Under Five Sovereigns

Having a good peek right now Jack - thank you kind Sir!

WOW...check out page 23 - age along with years of service - the whole lot of them - over 50 years service :eek:

The store photos are amazing, yet they do strike a terrible reality as well - especially when reading the quantities.
 
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Campbellclanman said:
Having a good peek right now Jack - thank you kind Sir!

WOW...check out page 23 - age along with years of service - the whole lot of them - over 50 years service :eek:

The store photos are amazing, yet they do strike a terrible reality as well - especially when reading the quantities.
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You're very welcome my friend. Yes, the booklet is very much of its time, and as you say, there is certainly a terrible reality to some of it. Those old fellers would have started work as children, and most of their contemporaries would have died long before from industrial accidents and disease.
 
Jack Black said:
You're very welcome my friend. Yes, the booklet is very much of its time, and as you say, there is certainly a terrible reality to some of it. Those old fellers would have started work as children, and most of their contemporaries would have died long before from industrial accidents and disease.
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I am amazed by the History Jack - and both Sue and I still to this day appreciate your day in educating us the realities of the hardships - hard hard men, and hard hard ladies of the early Sheffield!

" YEARS OF SERVICE...50, AGED 59" is just one example that you point out Jack as Children starting their work, imagine a 9 year old of today starting the work like they did - almost laughable in a sad way!
Thanks again Jack - I am going to come back to this and have a more in-depth read,this should go in Wellingtons Thread as well, maybe Mick hasnt seen this yet?
 
Very interesting! Thanks for the read, Jack.
Amazingly different from today's cutlery industry!
 
I'll tuck this away for a read when I have a chance. Thanks for sharing it!
 
You're very welcome gents, glad it's of interest :)

Campbellclanman said:
I am amazed by the History Jack - and both Sue and I still to this day appreciate your day in educating us the realities of the hardships - hard hard men, and hard hard ladies of the early Sheffield!

" YEARS OF SERVICE...50, AGED 59" is just one example that you point out Jack as Children starting their work, imagine a 9 year old of today starting the work like they did - almost laughable in a sad way!
Thanks again Jack - I am going to come back to this and have a more in-depth read,this should go in Wellingtons Thread as well, maybe Mick hasnt seen this yet?
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It was an absolute pleasure Duncan. I still keep thinking of other things I should have shown you or told you about. For example, opposite those left-luggage lockers we used in the bus station Rodgers' Sheaf Works once stood.



I dare say that Mick will have already read this book, and I wasn't sure whether it was appropriate to his thread or not, but I'd be happy to post the link there too :thumbup:

My paternal grandfather started part-time work at FIVE, and full-time work at seven! :eek:
 
Yes a great read...I am still working on it. The title says it all:eek: Cause we are and your not.
 
Wealth of information and imagery there Jack, much food for thought and daydreaming. Very grateful you could upload it.

Couple of observations: let me get in my time machine and out into that showroom as shown on p.16 please! The Stag store picture I've seen on this Forum already, and it provokes a lot of daydreams. The Tusk room I hadn't seen but I have to admit to more mixed feelings about that... Something really struck me on p.27 . They use the word 'scales' for the handles of a knife, I used to use this word until I got 'corrected' by somebody in the business and allegedly in the know that 'scales' are brass or metal liners. But now I can read from a 1911 original horse's mouth that this was the word they used then. Good enough for me, back to scales it is! I've never fancied the term 'covers' as this to me implies something that can be quickly changed or hides something...:D Also on p.27 they lay weight on the need to let materials for scales mature or age. This extends even to celluloid types (2 years wait) and I found this significant. Even very old Cell knives can be found in a stable condition and this may be why. This maturing/waiting aspect can especially apt for horn knives. I've seen some horn knives from the 1850s in very OK shape and yet some of their modern counterparts can be in a pitiful state of warp/shrink after only months or a couple of years. I've long suspected that curing techniques may have been lost but now it could be a simple maturation thing, well, after all you can't drink decent whiskey or brandy unless you let it be for a few years!:D Could make sense with natural materials as well.

They stress their defining notion as the maintenance of quality over mere price, this too is significant, they also note that the Rodgers name gets pirated by inferior marques but the discerning consumer won't be palmed off by this without the unique trade marks on the tang! How tragic they (or Sheffield as a whole) were unable or unwilling to maintain quality first in the decades that followed this catalogue. This quality is, they plainly admit, also due to the diligence, skill and loyalty of their workmen. It is rather sad when you look at that photo of all those old boys with so much accumulated knowledge and expertise on the brink of eternity. To think what happened to their successors and apprentices, many must have perished or been maimed in the Great War, just a stone's throw away from that photo. The loss of life, way of life, hereditary skills etc.

