One thing that I love about antiques is discovering, and learning about all the weird, whimsical little one-use gadgets that the Georgians and the Victorians invented to overcome fiddly little problems, or created, as elegant solutions to necessary evils.
I’ve seen everything from pocketknives with button-hooks, brass string-caddies that stop balls of twine from rolling away, oval-shaped silver pap-boats for feeding infants, brass pill-rollers, and countless other items too numerous to mention.
Well, last week, I ended up buying yet another historical curiosity – a pair of bone-handled boot-pullers! I don’t know how old these things are, but from the research I did, they used to be very common back around the Victorian era. Modern ones are still made today, but they’re manufactured with wooden handles and the steel rods used to make them tend to be much thinner. Some pullers are even made with plastic handles!
What are Boot-Pulls?
Boot-pulls have T-shaped handles at the top – usually in wood, or in antique ones – bone. Some slim, compact models have thin, folding metal handles. Modern models typically have plastic ones.
Beneath the handles (boot-pulls were always sold as pairs), there’s a long shaft, about six or eight inches. Beneath this is a flat, angular hook with a blunt tip.
They’re designed to help you put your boots on, back in the days when men wore calf-, or even knee-length riding boots. Due to the length of the boot-leg and the confined space inside, it wasn’t always easy to slide your foot all the way down and into the shoe at the bottom. Because the firmness of the leather, and the size of the boot, prevented (or at least made it very difficult) for the wearer to bend their knees or reach their boots to tug them on, boot-pulls were invented.
The whole idea is that the blunt, flat hook at the bottom of the pull hooks into the leather pull-loop or tab at the top of the boot-leg. The length of the metal shaft meant you didn’t have to bend down so far, and you were able to tug your boots on quickly and comfortably without having to fight with them.
Where Did Boot-Pulls Come From?
Back in the old days, boot-pulls were usually sold in pairs and were typically associated with the sports of hunting and horse-riding. It was common to buy a set of boot-pulls along with the rest of your traditional riding outfit such as boots, horse-whip, flasks, hat, breeches and so on. Companies like Swaine & Adeney, which for over 200 years, have specialised in high-end leathergoods such as riding boots and other footwear, would’ve sold sets along with their boots and shoes, or would’ve offered them as optional extras at the moment of purchase.
Boot-Pulls sound useful! I want some!
You can still buy boot-pulls today, although modern ones are typically made with handles constituted from wood, or plastic, rather than bone. Now, as then, some sets were collapsible, with folding handles for easy storage and packing.
If you want an antique set with bone handles, then the easiest place to find them is eBay. Being fairly common, they don’t tend to go for very much and a pair in good condition can easily be purchased for under $100. The set that I purchased cost me less than half of that, and they’ll last forever!
Despite the fact that winter in the Land Down Under has barely started, we of the Antipodes were recently given a stern reminder of the fact that, despite being one of the hottest and driest countries on earth, Australia can also get bloody cold in winter time! This is due to the oft-overlooked fact that there’s no landmasses between us and Antarctica, defending us from the frigid gales, storms and icy cold fronts that routinely come blasting up from the Roaring Forties.
Waking up to below or near freezing temperatures every morning is no-one’s idea of pleasant unless you’re a penguin. And this was what prompted me to start looking into buying myself a new dressing gown. I had one when I was younger, but after it started falling apart, I never bothered replacing it. Fed up with the cold mornings, I finally decided that I had to get a new one.
Soft, fluffy and warm! Velour cotton navy blue, with a pair of waist-level patch pockets, sash-loops and sash-belt. Red would’ve been nice, too, but blue seemed to be almost all they had.
At first, I wasn’t even sure if I could replace it. After all, dressing gowns are typically seen as being rather old-fashioned these days. Apart from myself, I only know one other friend who wears them (if he’s reading this, he knows who he is!), and I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to buy one. But after browsing the websites of two or three major department stores in town, I decided that I’d head out and buy something! I was fed up of constantly shivering every morning, and the weather over the next few weeks was only slated to get even worse.
What is a Dressing Gown?
A dressing-gown, also known as a housecoat, nightgown or dressing robe, is an open-fronted, loose-fitting garment with wide sleeves, typically ranging in size anywhere from knee-length down to ankle-length. It typically comes with two waist-level pockets, a pair of sash-loops, and a fabric belt or sash, designed to hold the robe shut.
Dressing gowns are designed to be worn over the top of one’s other clothes, such as (but not limited to) underwear, sleepwear such as pajamas, or one’s day-wear when around the house. Dressing gowns typically come in two different styles – those worn for comfort, and those worn for style.
Dressing gowns worn for comfort – usually for the purposes of keeping warm – are typically made of cotton or wool in various weaves or finishes. They’re designed to be soft, fluffy, warm and pleasant to touch. Dressing gowns worn for style are usually made of silk. They’re much thinner and are worn more as a fashion accessory than as a way to beat the cold!
What is the Purpose of a Dressing Gown?
Dressing gowns are usually worn for one of three reasons: For warmth, for fashion, or for the sake of modesty. The reasoning behind these three options will be explained later, but basically they’re linked to history, societal expectations, and comfort.
The History of the Dressing Gown
Robes of any description were among the first clothes ever worn by humankind, and in one form or another, their use date back for centuries.
In prehistory, robes were the easiest clothes to manufacture, and the easiest to wear, typically made up of flat, easily measured, easily sewn panels of cloth, ranging from Chinese silk robes, to Middle Eastern robes of cotton and wool, the Japanese kimono, to European academic or judicial robes, and all the way back to ancient Roman and Greek robes such as togas, robes of all kinds have permeated global culture.
Diarist Samuel Pepys in his nightshirt, cravat or kerchief, and draped with his dressing gown (1666).
The dressing gown, and indeed, pajamas themselves, migrated to Europe at the time of the Renaissance during the 1500s and 1600s, originally coming from the Middle East. The word “pajamas” comes from the Iranian words “Pai Jamahs”, originally referring to the soft, loose-fitting pants or trousers worn by people in the Middle East (especially in Turkey, India, and Iran). The dressing gown evolved from the Turkish and Persian “Banyan”, a loose-fitting over-robe worn for the sake of modesty and comfort. In this way, both the dressing gown (and its cousin – the bathrobe), and pajamas, are of Middle-Eastern or west-Asian origin.
The European Dressing Gown
The dressing gown started taking off in Europe in the 1500s and 1600s. For much of Western history, right up into the early 20th century, shirts of any kind – tunic shirts, collared shirts, T-shirts – were seen as underwear, akin to briefs, trunks or boxer-shorts. Shirts were seen as a necessary evil. They were regarded as underwear – to be worn under one’s regular day-clothes, and to be worn in bed as sleepwear. For the sake of modesty, shirts used to be much larger than they are today, and using much more fabric than is now the case.
A film screenshot depicting Ebeneezer Scrooge (of Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ fame) in his dressing gown, before the visitation of the Three Ghosts.
As shirts were regarded as underwear, it was considered VERY unseemly, and even rude, to appear in the presence of guests ‘in your shirtsleeves‘, as the literature of the time put it. That being the case, if it was required for you to make an appearance in front of guests in a ‘state of undress‘ as they said at the time, then the socially acceptable thing to do was to throw your dressing gown over your half-dressed body before entering a room. This not only kept you warm, but also preserved modesty.
In the 1800s, pajamas as we know them today – with a matching jacket and trousers – started to replace what was increasingly seen as being the antiquated and frankly -unhygienic – nightshirt, which was the usual sleeping garb for most people since medieval times. By now, the modern button-down shirt (in the form of the ‘tunic shirt’ with a separate attachable collar, which would later morph into the modern dress-shirt) had replaced the up-until-then, ubiquitous nightshirt as daily wear.
Despite this change in status of the humble shirt, the stigma of being seen in your shirtsleeves remained strong throughout the Victorian era, and it was still seen as a major faux pas to be seen dressed in your shirt alone. For this reason, the dressing gown remained popular as a garment, being an acceptable, and later, stylish way of preserving modesty while entertaining company in one’s own home.
The Dressing Gown as a Fashion Accessory
By the later 1800s, leading into the 20th century, the dressing gown started being seen, not only as a necessary evil, but also as a fashion accessory. This was partially spurred on by popular culture such as art, literature, and increasingly – motion pictures in the 20s, 30s, and 40s.
A character famous for his indulgence of luxurious clothes, James Bond did much to associate the dressing gown with sex-appeal and the playboy lifestyle.
It was at this time that increasingly elaborate dressing gowns with quilted fabrics, silk linings, satin exteriors, patterned silks, and carefully woven cotton or woolen fabrics became popular. As dressing gowns started being seen more as stylish sleepwear or casual, household lounging-attire, they continued to be increasingly embellished.
The ankle-length dressing gown owned by President J.A. Garfield.
Dressing gowns were often accentuated with embroidery and piping along the pocket-seams, cuffs, sash, sash-loops and around fastening-points such as straps, buttons and buttonholes. Hollywood films of the 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s increased the popularity of dressing gowns. People were treated to scenes of big celebrities like Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Cary Grant, Sean Connery and Noel Coward, to name but a few – regularly dressed, either in photographs, or on the silver screen, in dressing gowns, lounging around in their bedrooms or living-rooms.
The late Hugh Hefner was famous for being photographed in his silk and satin dressing gowns. This did much to strengthen the associations between dressing gowns, casual lounging and wealthy, idle hedonism in the 20th century.
Noel Coward and Hugh Hefner were particularly famous for lounging around in their dressing gowns, and this gave the gown an air of upper-class luxury, seductiveness, hedonism and relaxation. These connotations have lasted into the modern era, although some might say that the dressing gown as the stereotypical outfit of the gadabout idle playboy has somewhat diminished its appeal.
Dressing Gowns as Practical Accessories
If you live in a country that routinely experiences harsh winters such as northern Europe, southern Australia, New Zealand, or the northern reaches of the United States or Canada, then you’ll readily appreciate why the dressing gown became popular as an article of household attire and sleepwear, and also, why it remained popular for such a long time.
Remember that many houses from the 1600s to the early 1900s – the era when dressing gowns were most popular – did not have any form of central heating. While bedrooms, reception rooms, and private offices or studies might’ve had fireplaces, most other areas of a house – corridors, store-rooms, servants quarters, kitchens, etc, had absolutely no heating at all in the depths of winter. A thick, heavy, well-padded dressing gown was therefore essential for holding back the winter chills – especially if you had to rush out in the middle of the night for any reason.
