Pocket knife identification

[08nwright]

Hello everyone, for many years I’ve carried my late granddad’s pocket knife, keeping it sharp and usable and occasionally wondering exactly where it was from but never bothering to find out, simply using it as intended

I have absolutely no idea where he got it, I doubt he’d even remember if he was still around to ask. I would like to have some idea of how old it is and where it comes from if that’s possible

A mild fear is that it’s ever actually worth something and I’m wandering around with a valuable lump of silver in my pocket

[anon68680378]

Good knife! The mark is WR**S. Which is a silver electro-plate mark for a UK maker. From the condition of the blades it looks like it is indeed an older knife, steel but probably not stainless steel blade. Don’t know who the plater who made the exterior decorative sides is, but all that company would have made was the exterior decoration for the case. If the cutler’s marks aren’t on the blade then we may never know.

So why was the cutler so shy? It’s a guess but might be a Solingen knife. For reasons rather obvious the German blade makers were fairly careful about who they advertised product to in the war-plagued 20th century market.

There are three possible case platters that sort of fit “WR & Sons” but none of them have marks that quite fit this one.

CRWW

[silvermakersmarks]

WR are the manufacturer’s initials but as Guildhall has noted they are not identified in any of the usual reference places. By an unwritten convention a single letter at the end of a mark often stands for the town of manufacture so it is highly likely that “S” is for Sheffield - not too surprising given that Sheffield was the centre of the knife-making industry.

[Bartholomew]

Nick, could you please disassemble the pocket knife blades completely and take a photo of the marked areas?

Vintage Walker & Co Sheffield Twin Blade Pocket Knife With Ivorine Scales...

Miscellaneous Sheffield Made Knives

[anon68680378]

I had rather given up on WR being one of the “Little Meesters” of Sheffield, having reference to a fairly comprehensive list of these journeymen cutlers working smallholdings by one of the Twentyman Bros.

“Dick” or Richard Twentyman’s family had been Sheffield cutlers for centuries before moving to first Liverpool, then Calcutta, Ceylon and South Africa and finally Claverley near Wolverhampton and setting up shop as an architect and designing most of the W B Butlers pubs for us.

This unveiling of a piece by his brother Tony after his death interested me because it told of his capture and servitude on the Japanese railway. And the use a sterling silver cigaret case was put to — to buy motor oil to fry rice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9pG7xFiKXE#:~:text=Unveiling%20Anthony%20Twentyman’s%20sculpture%20The,outlining%20Twentyman’s%20life%20and%20legacy.

Decades ago, he spotted my interest in Hallam cutlers and kindly allowed unfettered access to the Twentyman archives which included a very comprehensive list of early 20th century late 19th century competitors.

Three of them have W and R as initials but none of the three ever used this mark, according to the records of some 274 competitors both active (in 1929 when the list was last updated) and closed down.

So I decided Occam’s razor rules may not, in this narrow instance, apply and S might stand for something other than the obvious.

Which sent me off to the twice ruined town in Germany. Where I did find similar blades on similar sized folding knives and specific imports including Dick and Tony Twentyman’s grandfather. But again nothing to clinch the identification.

The list isn’t mine to release but it might be quite useful if it was. It certainly has a lot of cutler marks which don’t appear other than in the cutler registry itself, presumably

Collectors of Indian or Raj silver will be familiar with the name as Henry sailed out to Calcutta from Liverpool and set up shop there in 1810. Ceylonese Coffee historians will see that family’s participation in the grown of that somewhat brutal trade these in the 19th century and South African silver collectors see Capetown shop work by Lawrence.

On a recent sailing trip I sought shelter in Gardiner Inlet on the west coast and noted a rather tidy craft normally taking two to crew rigged for single occupancy sailing and enquire as the owner from a local. “Ah, that will be Mr Twentyman’s’” I was told, and I met the next generation, retired from coffee and living in BC!.

Brilliant.

CRWW

[anon68680378]

I still collect Twentyman silver. Here’s a very chunky sugar sifter from Calcutta, early 19th century by Twentyman I bought at auction a year ago. The other item is made in London by Bateman and much less substantial.

Raj Silver is wonderful to collect because it is so heavy.

CRWW

[RalphW]

Hi there and hopefully this will help answer your question. I too have more or less the same knife most likely handed down from my Grandfather. As you can see in my picture of the blade the letters WR stands for William Rodgers and the S for Sheffield. Sadly I don’t believe there is any collectible value in this type of knife as it is definitely not silver but it’s probably worth more in sentimental terms as is the case for me

.

[Irishsilver]

There is a brief description of the brand and its adoption of the Ulu or women’s knife of the Inuit:

William Rodgers ('I Cut My Way')

But it doesn’t show the actual logo or the slogan which slogan may explain the origin of the song " I did it my way" made famous by Frank Sinatra in Las Vegas

So here is it on another Rodgers blade:

I had seen Ulu knives in modern use on visits to Tuktoyaktuk in the 1970’s

Here’s a facebook description of it which looks precisely like the Rodgers brand:

GCReconciliation

In the 1830’s. when William Rodgers partnership was formed and the brand and logo first introduced, there was very limited interaction between northern native people, Inuit and Europeans. The disastrous Franklin expedition, which forms a big part of the historical claim Canada has today to the Arctic, was still a decade away.

Somebody will have acquired one of these knives and brought it to the Sheffield cutler and asked for a modern reproduction.

One can only assume that Rodgers was sufficiently intrigued by the design not only to make it but to adopt it as a unique logo.

The Inuit had acquired iron to make it by the 4th century in the western Arctic via trade across the Bering Strait, and well before the 12th to 13th century when they expanded into the eastern Arctic and Greenland.

They had also collected iron fragments from large meteorites—most notably the Cape York meteorite deposits in northern Greenland and various Arctic sites—cold-hammering and shaping the metal into blades, knives and harpoon heads

When the Inuit migrated into the eastern Arctic, they traded for or scavenged Norse iron from abandoned settlements and shipwrecks starting around the 13th to 14th centuries.

Today the origin of people in Canada, so called indigenous people, is just beginning to understand the detail of how the Americas were populated by successive waves of people coming from various places and settling in different parts of that continent.

The Rodgers logo, the Ulu knife is a vital part of that understanding demonstrating that a native people the Europeans regarded as primitive had settled and survived in an Arctic climate which defeated many who followed.