Lots to ponder about in this wonderful catalogue. I believe that so long as people are interested in owning, using and talking about Traditional style knives from around the world, the skills of these long dead men are renewed in homage every day. Just let me fix up that time-travel machine...:D

Regards to all, Will
 
Wonderful read sir. As a noob here, I'm amazed at the information I've found. Thank you for the history lesson.
 
willgoy said:
Wealth of information and imagery there Jack, much food for thought and daydreaming. Very grateful you could upload it.

Couple of observations: let me get in my time machine and out into that showroom as shown on p.16 please! The Stag store picture I've seen on this Forum already, and it provokes a lot of daydreams. The Tusk room I hadn't seen but I have to admit to more mixed feelings about that... Something really struck me on p.27 . They use the word 'scales' for the handles of a knife, I used to use this word until I got 'corrected' by somebody in the business and allegedly in the know that 'scales' are brass or metal liners. But now I can read from a 1911 original horse's mouth that this was the word they used then. Good enough for me, back to scales it is! I've never fancied the term 'covers' as this to me implies something that can be quickly changed or hides something...:D Also on p.27 they lay weight on the need to let materials for scales mature or age. This extends even to celluloid types (2 years wait) and I found this significant. Even very old Cell knives can be found in a stable condition and this may be why. This maturing/waiting aspect can especially apt for horn knives. I've seen some horn knives from the 1850s in very OK shape and yet some of their modern counterparts can be in a pitiful state of warp/shrink after only months or a couple of years. I've long suspected that curing techniques may have been lost but now it could be a simple maturation thing, well, after all you can't drink decent whiskey or brandy unless you let it be for a few years!:D Could make sense with natural materials as well.

They stress their defining notion as the maintenance of quality over mere price, this too is significant, they also note that the Rodgers name gets pirated by inferior marques but the discerning consumer won't be palmed off by this without the unique trade marks on the tang! How tragic they (or Sheffield as a whole) were unable or unwilling to maintain quality first in the decades that followed this catalogue. This quality is, they plainly admit, also due to the diligence, skill and loyalty of their workmen. It is rather sad when you look at that photo of all those old boys with so much accumulated knowledge and expertise on the brink of eternity. To think what happened to their successors and apprentices, many must have perished or been maimed in the Great War, just a stone's throw away from that photo. The loss of life, way of life, hereditary skills etc.

Lots to ponder about in this wonderful catalogue. I believe that so long as people are interested in owning, using and talking about Traditional style knives from around the world, the skills of these long dead men are renewed in homage every day. Just let me fix up that time-travel machine...:D

Regards to all, Will
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I wasn’t happy about substituting covers for scales. It wasn’t what I learned at my father’s knee.

My inner pedant won the day, and I corrected my words.

Now that I have a decent excuse, it’s out with the covers and in with the scales.
 
willgoy said:
Something really struck me on p.27 . They use the word 'scales' for the handles of a knife, I used to use this word until I got 'corrected' by somebody in the business and allegedly in the know that 'scales' are brass or metal liners. But now I can read from a 1911 original horse's mouth that this was the word they used then. Good enough for me, back to scales it is! I've never fancied the term 'covers' as this to me implies something that can be quickly changed or hides something...:D
Click to expand...

Never bought into the whole "covers" thing as it sounded just way too cutesy to me. Kind of like the guys that buy sheaths and say "I got some new pants for my knife!"

In fact, for all the decades I have around knives, I had never heard scales called "covers" until I started reading BF a few years ago.

Great slice of history, Jack. Thanks for posting it.

Robert
 
Glad this booklet has proved of such interest, and that's a most interesting post in itself Will. I'm currently halfway through reading an absolutely fascinating unpublished doctoral thesis on the Sheffield cutlery industry prior to 1914, and hope to be able to post links to it soon.

In terms of the covers/scales debate, I think that 'covers' is more correct inasmuch that the scales are actually beneath the covers. However, the Sheffield cutlers, in the past and still today, refer to 'scales'.
 
Jack, I hope you can share some of that PhD work with us, be very interesting to read.

Did they continue the Under X Sovereigns theme? I mean by the start of WW II they could boast Seven Sovereigns perhaps or did Royal Warranty stop with Geo.V?

As for the scales thing, seems everybody is correct! My Shorter Oxford Dictionary (2 vols. 1933) shows this

IMG_1934.jpg


Regards, Will
 
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