A little knife trivia

[JAlexander]

I recently got a good deal on the 1958 reprint of the catalog of cattle brands from the Texas Centennial Expo (yeah, my wife thinks I'm crazy, too) and while I was paging through it I ran across an interesting connection to our world of pocket knives. I figured it was relevant enough to share. Sorry for the blurriness of the photograph, but I wasn't going to force the book flat in a scanner.

I don't recall running across any IXL knives while browsing antique stores in Texas, but then again, I wasn't looking. Anybody know when IXL knives were first exported to the USA?

James

 

[zerogee]

IXL (often written as I*XL) was the primary trademark of George Wostenholm & Son Ltd of Sheffield, England - their product had no doubt been exported to America for some time, probably thru various distributors, but they really began to take it seriously in 1830, when George Wostenholm the third himself came to New York with a bunch of stock and sold it off while setting up the beginnings of their dealer network - America would soon become by far the majority of George Wostenholm's business. Of interest is that in 1850 George Wostenholm acquired their primary "factory" called The Washington Works on Wellington Street, Sheffield. Hmmm...

 

[DennisStrickland]

ixl was coming in america way back to early 1800s. if you recall the old bowie knives were imported way back to 1820s. the english supplied much of our cutlery thru 1920s. it was 19oo before american pocketknives became dominant.