This was the time of the “Little Ice Age”, an era of history stretching from late Medieval times until the mid 1800s, when global temperatures were significantly colder than they are today. Clothing choices, such as three-piece suits, cloaks, capes and yes – dressing gowns – became not only fashionable, but also vital – to keeping out the cold in houses and buildings where heat was limited, and when the difference in temperatures between indoors and outdoors was negligible at best.
Dressing Gowns: Types, Styles and Elements
There are, broadly speaking, two or three types of dressing gowns.
Dressing gowns designed for warmth and comfort, and those designed for fashion.
Materials and Fabrics
Dressing gowns meant for fashion or style are typically lighter-weight and are made of silk, satin, or lightly-woven cotton fabrics. They’re used primarily just to cover up one’s other clothes so as to present a neat and stylish appearance. They’re also useful in warmer climates where a heavier garment would be uncomfortable.
By comparison, a dressing gown worn for comfort and warmth is typically thicker, and much heavier, made of heavier woven cotton or even wool fabric, ranging from thinner terrycloth, to heavier velour or even velvet fabrics. The gown might be silk or satin-lined for comfort, or may not be. To provide extra warmth, some gowns may even be quilted – that is to say – they’ll have two layers of cloth (the exterior and the lining) and have something else – usually wool or cotton padding – sewn or ‘quilted’ between the two layers like a sandwich, to add bulk and warmth.
Sizes and Styles
Dressing gowns typically come in one of two lengths: Knee- or shin-length, and (although rather rare today), ankle-length. My dressing gown is shin-length. Most which are made and sold today will be knee or shin-length. Longer, ankle-length gowns aren’t as common today, what with the advent of more effective home-heating, so If you want a longer, ankle-length gown, you’ll either have to make it yourself, or ask a tailor to make one for you.
Dressing gowns come in a variety of styles. For more structured, fitted gowns, the more casual, relaxed ‘shawl’-style collar and lapels are popular. For less structured gowns, a simple folded over collar and lapel is common. As dressing gowns were originally inspired by Far East and Middle-Eastern designs, some gowns are deliberately modeled on, or imitate the look of garments such as Japanese kimono.
Fastenings
While some dressing gowns (especially back in the Victorian era) came with buttons, straps and hooks for fastening, the accepted stance is that the vast majority of dressing gowns don’t come with any fastenings at all. If you need to keep your gown closed (for modesty, for warmth, etc), then simply fold one side over the other, and use the sash. Typically, the tightness of the sash and the friction of the fabric rubbing against itself will be enough to hold the gown shut.
Gowns which did have fastenings (usually buttons) had embroidered cord buttonholes or strapped buttonholes which were woven and sewn into the design of the robe, adding to the overall embellishment of the garment.
Pockets
Most gowns come with two pockets, usually patch pockets or similar, at waist-level. Patch pockets get their name because they’re simply square patches of matching fabric, which are sewn onto the sides of the garment. Almost all dressing gowns come with patch pockets, whether they number one, two (the most common) or three (not as common, but you can still find them).
While most gowns come with two patch pockets at waist-level, some gowns are also manufactured with a third, breast-pocket at chest level. A gown with a breast-pocket may have the manufacturer’s monogram or logo embroidered or sewn onto it as decoration. However, if the pocket is blank, you can have your own initials or monogram sewn there instead – Noel Coward was famous for doing this.
Sashs and Sash-Loops
Almost every dressing gown is considered incomplete without the soft, cloth belt, or ‘sash’ which accompanies it. The sash is a simple cloth cord, strap or belt that is designed to be wrapped around the waist and tied at the front or side, in order to keep the dressing gown closed.
To help guide the sash around the body of the robe and its wearer, and to keep the sash from sliding or falling away if it comes undone accidentally – most dressing gowns will also have two sash-loops – typically at waist-level, just above and behind the pockets. Sashes are typically made of the same type of fabric as the gown, or are made out of the fabric that lines or edges the gown, to provide a nice contrast.
Buying a Dressing Gown
So, you want to buy a dressing gown, huh? There’s a lot of things to consider.
Firstly – can you even find the style that you like? If you think you can’t, you can either get a tailor to design and make one for you – or if you have the skills – then you can do what I did – and simply make your own. I wore my own creation for five or six years before it started coming apart, but while it lasted, it was excellent!
Secondly – you need to decide why you want your gown. Is it for casual wear? Or for comfort and warmth? This will determine the types of fabrics that the gown will be made of. Gowns are typically made of silk, cotton, wool or velvet in various weaves, patterns and decorations.
Thirdly – How big do you want the gown to be? Ankle-length gowns are rather rare these days unless you can find someone to make one for you. The most important thing to consider when buying a gown is how it fits you. Remember that dressing gowns are meant to be worn over the top of other clothes – so they need to have lots of space to move around. If you’re buying your gown in-store somewhere, don’t be afraid to just throw it over the top of whatever it is you’re wearing on the day.
Fourthly – How much do you want to spend on your gown? Really luxurious handmade silk dressing gowns can cost upwards of $1,000. Whereas more reasonable gowns, typically made of wool, cotton, or less elaborate silks or in plainer styles and patterns, may be purchased for just a couple of hundred…my navy blue number cost me all of $60.00! So they need only be expensive if you want them to be, and can afford it.
Lastly – pick a gown that goes with as many outfits as possible. Think about your sleepwear – what colour pajamas do you have? What would go best with them? Would the gown look just as good draped over just anything else? If the answer to these questions is all ‘Yes’, then buy it. Classic gown colours are typically blue, red, brown, black, and grey. This is just my opinion – but I would seriously avoid buying a dressing gown in white, because then it starts looking far too much like a bathrobe…
Dressing Gowns Vs. Bathrobes
Last, but not least. What’s the difference between a dressing gown and a bathrobe?
While superficially, they look and feel very similar, the differences between the two garments are quite significant.
Bathrobes are made of toweling fabric – a thick, absorbent fabric (usually cotton), used to make floor-mats and towels. Bathrobes are designed to dry and warm the body after having a shower or bath, or after swimming. They’re not meant for long-term wear. Also, bathrobes typically only come in one very generic style, and even fewer colours!
By comparison, dressing gowns are meant for long-term wear, around the house, at night, first thing in the morning, and even during the day. They’re designed to keep the body warm, and they come in a much wider range of styles, colours, fabrics and designs.
Another key difference between a dressing gown and a bathrobe is that dressing gowns are typically meant to be worn over other clothes (either day-clothes, night-clothes or underwear). By comparison, bathrobes are almost always worn against bare flesh.
Concluding Remarks
Anyway, that about sums up this article. I hope you enjoyed reading it and that it helped you pick out what you want, or helped you make a decision about whether you want to buy a robe. I’ve always liked the look of dressing gowns and have always enjoyed how comfortable they are, as well as looking into their fascinating history and their evolution through time and fashion.
“If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth” – Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda & Public Enlightenment.
“Truth isn’t truth”– Rudolph Giuliani, Mayor of the City of New York.
It’s been remarked by a number of people that those who collect one area of antiques will often branch out into other areas. Typically, for guys, at least, these areas are:
Fountain pens and related accessories.
Watches and/or clocks, and related accessories.
Knives, and related accessories.
Lighters, and related accessories.
Basically, this theory states that if you’re interested in one of those areas, you’re likely to be interested in at least one of the other three areas. Shamefully for me – I’m interested in all four of those areas. So I’m screwed right off the bat! Haha…
Aaanyway. Enough of that. I am creating this posting for the very real purpose of it being a public service to the collecting community, and the subject of this posting is, as the title says: IMCO lighters! Or specifically, one particular IMCO lighter, which I’ll be talking about later on.
OK. So What is “IMCO”?
Most people in lighter-collecting circles will likely have heard of IMCO, and if you haven’t, here’s a brief introduction:
IMCO was an Austrian manufacturer of cigarette lighters. Established in 1907 by Julius Meister, who was formerly a manufacturer of brass buttons for the Austro-Hungarian Army. Unable to make much money just from making buttons, Meister struck on the idea of manufacturing something that everybody would need, and that everybody would use – not just the army. And that something was the newfangled ‘cigarette lighter’.
Cigarette lighters as we recognise them today were invented in the late 1800s. Early models were unbelievably crude by modern standards, but IMCO got the idea that if they could come up with one good, cheap, simple design, then they could mass produce them, and become the Henry Ford Company of cigarette lighters!
Of course, for the lighters to be cheap enough for everybody to afford them, they had to keep costs down. So that meant that they needed a cheap, readily available source of metal. This wasn’t easy in the 1910s, when Austria-Hungary was fighting with Germany and Turkey, against Russia, France, Belgium, Britain, Canada, and the United States! Any plans to start manufacturing lighters during the First World War were quickly shelved as being wholly impractical. It wasn’t until after the war in 1919, and 1920, that IMCO actually began manufacturing.
The IMCO ‘Trench Lighter’
Due to the restraints of the First World War, IMCO couldn’t actually start making lighters in the 1910s. When the war ended in 1918, the need for flashy brass buttons for the army suddenly ended, and IMCO was groping around to try and find something else to manufacture. In 1920, the first IMCO lighter was released.
The lighter, closed up. At the top is the snuffer-cap. On the right is the flint-tube and striker-wheel. At the bottom of the flint-tube is the spring-loaded arm which keeps the flint hard up against the wheel. Pulling this arm down pulls back the spring so that you can drop in a fresh flint. The brass sleeve around the lighter body is the windshield.
In the days before stainless steel, a lot of metal products were made of brass, because of its ability to resist rusting and most forms of corrosion. The biggest source of brass in Austria at the time was the millions and millions and MILLIONS of leftover shell-casings from the First World War.
Now, whether or not IMCO ever used these casings in their ‘raw’ form to make their first lighters is unknown. Going by photographs I’ve seen, I would say that it was very unlikely. It is possible that they simply used the brass bullet-casings, melted them down and remade the reclaimed metal into the necessary parts they needed, but didn’t use the actual casings themselves to manufacture the lighters.
So, what’s the deal here?
The ‘deal’ is that almost every single one of these lighters – be they originals from the 1920s, or (much more common), reproductions made in China or elsewhere – are always sold as ‘trench’ lighters, a moniker which is not only massively misleading, but also blatantly incorrect, for reasons I will explain below.
