flaws
The only major flaw was a cracked scale, around one of the drilled pivot-holes. Under other circumstances, this might be awful, but it’s actually pretty common with antique razors which have scales made of natural materials. So long as it’s just a surface-crack and is holding together, there’s really nothing to worry about, and if it ever does get worse, it can simply be reinforced with a drop or two of strong glue to hold it together.
The Storage Box
While you can find two matching razors anywhere if you look hard enough, one thing which is definitely much harder is finding the right box or case to put them in. Sets like these came with slim, hinged two-razor cases, similar, but smaller than, the more elaborate seven-day razor kits sold by high-end manufacturers and luxury retailers like Mappin & Webb or Joseph Rodgers.
Cracks around rivet-holes on antique straight razors – especially those with scales made from natural materials like bone or ivory – are extremely common. In most instances, they are nothing to worry about.
The box, like the razors, was in great condition, and a bit of minor cleaning, and a few touch-ups with shoe-polish and a drop or two of glue was all that was needed to render it serviceable once more. In many ways, the box is rarer than the razors. It’s really common for the boxes to be broken, torn up, or even missing parts entirely, which renders them completely unusable.
Purchasing Antique Straight Razor Sets
Buying antique straight razors is pretty…eh…straightforward.
Buying antique sets of straight razors, however, is rather more involved. Such sets usually came in pairs, such as this one, in three-razor sets (which aren’t too common), four-razor sets, which are somewhat more common, and last but not least – the coveted seven-razor sets, also called ‘seven day sets’, with one blade for each day of the week.
The more razors there are in the set, the harder the sets are to buy. Not just because they cost more, but also because there’s more things to go wrong. For such sets to be worth the expense, they have to be in perfect condition – or in as near-perfect condition as you can find them.
Check for issues like cracked or chipped blades (any razors in this condition are completely unusable – ignore them and keep searching), cracked or chipped scales (depending on the damage, this may, or may not be repairable), and any damage to the box or case itself.
Razors made of natural materials such as horn, bone, ivory, and tortoiseshell almost always have some manner of cracking around the pins and pivots, simply due to the nature of the material. If the cracking is light, then there’s really nothing to worry about. Serious cracking may be repaired with the right types of adhesives (if you have all the pieces to glue back together, of course!), but broken scales should be avoided at all costs, unless you’re intending to re-scale the entire set of razors yourself – it is possible to re-scale antique razors – I’ve done it myself – but it takes patience and skill, and is not something to be rushed into.
When looking to purchase a two, three, four, or seven-razor set – make sure that all the razors are there, and that all the razors are matching, and that they’re all in identical (or near-identical) condition. Count the razors, and check each one individually. Skimping on this means that you could end up with something that you don’t want. But if you don’t want it, chances are, nobody else does – and selling a mismatched or broken set is not going to be easy.
Last but not least, check the box or case.
Razor boxes designed to hold sets of razors were typically made of wood, and covered in leather, with interiors fitted out with slots and ridges to hold the razors, padded with felt or velvet, and with the interior lid-linings being done in silk – sometimes, but not always – with the details of the manufacturer stenciled on top in gold leaf. Some sets were not swathed with leather, and you can find cases out there with polished wooden exteriors, sometimes inlaid with brass, ivory, bone, or some other contrasting material, to add a touch of flair and decoration.
Again – check for defects. In particular – damage to the hinges, damage to the clasps or catches, damage to the lock (if there is one), and if the lock (if it exists) has a key. If it doesn’t have a key, you can usually find another to replace it, however.
As always with buying anything secondhand, the better condition something is in, the higher the price is likely to be. Hunt and shop around, compare prices, and weigh up the pros and cons. Sets like these are hard to find, so you’ll have plenty of time to do that! Last but not least – as always – decide what your level of tolerance is.
By that, I mean – how perfect does something have to be, before you’ll buy it? Does it really matter that there’s a surface-crack? Does it really matter that there’s rust? Can it be polished off? Do you have to have a set by this particular manufacturer or retailer? What are you able to fix or restore by yourself? The more you’re willing to compromise on these things, the cheaper the prices become.
Preparing the Razor Set
Once you’ve found a set that you like and can afford, the next thing to do is to prepare it for use.
First – repair anything that needs repairing. Glue any cracks that need gluing, and stick down any loose parts that might peel or fall off. Apply any necessary polish to the leather or wood that the case is made of, and make sure that everything works.
Next, turn your attention to the razors. In most instances, a fine-grit stone will do for sharpening. Once the blade is sharpened, going edge-first along the stone at least 25 laps (back-and-forth = one lap), then either move to an extra-fine stone, or start stropping at least 20 laps – again – back-and-forth = one lap. Your razors should now be ready to use. If they’re tugging or catching while shaving, then they’re not sharp enough. Repeat another 20-30 laps on the stones and another 20-30 laps across the strop to get the edge properly sharp and ready. A straight razor which is ready to shave should cut effortlessly with no force or pressure applied by the user. Your hand is only there to hold the razor and guide it, not to apply pressure.
And there you have it!
My cased pair didn’t require much tinkering before use. A bit of glue and a lot of blowing and dusting, a thorough sharpening and stropping, and it was ready for use. Honestly, these antique razors are pretty low-maintenance when you think about it, and they shave just beautifully.