What is a ‘Trench Lighter’?
A ‘trench’ lighter is a type of ‘trench art’. ‘Trench art’ is anything decorative or functional, handmade by soldiers while out in the fields or in the trenches during battle, or by soldiers recuperating or on-leave from the battlefront, using materials scavenged or saved or found on the battlefield. Usually such items are things like shell casings, bullet-casings, and metal from food tins or cans of meat and so on.
For something to qualify as ‘trench art’, it has to have been made by a soldier during either the First or the Second World War, while on the front lines (or while on active duty during the wars) using materials available on the battlefield.
That means that for the IMCO lighter to be a REAL ‘trench’ lighter, it would have to have been made out of actual battlefield materials. Which it never was. Even if the brass which was used to manufacture it came from old shell-casings that were melted down and reused, that doesn’t constitute a trench lighter, since it wasn’t made by a soldier on active duty during the war, out of actual field materials. That’s not to say that actual trench lighters don’t exist – they certainly do – but the IMCO lighter from 1920 is not one of them.
Where does this whole thing come from?
If it’s not a trench lighter, and was never used in the First World War, and wasn’t even manufactured until at least a year or two after the war ended, then why is it even called a trench lighter? Where did it come from!?
Honestly, I have no idea. But it perplexed, and later, perturbed me, that so many people were being unknowingly and unwillingly conned or misled into thinking that they were buying some sort of legitimate and original First World War cigarette lighter made on the Western Front or in the trenches or something. The sheer QUANTITY of these so-called ‘handmade’, ‘homemade’ lighters, supposedly produced out of stuff they found lying around in the trenches, should alone, make it a suspect piece, to say nothing of the fact that they all look exactly the same.
Are Soldiers’ Cigarette Lighters a Thing?
Did soldiers in the First World War ever make their own trench-art lighters out of scraps of brass and copper that they found lying around in the trenches, probably while in hospital or on leave, to kill time and have something to do?
Probably, yeah! Some genuine examples certainly do exist. But what was far more common was for established companies to actually manufacture lighters specially for the armed forces (no, the IMCO lighter isn’t one of these, either. Sorry, folks). Many of these were made during the Second World War. The most common models were the Dunhill Service Lighter, and the venerable ZIPPO lighter.
Sliding up the windshield raises and shifts the snuffer-cap to the side, exposing the wick, ready for use.
During the conflict, ZIPPO ceased manufacturing lighters for the civilian market, and sold exclusively to the armed forces. Because brass was required for the war-effort, wartime Zippos were made exclusively of steel – the first, last and only time in their history when the lighter wasn’t made of brass (except of course, for when it was made of silver or gold).
Another example is what is known as the ‘foxhole’ or ‘sailor’s lighter. This consists of a flint-tube with striking wheel, and an adjacent tube through which a thick match-cord or rope has been passed. Striking the flint-wheel causes sparks to land on the frayed end of the match-cord.
Blowing gently on the captured sparks creates the necessary heat to ignite the rope, creating an ember. This ember can be used to light a cigarette or start a fire. Since it doesn’t require lighter fluid and doesn’t actually create a flame, the ‘foxhole’ lighter was popular with sailors, soldiers and campers, and anybody else who might need to start a fire without the aid of combustibles, matches or a conventional cigarette lighter.
Concluding Remarks
In closing – is the original IMCO lighter a ‘trench’ lighter? No. It never was, and it never will be. It doesn’t fulfill a single one of the aforementioned prerequisites to be called a ‘trench’ lighter. It wasn’t made of bullet-casings, artillery-shells or other scrap metal found in the trenches, it wasn’t manufactured by soldiers during combat, and it wasn’t even manufactured by IMCO until two years AFTER the war was over.
If that’s the case, then why do people think it is? I honestly don’t know. As for why it’s still WIDELY manufactured (literally – you can buy one off of eBay right now for next to nothing), I don’t know. IMCO folded in 2012, but this peculiar, fascinating, quirky little lighter, now coming up to 100 years old, continues to be loved, appreciated and admired. I think part of it is the sheer novelty aspect of it, as well as people’s mistaken belief in its fraudulent history.
Is it Possible to Buy an ORIGINAL IMCO lighter from the 20s?
Sure! They ain’t easy to find, but yes, you can buy them. They pop up on eBay from time to time. The original IMCO lighters (as opposed to the reproduction ‘trench’ lighters) are marked on the flint-tube with “MADE IN AUSTRIA”, and the sliding windshield is stamped with “IMCO” and the relevant patent numbers in very snazzy Art-Deco style font. Most of these lighters date to the mid 1920s.
Made of silver-plated brass, what we have here is an icon of classic, 1920s design, made by one of the most famous companies in the world.
I picked this up at my local flea-market. I’ve always wanted a lighter like this. It’s solid, chunky, dependable, stylish, and it looks so much more interesting than the bog-standard Zippo-lighter, which most people are doubtless familiar with, from movies and TV shows. In this posting, I’ll be going through the process of how I restored the lighter, and also a bit about its history in general.
What Is a Lift-Arm Lighter?
This style of lighter is of a kind hardly seen in the 21st century. There’s only a handful of companies that still make them (if that), and prior to their limited resurgence in recent years, haven’t been widely manufactured since the 1950s.
Generally featuring a horizontal flint-tube and striking-wheel, a spring-loaded snuffer-arm, and a refueling hole underneath, usually accessed via a screw-on cap, lift-arm lighters were among the most common types of cigarette lighters available from the end of the First World War, up until the end of the 1950s. In the long and storied history of the lighter, that’s only about 40 years of existence. Not much, when you think of something like the ZIPPO which has been around now, for nearly 90 years!
The name of this style of lighter comes from the very distinctive spring-loaded snuffer-arm which is mounted on the top of the body, parallel to the horizontal flint-tube and striking-wheel. To operate the lighter, you flip the arm upwards and then strike the wheel to create the necessary sparks to light the fuel. When you’re done, you flip the snuffer-arm the other way, and it snaps down to extinguish the flame and protect the wick. Since you had to flip or ‘lift’ the snuffer-arm each time you wanted to use the lighter, they became known as ‘lift-arm’ lighters.
How Old Are Lighters Such as These?
A traditional, liquid-fuel lighter of this kind typically dates from the late 1910s/early 1920s, up to the late 1930s/early 40s. They appear to have died off during the war. This style made a BRIEF resurgence in the 1950s, but then appears to have died off again by the end of the 1960s.
That being the case, the majority of lift-arm lighters of this style date from the 20s and 30s, when they were in their heyday. Prominent manufacturers include POLO, PARKER, and DUNHILL, along with a variety of European and American manufacturers. If you’re looking to buy an original lift-arm, then in most cases, you’ll be hunting down a lighter that is the better part of 80 – 100 years old.
Lighters like these date back to the days when smoking was not only common, but highly fashionable. The dangers of smoking were unknown (or at least unacknowledged), and tobacconalia was extremely popular. For most men and a lot of women, owning a flashy lighter was as common an accessory in 1930, as owning a smartphone is today. Lighters were made of solid gold and silver, and in some truly beautiful and fascinating designs and styles.
It’s a thrill to own a lighter from this fascinating and bygone era, full of such elegance, even for something as questionable as smoking. While I don’t smoke, I have always felt that smokers from the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s had some of the most interesting and beautiful smoking accessories ever made.
What is YOUR Particular Lighter?
The model that’s being featured in this posting is the DUNHILL Model A ‘Sports’ lighter, manufactured in the second half of the 1920s (ca. 1924-1928, according to my research). As far as lift-arm models go, it’s one of the most famous designs ever produced.
The lighter has certain features which were iconic to the Dunhill brand, such as the distinctive, downward-curving lift-arm, with “Dunhill” on it, and the three-slot windshield (what ZIPPO would later call a ‘chimney’, in the early 1930s).
Here, you can see the flint-tube (front), the flint-wheel (on the right), and the lift-arm snuffer-cap (behind).
The lighter is made of brass, and is plated in silver. Here and there, the silver plating has started to wear off, most likely from use, cleaning, and just the friction from being shoved into, and being pulled out of, pockets for 95 years!
One of the more interesting features of the lighter is the windshield or chimney which surrounds the wick. Although it has a number of horizontal vents cut into it, the purpose of the windshield is, nonetheless – to guard the flame and wick against the wind. The vents in the sides of the windshield allow for airflow and sufficient oxygen for the flame, while the body of the shield reduces the likelihood of the surrounding wind to snuff out the flame accidentally.
Whatever you call them – wind guards, windshields or chimneys, this feature was very rare on early lighters. Most lighters from the 1890s through to the 1930s had no wind-protection of any kind (or at least, had very, very little), making them nigh impossible to use outside on anything but the calmest of days. One of the selling points of the ZIPPO when it came out in 1932, was that it was the ZIPPO WINDPROOF LIGHTER!
While no lighter can be said to be fully windproof, the chimney or windshield did at least give the flame a fighting chance, allowing the lighter to be used more easily outdoors.
That said – even into the 1930s, such features were rare (and still are rare) on the majority of cigarette lighters – especially those of the lift-arm variety, so the presence of the shield makes this one stand out quite significantly.
Restoring the Lighter
This lighter, while functional, was in a very sorry state of affairs when I bought it. The whole body and mechanism were black and grey with heavy tarnish and the mechanism itself was clogged with dust, grime, ash and soot.
Removing the Windshield
The first order of business was to clean the lighter and remove all the grime and tarnish. Part of this process was removing the windshield or chimney from around the wick and flint-wheel. Easy in theory, but difficult in practice!
Removing the windshield, its two screws, and the filler-cap (inside the glass bowl).
The windshield, chimney or wick-guard (whatever you want to call it) was held onto the top of the lighter’s body by two absolutely microscopic screws. The first step was to clean out all the gunk inside the windshield, and then locate the screws. Using a very small, very thin flathead screwdriver, I unscrewed the two screws and very carefully lifted the shield off of the lighter. I tipped the two screws into a glass cup nearby to stop them from rolling away, and then started cleaning the shield, polishing it, removing dust and grime, picking out old bits of wick, cleaning the wick-housing and everything else that I could reach while the windshield had been removed.
Once the shield was clean and the area where it was mounted onto the lighter was clean, I had to reassemble the whole thing. To do this, I mounted the shield back on top of the lighter and then I had to get the two screws down through the shield and onto their holes, and then screw them back in.
How?
The screws are TINY (about half a grain of rice), and there’s no way to grip them while screwing them in. In the end, I used Blu-Tak (what some people might call adhesive Plasticine) to stick the screws onto my screwdriver. Then I lowered them one at a time, through the gap in the windshield and into their respective holes. Then I very carefully screwed them back in.
Sticking the screws to the head of my screwdriver with plasticine so that I can screw them back into the lighter.
Don’t be fooled into thinking this was easy – it took about 3-4 tries for each screw, before I got the threads to line up properly, but once they do, the actual act of screwing them down was thankfully – very easy.
Replacing the Wick, Flints and Wadding
Next came the relatively easy task of replacing the wadding, the wick and the flint inside the lighter. This was done by unscrewing the fuel-cap underneath the lighter, and removing all the cotton-ball wadding using a pair of tweezers. After teasing out little tufts of cotton wool, it was a matter of grasping them in the fingers and then spinning them around and pulling at the same time. This caused the wadding fibres to mesh together. This means you can pull them out more easily, and you can pull out more wadding each time, instead of little tufts.
Removing the wick and the original wadding.
Once the wadding was out, the wick came next. At some point in this lighter’s history, some ingenious fellow had come up with the idea of wrapping very thin steel wire around the base of the wick, and leaving several inches of this wire to trail off the end. This is a great idea! It means that you can feed the wire through the body of the lighter…and out the other side.
That means that you can grab the wire, and yank it through the lighter, and that pulls the wick inside along with it. No more screwing around with trying to stuff the wick inside, just pull it in. Any old copper or steel wire (of an appropriate thinness) will do. Just make sure you wrap it around the wick a sufficient number of times so that it doesn’t unexpectedly unravel when you use it to tug the wick through the lighter.
If you find replacing the wick on your lighters to be particularly troublesome, perhaps try this method? About six inches of wire should be more than enough. Once the wick is through, simply roll or fold up the excess wire and stuff it into the lighter along with the wadding.
Once the new wick was inserted, it was just a matter of packing in fresh wadding. Now this isn’t strictly necessary, but I like to replace the wadding with fresh wadding when I restore my lighters. The wadding is ordinary cotton wool balls so they cost nothing, anyway. The average lighter (eg – Zippos, and lighters of that size) typically take 6-8 balls, firmly packed inside. Once it was full, I put the cap on and then looked at the flint.
The next step was to replace the flint. Now this lighter didn’t have a flint when I bought it, but I have plenty of spares, so it was easy enough to unscrew the screw and spring on the flint-tube and drop in a fresh flint and then screw it shut again. Now what some people may not be aware of, is the fact that the majority of antique lighters actually take TWO flints!
One flint goes into the flint-tube at the top of the lighter, the other flint – the spare flint – goes inside the lighter. In the majority of antique lighters (including this one), the spare flint is housed in a TINY compartment INSIDE the fuel-compartment screw-on cap. Simply remove the cap from the fuel-tank and inside should be a little cylindrical cap – unscrew that – the spare flint goes in there. Usually, they’re big enough to hold one flint, but sometimes you can cram two in there.
Removing the Engraving
Once all the working parts of the lighter had been seen to, the next thing to address was the engraving on the snuffer-cap.
Now personally, I hate engravings. Unless it’s a gift, a dedication, reward, a date, or a monogram, I find them really tacky and unsightly. Given a choice, I’d almost always prefer an antique without an engraving. That said, some engravings can be fun because they add something to the object – a date, an event, an important name, etc. In some antiques, engravings can be a useful dating or research prompt.
Not in this case. The engraving of the owner’s initials just didn’t add anything to the lighter. So I decided to remove it.
Removing the engraving was just a matter of polishing. Lots and lots of polishing. I started with 200-grit sandpaper for the initial scrubbing, then moved up to 400-grit paper, and then finally, 0000-grade steel wool, mixed with sewing-machine oil and Brasso. What you’re doing with this process of polishing and sanding, is removing the surrounding metal, a microscopic layer at a time, until the surrounding metal reaches the lowest point of the engraving. Once the metal is level again, the engraving will disappear, leaving smooth, glossy metal (in this case, brass) behind!
Of course, this can only be done properly once, so you need to be very careful. Fortunately, the engraving on this lighter was very shallow, so removing it was no challenge.
Once that was gone, it was simply a matter of polishing the entire lighter, to remove as much of the grime and blemishes, marks, tarnishing and crud as possible. The lighter would never look 100% brand-new, what with plating-loss and such, but it at least looked clean and attractive enough to be picked up and used!
Fueling up the Lighter
The final step in the restoration was, of course, making sure that the lighter works! I juiced up the fuel-tank with four or five generous squirts of lighter-fluid and screwed the cap on.
Lighters like this 1920s Dunhill are designed to be operated by one hand – indeed, by one FINGER of one hand – typically the thumb. In normal operation, the lighter is held upright with the flint-tube facing towards you (so that you’re looking at the lighter from ‘behind’, with the lift-arm snuffer-cap facing away from you).
The lift-arm is flipped up using the thumb, and then the flint-wheel is struck rapidly from right to left. Assuming that everything is clean and functional, one half-turn of the flint-wheel is all it takes to create enough sparks to light the fuel-vapours and ignite the lighter.
Help! My Lighter Won’t Light!?
When it comes to repairing or restoring antique lighters, this is one of the most annoying things ever. You spend all that time lavishing care on your newfound lighter, and the damn thing just refuses to repay your kind attentions by deigning it necessary to carry out its primary function – lighting up!
Why not??
Antique lighters fail to light for a number of reasons. Here are some of the most common ones:
There’s No Fuel!
Probably the most obvious reason – there’s no go-juice in the tank! Antique lighters take liquid fuel – typically some manner of petroleum spirits. For there to be enough fuel to burn, the tank needs to be full. The cotton wadding soaks up the fuel and the wick transports this fuel up to the top of the lighter. But if there isn’t enough fuel, it’s not going to reach the wick. The lighter is full when you’ve thoroughly saturated all the wadding (typically 4-5 generous squirts of the can will be enough).
The wick is too short…
Antique lighters have wicks, just like old-fashioned oil-lamps or candles. And the same principles apply – if the wick is too short, then there’s nothing to burn! Now, on a properly functioning lighter, it’s not the wick itself that burns. What burns is the fuel-vapour around the wick that is drawn up through capillary action. But if the wick is too short, there isn’t enough surface-area above the top of the lighter for there to be enough vapour to light.
This is easily remedied by tugging out the wick until it’s long enough for the sparks to catch the fuel-vapour. Typically, the wick should be as high as the top of the windshield, or as high as the top of the snuffer-cap.
The wheel isn’t sparking
Another really common reason as to why lighters won’t light is because there’s no spark to get it going.
When you strike a light, you spin the corrugated flint-wheel or striking-wheel against the small pellet of flintstone inside the lighter. The corrugations scrape the flint and this produces sparks – it’s a principle known for hundreds of years that steel plus flint = sparks.
But this won’t happen if there isn’t enough friction between the flint and the wheel for the lighter to spark properly. Why is this?
There’s three reasons.
1). The flint isn’t touching the flint-wheel.
A REALLY common problem with old lighters is that when you buy them ‘in the wild’ in flea-markets, etc, they often still have old, corroded flints inside them! These old flints are beyond saving, and they’re often impossible to spark. They must be removed from the flint-tube, and a new flint should replace it. To remove the flint, just take the flint-tube cap and spring out, and tap the old flint out.
Sometimes if it’s stuck, you may need to tap the lighter on a table or something, to coax it out. If it’s REALLY stuck up in there, you can use something like a nail, a pin or a screwdriver to smash up the flint and pick at it. This will break up the flint into chunks and they should fall out on their own. Use pipe-cleaners or toothpicks to make sure that all the flint is gone, and then replace the old flint with a new flint.
2). The compression is incorrect.
Every lighter that operates with a flint has a flint-spring inside it. This spring is used to apply pressure to the flint, so that it’s kept hard-up against the side of the flint-wheel, so that when you spin the wheel, there’s enough friction to generate sparks. If you spin the wheel and there’s no sparks, (or very few sparks) then there’s probably either not enough (or too much) pressure from the flint-spring pressing on the flint.
Fix this by fiddling with the screw-cap at the end of your flint-tube. The tighter you screw it shut, the more pressure and friction there is, the looser it is, the less pressure and friction there is. Typically, the tighter you can get it, the better the lighter will work. But, you can get it SO TIGHT that there’s no way for the wheel to spin. If so, loosen the screw-cap slightly until there’s just enough laxity for the wheel the spin, but enough compression that the spring holds the flint against the wheel.
Now when you strike the wheel, the lighter should light.
3). The wheel is clogged!
Another reason why the lighter may not strike right is because the corrugations on the flint-wheel are clogged with gunk (either dust, lint, or more commonly – flakes and chips of old, corroded flints). All that gunk means that the edges of the corrugations can’t catch the flint and strike it. This grime can be removed using a stiff brush and plenty of scrubbing.
That said, another reason your lighter may not strike is because the flint-wheel is simply worn out. This is VERY rare, because flint-wheels last almost forever, but it can happen. If it does…well…sorry to say it, but you have a dead lighter. But, barring that, just about any antique lighter in decent condition can be made to be serviceable again.
Closing Remarks
That pretty much brings this little saga to a close. While some might baulk at the idea of lavishing this much attention on a cigarette lighter, it is nonetheless, a very old and I think, beautiful cigarette lighter, and one that was well worth the effort used to improve its condition, to something resembling its original appearance.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this posting! Perhaps it’s given you some instruction on how to fix your own antique or vintage lighters that you’ve collected, inherited or found in the wild. I’ve always wanted a functioning, Dunhill lift-arm lighter from the 20s. They’re iconic! And I was so glad to have the opportunity to breathe new life into this worn-looking antique.
We all love to eat. And we all have particular foods, or dishes that we hold dear to our hearts, out of nostalgic, sentimental or patriotic reasons. Every nation and culture on earth have dishes that they regard as sacred, and as being quintessentially part of their lives. But not all is what it seems. In this posting, I’ll be talking about just a few of the dishes and foods which have surprising backstories.
Let us begin!
Food: The Hamburger Claimant: The USA. Origin Country: Germany.
Aah, the hamburger! The quintessential fast-food menu staple! But why are they called hamburgers when there’s…no ham…inside them?
The original “Hamburger”, a Hamburg Steak, popularly eaten in Germany for centuries. Sandwich versions of this steak became the ‘Hamburger’ we know today.
Actually, hamburgers are named after the city of their origin – Hamburg, Germany! The original concoction was a simple ground beef sandwich. When the people of Hamburg (also called ‘Hamburgers’) moved to the USA, they took their “Hamburg Steak Sandwiches” along with them. Deciding that this was an even bigger mouthful than the sandwiches themselves, Americans shortened them to just ‘hamburger’, and later on, shorter still, to just ‘burger’.
Food: Fish and Chips Claimant: The UK Origin Country: Various.
Ah, fish and chips! We like fish and chips! As British as bad weather, hot tea, and more accents than you can shake a stick at, fish and chips has long been seen as a staple of British cuisine!
Right?
Wrong.
Actually, fish and chips only goes back to Victorian times, barely two hundred years ago! The idea of battered, crumbed fish, deep-fried in oil (or as was common in Victorian times – beef tallow…mmm…tallow!), actually comes, not from England, but from Russia! Observant Russian Jews would abstain from doing any useful work on the Sabbath Day, except that which was absolutely essential, as dictated by their religious teachings. This includes the kindling of flames.
Fish and chips! Mmm…
Since you can’t kindle flames on the Sabbath, you can’t cook. So instead, they would batter, crumb and fry their fish the night before, so that they would have a quick, convenient and delicious food to eat the next day. This custom of frying fish came to England with the immigration of Russian and Polish Jews in the 1800s when they fled pogroms in Eastern Europe.
The idea of chunks of potato being fried in a similar manner comes from Belgium. Unable to fish during the winter months, Belgians would dice up potatoes into slabs or blocks and deep-fry them in oil or tallow as a fish-substitute. This method of cooking potatoes is also what gave rise to the “french fry”, since they were created in the French-speaking area of Belgium. That said, American-style French-fries are much thinner than British/Commonwealth-style Chips.
The first fish-and-chip shop…or as most people affectionately call them – chippies! – dates back to around 1860 in Britain. Fish and chips were a fast, tasty, filling, and relatively cheap dish. The industrial revolution allowed for the widespread construction of railroad networks which allowed for fish, potatoes, and other foods and vegetables to be, for the first time, transported in-bulk across the country in a matter of hours, rather than days or weeks. This spike in the availability of fish meant that the price dropped and it was cheap enough to be fried up and served to the working-classes as a convenient and crispy lunchtime snack.
Food: Doughnuts! Claimant: The USA Origin: The Netherlands.
Mmmm. Doughnuts. The staple food of Homer Simpson, Garfield the Cat and most American children, the doughnut has long since been a popular sweet snackfood. Chocolate-stuffed, jam-filled, custard-pumped, cinnamon-dusted, sugar-glazed…the list of varieties goes on forever!
But where do they come from?
Despite their popularity in the ‘States, doughnuts actually come from the Netherlands, and were brought to what would eventually become Manhattan, with the Dutch immigration in the 17th century. The doughnut is directly descendant from the Dutch Oly Koek, literally ‘Oily Cake’, so-named because it was a sweet cake or bun that was cooked by being fried in oil (much as most doughnuts are still made today).
Variations of the Oly Koek remained popular in the area around what would become New York City for centuries, and are mentioned in the writings of early American writer, Washington Irving, who said that to find the genuine Dutch original, you had to find Old Dutch families who had been living in New York for generations!
Traditional Dutch ‘Oly Koeks’ or ‘Oily Cakes’, the precursor to the modern doughnut.
The first record of a ‘dough nut’ comes from the early 1800s, when it was mentioned in an English-language cookbook from 1803. By the end of the decade, the spelling of “doughnut” or “dough nut” had become accepted, and the original Dutch snack was slowly morphing into the treat we know today.
Doughnuts at this time were not as we would currently recognise them, however. The majority still resembled buns rather than circles of sweetness. Although debate seems to rage over this, it appears that the modern holed doughnut was invented in the mid-1800s as a way to make the doughnuts cook more evenly when they were deep-fried.
Food: Chop Suey Claimant: N/A. Supposed origin: China. Origin: The USA.
Any film, or book, set or written back in the 1800s or early 1900s in the USA that mentions Chinese culture or food is likely to mention this dish at one time or another. It’s mentioned in the 1936 film “San Francisco”, when two characters decide to go out for a meal of ‘chop suey’.
At the time, it was believed by unknowing Americans, that chop suey was a genuine Chinese dish. It isn’t, a fact more widely known today than it once was. The word ‘chop suey’ is a corruption of the Chinese words “Za Sui”, which basically means “Bits and Pieces”. This is because chop suey was usually made out of whatever food was available and served up to hungry people looking for a cheap meal. As such, it doesn’t really have a recognised ‘recipe’. These days, ‘chop suey’ is largely seen as a historical curiosity, but there was a time when most people with limited knowledge of Chinese cuisine literally didn’t know any better.
Food: The Croissant. Claimant: France. Origin: Austria & Germany.
Ah! La croissant! The Crescent! Leavened dough folded, folded, folded and refolded over and over sheets of butter, before being proofed, and baked, and coming out hot, savory, tangy and crunchy and soft and oh-so-rich…mmmmm.
Who doesn’t like croissants? They’re as French as the Eiffel Tower and beheading the nobility! But believe it or not…they’re not french at all!
The East-European Kifli, or Kipferl, the precursor to the modern croissant.
The croissant actually originated in Austria, created by Viennese bakers who were creating a type of bread roll known as a “Kipferl” (literally “Twisted” or “Curved”). The idea of a leavened-dough roll or bun in the shape of a crescent migrated to France with Austrian immigrants in the 1800s, but even then, it wasn’t a Frenchman who was responsible for the transition from Kipferl to Croissant!
Zang’s bakery (on the left) in Paris, photographed in 1909, after his death.
Again, it was an Austrian, a former army officer turned civilian baker, August Zang, who moved to Paris in the 1830s. In Paris, Zang set up the “Boulangerie Viennoise” (literally “The Viennese Bakery”), where he sold modified versions of his native Kipferl, which became known as the ‘Croissant’ we love today.
After selling one of my telescopes last year at an antiques fair (and making a very healthy profit on it, if I do say so myself!), I was able to splurge a bit on another ‘scope – of a particular style which I have, until now, not had the privilege of adding to my collection.
I’ve seen a number of these telescopes over the years, but they were all in absolutely terrible condition. Most of them were covered with dents, scratches, loose or broken lenses…and outrageous price-tags! I don’t know about you, but $650 for a telescope with no glass inside it sounds like a very steep price to pay for what is basically a very nice, polished metal tube covered in leather.
I got this particular ‘scope from my local flea-market and after checking it all over for flaws and damage, decided that it was worth the expense to buy it. It had one or two minor faults, all relating to the leather sheathing, but nothing that some restoration (eventually…if it ever needs it) couldn’t rectify. So, for much less than the nearly $700 that the other telescopes were going for, I decided to buy it.
What is an ‘Officer of the Watch’ Telescope?
With its long, thin profile and single draw-tube, sliding glare-shield and smooth, leather cladding, this telescope is quite different from a lot of the others that you’ll find out ‘in the wild’ as it were. Most antique telescopes that you’ll find out and about are multi-tube telescopes without any type of sliding glare-shield, and they’re usually much smaller, with a closed length of anywhere from four to six to eight inches; some slightly larger ones might be about twelve inches, but not many will be longer than that.
Telescope with the draw-tube (back) and the glare-shield (front) extended.
By comparison, an officer-of-the-watch telescope typically measures 18 inches when closed up, stretching out to about two feet when fully extended. Most other telescopes can double or triple their lengths easily when they’re extended, while this particular model does not. Exactly why it was designed this way will be explained later on.
The Maker’s details.
These telescopes are called Officer-of-the-watch/officer-on-watch (‘OOW’) telescopes because they were usually purchased by officers or captains serving in the navy or the merchant marine for use on the ship’s bridge. Such telescopes were either the private property of the officers who carried them, or else were the property of the ship, and were kept on the bridge at all times for use by the crew. Their purpose was to provide a vision-aid close to hand for officers on the bridge in the event of an emergency.
Why are they shaped like they are?
A closeup of the glare-shield.
As I said earlier, Officer-of-the-Watch telescopes are long and narrow, with single draw-tubes and sliding glare-shields over their objective lenses. Their unique shape is due to the constraints of their working environments. Since these telescopes were usually kept (and used in) the bridge of a ship at sea, they had to be compact. A shorter, two-foot telescope was lighter, easier to carry and easier to use in the confined space of a ship’s wheelhouse, compared to a more conventional naval telescope (some of which could be three or even four feet long!). Try swinging that around inside a wheelhouse without cracking the helmsman in the head! He won’t thank you for it!
How Old are these Telescopes?
Officer-of-the-watch telescopes date to the early 20th century and appear to have been made exclusively in Britain. They were manufactured starting ca. 1900 up to the middle of the century. and were originally manufactured for the Royal Navy, but their use drifted into regular merchant-marine use as well due to their practicality of design.
So, what is an Officer of the Watch?
In the ship’s crew, an officer of the watch (or ‘officer on watch’) is the officer in charge of watchkeeping. Every officer on the ship, generally from the captain down to the lowest-ranking officer, covers watchkeeping in shifts. Traditionally, a watch was four hours long. During that four-hour shift, an officer stood watch on the bridge. Here, he could oversee the ship’s navigation, the weather, the speed and direction of travel, and could respond swiftly to emergencies. The officer of the watch had to be good at navigation, reading the weather, and at assessing dangerous situations such as storms, reefs, rocks and other hazards. In the absence of the captain (who might be sleeping, working, having dinner or be otherwise engaged), the officer of the watch was in charge of the ship’s immediate handling and navigation.
The “HUSUN” trademark on the glare-shield, comprised of the ocean and the rising sun
Typically, the officer of the watch was joined by at least two other sailors – a forward lookout or two, and a junior seaman known as a quartermaster, whose job was usually that of controlling the ship’s direction by manning the helm or the ship’s wheel. Officer-of-the-Watch telescopes were usually mounted on the wheelhouse walls, secured in place by brackets or rings to stop them rolling or sliding around.
In the event of something posing a hazard or threat to the ship (such as an oncoming storm, a coastline, rocks, a lighthouse or other ships), the officer of the watch could use the telescope provided (or one which he himself had purchased) to assess the situation ahead.
The bridge of the RMS Queen Mary. The semicircular devices on pedestals are the ship’s engine-order telegraphs
Since it could be dangerous to leave the wheelhouse during rough or stormy weather, a slimmer, more compact telescope which could be used easily indoors was preferable to the much longer, thicker, and heavier telescopes usually used at sea. Once the hazard had been identified, the ship could take appropriate action, either changing course, or else ordering the ship to stop or slow down, usually done by operating the engine-order telegraphs on the bridge, to send or ‘ring’ orders down to the engine-room below (each telegraph was equipped with a bell that dinged with each movement of the telegraph-arm so that the engineer could hear the change in orders from the bridge, over the drone of the engines).
What Features do these Telescopes Have?
To begin with, one of the most noticeable features of these telescopes is how thin they are. Typically not more than about three inches wide (if that!). A useful feature, since it would make the telescope easy to grip and hold – even if it’s winter on the Atlantic, and you’re wearing gloves to stop frostbite, but you need to spot an iceberg right ahead!
Another useful feature is the leather, non-slip cladding on the barrel. This was partially done for style purposes, but it also makes the telescope easier to grip with wet, cold hands in an emergency.
The third most noticeable feature that you’ll find on every officer of the watch telescope is the sliding shield at the front. Variously called ‘dew shields’ and ‘glare shields’, their purpose was to keep rain, seawater, spray and sunlight off the main lens (known as the ‘objective lens’). By sliding the shield out ahead of the lens, it prevented the sun’s rays from reflecting off the glass and potentially blinding the user, and it also kept the glass clear of raindrops or sea-spray in heavy weather, and was a popular feature on maritime telescopes.
Are These Types of Telescopes Common?
They are fairly common, yes. I’ve seen about four or five before I eventually bought this one. Most of them were in terrible, unusable condition due to their age and the lives they led, but you can find working examples for not too much money, if you’re patient. They’re typically made of brass (which may or may not be nickel-plated. Mine is plated) and are typically 18 inches long, extending out to about 24 inches in open length. Living in Australia, a country which until the late 20th century was accessible only by ship, finding maritime antiques isn’t that difficult. Barometers, ship’s clocks, telescopes, binoculars and sextants are pretty common here.
If you’re thinking of buying an antique telescope, then you need to check for things like dents, cracks, scratches and warpage. Damaged lenses can be hard to replace, and so should be avoided. Dents on the barrel (but even moreso on the draw-tubes) should be avoided as much as possible. Dents will misshape the profile of the tube and make it harder to draw in and out of the telescope. Dents on the draw-tubes will cause the telescope to jam.
If you have the right tools and enough patience, you can press and roll out (or at least reduce) stubborn dents, but you should be careful not to warp the shape of the tube. I was able to use a heavy, wooden rolling pin to roll out the dent inside the glare-shield on one of my favourite telescopes with great success. It wasn’t entirely eliminated, but it was reduced significantly – enough that it was no longer causing the shield to jam every time I opened or closed it.
The eyepiece shutter (closed) on the end of the telescope.
You should check that the sliding eyepiece shutter over the eyepiece lens is in good condition. If loose, they can be tightened by screwing them back into place. If they’re too tight, loosen the screw slightly. If the screw works itself loose repeatedly after tightening, every time you open and close the shutter, then a DROP of oil on the shutter will provide enough lubrication to allow the shutter to slide open and shut, without the friction that would also loosen the screw.
Simply tighten the screw as much as possible, apply a dab of oil and work it in. I’ve had to do that with a couple of telescopes in the past and provided the oil doesn’t dry out completely (unlikely), then it’s a very effective little fix.
Last but not least, you should check the telescope for its lens cap. Not all telescopes were designed to have lens-caps, but most did. This one does not have a cap over the objective lens, and never did. Instead it has a leather hood that drops over it, but most telescopes are meant to have them, to protect the objective lens from dust, water and damage. That said, it’s rather common to buy antique telescopes without their lens-caps included.
Anyway, that wraps up my posting about my rather different and interesting addition to my collection. For more information about antique telescopes, I can strongly recommend the blog of Nicholas Denbow, at The Telescope Collector. His posts are both entertaining, informative and fun to read!
If you’re like me, and have had to grow up with appalling eyesight, then you’ll know that you can never have too many magnifying glasses. Ever since the day I started highschool, I’ve always wanted a pocket magnifying glass. Something which I could carry around with me and use whenever I needed to read small text, or magnify something which I couldn’t see clearly.
These days, there’s all kinds of magnifiers available. They come with lights, folding lenses and protective cases, they’re downloadable apps on your phone which you can customise to your needs, they have sensors and zoom-functions and all the rest of it.
And almost all of them are made of some cheap plastic stuff, usually in garish colours and god-awful patterns, and with weird, whacky designs that make them look more like toys than anything else. And this is the main reason why I have never bought one.
Instead, for many years, I held out, hoping to find something a little nicer, a little more refined and elegant, something useful that didn’t look like just another mass-produced vision-aid. Deciding to take a page from the book of history, I started hunting for a quizzing-glass.
What’s a Quizzing Glass?
“A what?”, I hear you say.
A quizzing-glass, I repeat, a quizzing-glass.
Alright…and what is a ‘quizzing-glass’?
I am so glad you asked, because this post is going to be all about them!
My sterling silver quizzing-glass, complete with silver albert-chain.
First, a bit of background – struggling with a heady mix of myopia and astigmatism (the eyes’ inability to both focus, and stabilise an image) – my eyesight has always been awful. Don’t get me wrong, I can see well enough to do just about anything – with enough time, patience and swearing, I can thread a needle if I really have to – but because of my conflicting vision-conditions, I’ve always suffered from terrible nearsightedness – hence the need for a decent magnifying glass.
To this end, I’d spent a long time – at least 10 years – searching for a decent quizzing-glass to use as a magnifier. Unfortunately, quizzing-glasses are both rare, and expensive. Despite visiting countless fairs, shops, and dealers, I’d never been able to find one, or afford one, or buy one which I liked enough to spend money on – when a glass costs upwards of $600 retail, you want it to be the best possible…and even then, I didn’t have $600 to blow, being a poor university student at the time.
Anyway, enough backstory – what is a quizzing-glass??
Quizzing-glasses, or ‘quizzers’ as they’re also called, are small, pocket-sized handheld magnifying glasses with single lenses. The lenses are about the size of a large coin, and the frames and rims are typically made from gold, silver, or Pinchbeck-Brass (more about that later). Quizzers typically came with a handle or ring under the frame to hold in the hand or fingers, and the same handle or frame also served as an anchoring point for a chain, ribbon or cord, that affixed to the user’s clothing or went around the neck, to prevent damage or loss during the course of a day’s usage.
Quizzing-glasses were very common in the 1700s and 1800s. At a time when eyesight conditions were typically corrected with crude lenses and eyepieces such as Nurnberg spectacles and handheld lorgnettes, high society was looking for something more elegant and refined.
‘Nurnberg’ spectacle-frames, named after the town in Germany where they were invented – the most common type of spectacles in the 1700s. They would eventually evolve into the French ‘Pince-Nez’.
Quizzing-glasses were a lot more than just eyepieces to help you read stuff, in the 1700s, they were also flashy fashion-accessories! It was very common for a man – or even a woman – of means, to sport a quizzer as a fashion-accessory, even if they didn’t even need one! Peering at something through a quizzer became an upperclass affectation – one might, or might not, be genuinely interested in whatever they were looking at – but if they did look at it, then it was usually through the lens of a quizzer! In the later 19th century and even into the 20th century, this action was usually replaced by the more well-known monocle (yes, there is a difference, I’ll talk about that later, too!).
For gentlemen in the late 1700s and early 1800s, stereotypical accessories were the walking-stick and tricorne hat. For ladies, a parasol and fan were the most common accessories – but both sexes carried, and used quizzing-glasses.
Why Use a Quizzing-Glass?
I suspect the main reason why they were so popular is partially because they were cheaper. Spectacles – even relatively simple ones, needed so much work done to them – two identical lenses, two rims, screws, springs, a bridge, nosepads…and if you wanted them, then also temple-arms – and if you did want them, then that meant adding hinges, more screws, finials, and maybe even a protective case to go with it…it’s getting expensive now, isn’t it?
My Pinchbeck brass quizzer, from the early 1800s.
On the other hand, if you weren’t the type who desperately needed or used spectacles every day, and instead only did a casual amount of reading or close-work, then a quizzer, with its simpler construction, fewer parts, and smaller size, was generally considered to be a better, and cheaper, selection!
What’s the Difference Between a Quizzer and a Monocle?
Ever since I started carrying and using my quizzers (which is on a daily basis, thanks to my aforementioned eye-condition), I get people who come up to me and say ‘Oh wow! A monocle, I didn’t know anybody used those anymore…‘.
I grin, and smile and nod…and do my best not to correct their misinformation – because – it’s not a monocle!
Alright, so what’s the difference, then?
A quizzing-glass and a monocle both have a single lens fitted into a frame or rim. Both lenses serve as magnifiers, or otherwise help to correct vision.
That is where the similarities END.
A quizzing-glass is a handheld device – the frame is held by the ring or handle up to the eye, like a magnifying glass, and is attached to the user’s clothing by a chain, cord or strap of some variety. When not in use, it sits in the pocket of the user’s coat or jacket or waistcoat, or hangs on a cord or ribbon around the neck, usually resting at chest-level.
On top of that, a quizzing-glass lens can be almost any shape – round, oval, hexagonal, octagonal…even square! Since it doesn’t have to fit into the user’s eye-socket, the shape or even the size of the lens and the frame around it really doesn’t matter. By comparison, a monocle’s lens is always a perfect circle – it has to be, in order to fit into the user’s eye-socket, which is how a monocle is worn.
Monocles fit into the user’s eye-socket through friction. You pop it in, and the friction of your eyebrow resting and pressing against the top of the monocle holds it against your cheekbone, keeping the monocle in place. In cheaper monocles, which are just plain glass, the edge of the lens is smoothed off to make it more comfortable to wear.
On more expensive monocles, which come with frames and rims, seating the monocle in the eye-socket is done with the aid of two protruding shelves or ledges affixed to the edge of the frame, called ‘galleries’. A monocle has two galleries – one for the top of your eye-socket, and one for the bottom. You raise your eyebrow, pop in your monocle and then relax your facial muscles. The tension of your eye-socket pressing or resting against the monocle-galleries should be enough – if the monocle is sized and fitted correctly – to hold it in place.
The End of the Quizzing Glass
While monocles and quizzing-glasses were, for a time, equally popular, quizzing glasses died out in the 1800s, and by the turn of the 20th century, were a complete anachronism. Their demise is due chiefly to the fact that they were a fashion accessory, rather than being an actual vision-correction device, such as a monocle is designed to be. As fashions changed to be less frivolous and flamboyant to more straitlaced and tidy, people with eyesight problems chose to use lorgnettes or even modern-style temple-glasses to correct their eyesight, rather than fiddling around with a quizzing-glass. Monocles and modern spectacles had the advantage that while worn, they could leave both hands free to work.
By comparison to the demise of the quizzing-glass, the monocle remains in use today. Although it’s largely seen as a quaint holdover from the Edwardian era, the stereotypical eyepiece of well-bred, public-school-educated upper-class men, you can still buy – and even have prescribed for you – monocles which are brand-new. Most wearers are people who have poor vision in just one eye, and for whom a pair of spectacles isn’t strictly necessary.
I want to Buy a Quizzing Glass!
Quizzing glasses can be hard to find. After all, they haven’t been manufactured in the best part of nearly 200 years! They’re typically made of silver, gold, or pinchbeck (a type of really shiny brass). They were most common from the early 1700s up to the mid-1800s (when various types of spectacles and monocles replaced them in popularity). So, if you want to buy one, what do you need to look out for?
First thing’s first – you need to check the lens. The lens should be clean, clear and without cracks, scratches or chips. Test it for magnification power and see if you’re comfortable with the strength provided. Unless you have the facilities, contacts or the money to pay for someone to grind you a new magnifying lens, discard any quizzers with overly-scratched/chipped lenses.
Next thing to check is the condition of the frame or rim. In general, these should be alright, but you can find some (as I certainly have, in the past) which were bent or damaged. This can cause the lens to sit improperly, or even fall out, so rivets, screws and the edges of frames should all be checked for integrity. While you’re at it, examine any holding-loops or handles for issues like dents, cracks, warping or bending, and loose fitting parts. Just keep in mind that some holding-loops are meant to pivot and swing around, so don’t worry if they swivel back and forth.
How Much do Quizzing Glasses Cost?
Due to their rarity, quizzers are fairly expensive. Although some historical reenactment companies do manufacture modern quizzers in antique style, to purchase an actual Georgian-era quizzer will set you back quite a bit, anywhere from $100 – $300 for a silver one in variable condition (which is not too bad a price to pay) up to $400 – $600+ for one in solid gold. And that’s provided you don’t have to pay for the lens to be replaced, or for the frame to be repaired.
Quizzers were typically attached to the body of the wearer using a silk ribbon or lanyard. Since I wear mine in my upper waistcoat-pockets, I use simple pocketwatch chains (which is an option, if you choose to wear them that way). To stop them from swinging around and damaging the glass, keep your quizzer tucked out of the way (under your shirt or in your jacket pocket) when not using it.
People are always fascinated about ‘the other’, ‘those people’, ‘them’, and ‘how the other half live’. Love them or hate them, people at the top – be they kings, queens, presidents, or multibillionaire business moguls, the Nouveau Riche and the Old Money, the landed gentry and the aristocracy – they have always held a fascination for us, whether we would wish to admit this fact or not.
Reality TV shows like ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’, ‘Pads’ and ‘The lives of Super-Rich Billionaires’ and countless others, continue to draw crowds because they allow us to see into a world that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to experience…unless we were really, really well-connected and had lots of friends in high places.
In this posting, I’ll be looking at the original celebrities – the aristocracy. Before the days of A-list actors, fashionistas, socialites and boppy boy-bands, the ‘rich and famous’ were those situated in traditional positions of power – royalty, aristocracy, and so-on. There are many aristocratic titles, and I’ll be using the traditional British aristocratic ranking system for this posting (yes, there is a ranking-system), but I’ll include as many titles as I can. So, let’s begin…
Ranks and Titles
Title: Emperor (Fem: Empress) Area of Rulership:Empire Form of Address:Your Majesty
On the royal-aristocratic pyramid of power, the emperor sits at the very pinnacle. In the past, there were a lot of emperors – the Emperor of China, the Emperor of Japan, the Holy Roman Emperor, Ancient Roman Emperors, King-Emperors, etc.
The only emperor officially recognised in the world today is the Emperor of Japan. The last Emperor of China was dethroned in 1912, and abdicated in the 1920s. His home, the Imperial Palace in Peking, is now the Forbidden City Museum. It remains the largest palace-complex in the world by sheer size.
Title:King (Fem. Queen) Area of Rulership: Kingdom Form of Address:Your Majesty
Below the Emperor comes the King. At one time in history, there were hundreds of kings all over the world. Before the rise of modern nation-states as we know them today, places like China, Europe, Britain, India and many others had loads of little kings ruling little kingdoms. The idea that a king ruled an entire country is a pretty modern concept; Italy and Germany only became the countries that we recognise today in the 1870s, which isn’t that long ago!
While the days of loads of little kings and little kingdoms are gone, there are still a lot of kings and queens around. Britain, Spain, Cambodia, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Malaysia, Thailand, and Tonga, are just some of the countries which are still kingdoms. Some of these countries even lost or gave up their royal families, only for them to be reinstated (or ‘restored’, which is the official term) later on by popular demand. These include England (1660), Spain (1975), and Cambodia (1993). And they’re not the only ones – almost since the day of his birth, Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia has been fighting to get the Yugoslav Monarchy restored, despite the fact that he doesn’t live there, and nor does he speak a word of Yugoslavian! The monarchy was forced to flee from their homeland in the 1940s during the Second World War and couldn’t return home again due to the rise of communism. Ever since, the Yugoslavian Royal Family (now based in Britain), have been kings (or at least princes) without a country.
By the way, a king always outranks a Queen. And because nobody can ever outrank the monarch in precedence, a queen regnant (a queen who inherited the throne and rules in her own right) is never married to a king, since her husband would then outrank her, and nobody can outrank the queen. That’s why her husband is given the title of Prince, Duke, or some other lesser title. A queen who is the wife of a ruling king is known as a Queen Consort.
The one and only Prince Consort in history was Prince Albert, husband to Queen Victoria, who received the title at Victoria’s insistence, when the government insisted that she couldn’t give him the title of ‘King’ (for the reasons stated above).
In most countries today, a king is a ceremonial figurehead who acts as an ambassador for the culture, history, and social harmony of his kingdom. But in times past, kings were genuine military leaders. While today this role is largely of a morale-boosting nature and their position as head of the armed forces (in most countries) is purely ceremonial, in the past, being king really did involve going into battle, sword swinging and guns blazing! The last English king to ride into battle alongside his troops was George II, in the 1700s!
While kings who rode into battle with their troops, drums playing and colours flying is a romantic and gallant image, the truth was that while kings were often the most heavily armed, armoured and protected individuals on the battlefield, they were just as susceptible to danger as everybody else. King Richard I, of Richard-the-Lionheart fame, was killed in battle in 1199 when he was shot in the shoulder…by a little boy wielding a crossbow!
Title: Prince (Fem. Princess). Area of Rulership: Principality Form of Address: Your Royal Highness
Aah, princes. We like princes! Tall, young, dashing and handsome! Everybody knows what a prince is, and everybody has this image in their heads of what a prince should be. Someone rich, accomplished, charming, sweet, someone who is irresistible to women, and who should, ideally, have some sort of militaristic background. Not for nothing has Disney been milking this cow for nearly 100 years, and the Brothers Grimm before that! Alongside the Prince is the Princess, what every little girl aspires to be, or at least treated like.
Princes are traditionally the male children and grandchildren of monarchical rulers. In popular lore, princes are the cute hotties who rock the best threads at parties, slay dragons, rescue damsels in distress, and who have absolutely scandalous social lives. In some respects, none of that has changed!
Princes are typically divided into two categories – those who are the children of monarchs, and those who are monarchs in their own right. A prince who rules as a monarch rules an area of land known as a principality (eg.: The Principality of Monaco) and is known as a Sovereign Prince. A prince who is heir-apparent to a throne and kingdom is typically known as a Crown Prince (as in, the next person to inherit the crown). In Britain, the same title is the Prince of Wales.
Famous princes throughout history included playboy Prince Edward (Edward VII of England), Charles Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie), and Henry, Prince of Wales (later Henry V), who was shot in the face by a bow and arrow in 1403. Unlike his predecessor Richard the Lionheart, Henry survived his brush with death. The arrow missed his left eye by milimeters and almost severed his spinal-cord. Disinfection of the wound using honey, and careful surgery successfully extracted the armour-piercing arrowhead from his skull, and he went on to live for another nine years!
Title:Duke (Fem. Duchess) Alt.: Herzog (German). Area of Rulership:Duchy Form of Address:Your Royal Highness/Your Grace
And so, from titles of royalty, we move down to titles of aristocracy or nobility, also known as the ‘peerage’. Top of the tree is the Duke. The name of this particular title (a ‘dukedom’) comes from the Latin ‘Dux’, meaning ‘leader’. There are two types of dukes – Royal dukes, and aristocratic dukes. A royal duke is a prince (son of a sovereign ruler) who has been given an aristocratic title, usually upon marriage (eg. Duke of Cambridge, for Prince William). Despite this, they retain their royal form of address as ‘Your Royal Highness’.
Arthur Wellesley, the “Iron Duke” of Wellington, the famous field commander who brought British forces to victory during the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
Slightly below this is the aristocratic duke. Traditionally, dukedoms (indeed, all aristocratic titles) were given as rewards for exceptional military or civil service. One of the most famous examples of this is Arthur Wellesley – the Duke of Wellington. Dukedoms are awarded so rarely that in Britain, they’re almost dying out!
Title: Marquess (Fem. Marchioness). Alt.: Marquis (French), Margrave (German). Area of Rulership: Marquisite or March. Form of Address: My Lord
Gilbert du Motier, better known as the Marquis de Lafayette, the French nobleman and army-officer who fought for colonial freedom during the American Revolution.
In the world of aristocratic titles, the marquess, or marquis (pronounced “Marr-key”) is possibly one of the least-known. Let’s face it, there aren’t exactly a lot of them around. A marquess was originally the title given to someone who ruled over a borderland between two countries, and the land they ruled was known as a march or marquisite. Possibly the most famous marquis known to people in modern times are the Marquis de Sade…after whom the sexual practice of ‘Sadism’ is named…and Gilbert du Motier – the Marquis de Lafayette, of American Revolutionary fame.
The Marquis de Lafayette, painted in 1825 by Samuel F. B. Morse…yes, the same Samuel Morse who invented Morse Code.
Born into a noble French family, the Marquis de Lafayette traveled to America in the late 1700s looking for adventure and got far more than he bargained for! Although he had absolutely NO military experience at the time, he found himself a natural leader and commander, and was instrumental in winning or helping to win, many crucial battles in the American Revolutionary War. Upon return to France, after the war, the marquis was arrested and imprisoned during the French Revolution when he tried to flee into the Netherlands. Members of his extended family were either arrested and imprisoned, or lost their heads to Madame La Guillotine.
Although he was nominally an American citizen, the American ambassador (based in The Hague) was unable to secure his release from prison. This was later achieved through the intervention of Napoleon Bonaparte who had the Lafayette family struck off a list of enemies of the state and all surviving members (including the Marquis, his son, daughters, wife and other relatives) were eventually all released from prison.
In 1824, the marquis was invited to the United States by the American government, and he came as an official guest of President Monroe, to participate in celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the American republic.
Title: Earl Area of Rulership: Shire Form of Address: My Lord
Apart from dukes, earls are the highest level of aristocracy that most people are familiar with. Lord Grantham in the Downton Abbey series, is the Earl of Grantham. As with sovereign princes, dukedoms, and marquesses, earldoms are hereditary through the male line, going to the first surviving son of the title-holder (or if no sons survive or were born in the first place, then to the next male-line inheritor, typically a brother or cousin).
Title: Count (Fem. Countess). Alt.: Comte (French), Graf (German). Area of Rulership: County Form of Address: My Lord
The title of ‘count’ isn’t that common in British nobility, but it is very common on the Continent. Countries as diverse as France, Poland, Germany and many others, have long held traditions of including the title of ‘Count’ in their aristocratic heirarchy. A count traditionally ruled over a ‘county’.
In modern society, the most famous count, is, of course, the Transylvanian vampire-nobleman, Count Dracula! Dracula is based on the ancient Wallachian prince, Vlad Dracul, also known as “Vlad the Impaler”…and that isn’t some cutesy nickname given to him by his lovers, either, but rather for how he tortured and killed his hundreds of enemies – by impaling them on wooden stakes and leaving them to die.
Title: Viscount (Fem. Viscountess) Area of Rulership: N/A Form of Address: My Lord
“You have to think about your style! What’s that village where your father was curate?” “Upper Burnham Trenton” “No, no. Give me another place, nearby”. “Havisham, two miles away?” “That’ll do very nicely. Viscount Bellamy of Havisham. Has style!…wouldn’t mind it myself!”
“Upstairs, Downstairs”
Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson. Nelson’s brother, William Nelson received a title, too, and was created Earl Nelson. The earldom still exists today. The 10th Earl Nelson is Simon Nelson, an officer with the London Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard).
Unless you’ve ever watched that exchange between Lord Bellamy and Sir Geoffrey Dillon in the classic 1970s TV show “Upstairs, Downstairs”, most people in everyday life have probably never heard of the title of viscount (pronounced ‘vy-count’). The most famous viscount familiar to the majority of people today is probably Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, the Viscount Nelson, who earned his titles (as well as an amputated arm, leg, and the loss of an eye) during his gallant naval actions at the turn of the 19th century.
Upon being informed that Nelson had been hit by a sharpshooter’s bullet during the famous Battle of Cape Trafalgar, King George III is claimed to have said that “we have lost more than we have gained”. The bullet that killed Admiral Nelson, extracted from his corpse after his death, is a museum-exhibit today.
Title: Baron (Fem. Baroness) Alt.: Freiherr (German), translating as “Free Lord”. Area of Rulership: Barony Form of Address: Sir
The lowest of the hereditary titles (ie – a title which can be passed down, father to son), Baron was originally given to warriors or knights as a reward for exceptional military service to their king. In recognition of this gallantry, the title of Baron (which entitles the holder to be addressed as ‘Sir…’), was typically hereditary in nature.
Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen – better known as the Red Baron, was an aristocratic German fighter-pilot during the First World War.
A lot of baronies were granted to knights who had served William I (The Conqueror) with distinction in the 1060s and 1070s. 150 years later, it would be most of these barons who attempted to check the power of the unpopular King John, by forcing him to sign the Magna Carta Cive Libertatum – the Great Charter of Liberties.
A slightly lesser title below that of Baron is that of Baronet (in German ‘Ritter’, or ‘Hereditary Knight’). Like most of these titles, a baronetcy is also a hereditary title and like a baron, a baronet is also titled as ‘Sir’.
Baronetcies are among the most common titles given to fictional characters (one look at Wikipedia’s list on the subject would convince anybody of this!), probably because they’re uncomplicated, but still sound stylish. The murdered Sir Charles, and his nephew and heir, Sir Henry Baskerville, in Sherlock Holmes’ “Hound of the Baskervilles” adventure, are both baronets.
Title: Knight Area of Rulership: N/A Form of Address: Sir
Like kings and princes, knights have also been heavily mythologised. While the whole trope of the ‘knight in shining armour’ certainly existed, that’s about all that was really true of medieval knights. Most knights did not follow the code of Chivalry and most knights were not what we’d think of as being gallant, honourable warriors doing deeds of daring do, to win the love of maidens fair!
In actuality, most knights barely followed chivalry, and when they did, they only followed the parts that were convenient to them, when it was convenient for them to follow them. That said, being a knight did involve heavy training. To be deserving of the title of ‘Sir Knight’, you had to undergo a grueling fifteen-year training period starting from the age of seven! If you showed enough prowess at blade and steed, and were suitably ballsy enough, then in your late teens or early twenties, typically between about 18-21, you might be made a knight!
The knighting ceremony typically involved the act of the liege lord or ruler laying the sword across a knight’s shoulders (something that still happens today) and then – slapping the knight in the face!…something which does NOT still happen today! Exactly what the slap was or why it died out is unknown, but it’s generally seen as an act of dominance, to make it clear to the knight who owns him and who made him a knight to begin with!
As with most titles, a ‘knight’ today is purely ceremonial, a title given as recognition for some manner of service provided, and as a token of appreciation.
A History of Aristocracy
So, now that we know what aristocratic titles are and what order they go in, where did titles like this even come from? Although such titles (and similar titles all around the world, from Japan to China, Germany, Belgium, France, Britain and countless other places) have existed for centuries, what do they actually mean?
In times past, an aristocratic title was usually given as a reward for exceptional military or civil service. Kings and Queens had a lot of land to govern over. Since it was impossible for a king to be everywhere at once (although some certainly tried!), he often passed on the more mundane, day-to-day governing jobs (collecting taxes, ensuring state security, ruling the peasantry, etc) to his various underlings. Exactly who these underlings were, depended on their history with the king. The people chosen by the king to rule a parcel of his kingdom in his name were typically close family, relatives, good friends, or lesser subjects who had impressed the king with their service. Land was given to these people, along with a title to designate their legitimacy to rule.
If nobles did a really good job at ruling their land and looking after the king or kingdom’s interests, then they could be promoted, even after achieving their peerage or title. William Canvendish, 5th Earl of Devonshire, was promoted to the position of First Duke of Devonshire in the 1690s for taking an active part in the plot to remove the exceedingly unpopular King James II from the throne of England – an event known to history as the “Glorious Revolution”, where the English Crown was basically given on a silver platter, to James’s much more popular daughter, Princess Mary, and her husband, William, Prince of Orange. They would reign, starting in 1688, as William III and Queen Mary. As they reigned as joint monarchs, the period covering their reign is known as the Reign of William AND Mary. The College of William and Mary in the Unitd States is named after them, and was founded by their permission in 1693. It is the second-oldest university in the United States (the oldest is, of course, Harvard!).
Anyway, I digress…
For helping to kick James out of England, and giving the throne to Queen Mary and King William, the new monarchs bestowed the new title of Duke of Devonshire upon the Cavendish family – a title they have held right up to the present day! The present Duke of Devonshire is the twelfth to hold the title since its creation in the 1690s!
How Do Aristocratic Titles Survive?
Aristocratic titles survive by being inherited, usually down the male line of descent. That is to say, first son to first son, first son to first son, through the ages. Should a first son not have a first son, then upon the first son’s death, the title reverts back up the line to the first son’s next male heir – usually a younger brother or cousin. Titles cannot be inherited by female members of a family, such as daughters, or wives. This complication is one of the main plot points of the period drama series ‘Downton Abbey‘, and it was even discussed in the British Parliament.
Despite attempts to pass what was called the “Lady Mary Bill” (which would allow females to inherit family title), no progress was made. So for now at least, aristocratic titles remain solely the preserve of men. If the holder of a hereditary title dies without heirs or descendants of any kind, the title becomes extinct, and dies out. To prevent this from happening, most aristocratic families always tried to have at least two sons (a practice that was colloquially known as having an ‘heir and spare’) to carry on the family title, name, and estate.
Courtesy Titles
A courtesy-title is a title given to a member of a nobleman’s family who has not earned a title of nobility or peerage in their own right. It is given, as the name suggests, out of courtesy, or politeness. In an aristocratic, noble or even royal family, the only true noble or aristocrat is the actual holder of the title. Everyone else, unless otherwise stipulated, holds what’s called a ‘courtesy title’. The wife of an earl is titled ‘Lady’ out of politeness. Their sons and daughters are titled ‘Lord’ or ‘Lady’, again out of politeness.
A good example of this is Lord Peter Wimsey, and his good man, Bunter! Strictly speaking, Lord Peter has no actual title of his own – the actual holder of the family title is his older brother Gerald, the Duke of Denver. Peter receives the courtesy title ‘Lord’, and the privilege of being addressed as ‘My Lord’, purely out of courtesy. Even Prince George, the firstborn son of Prince William and Kate Middleton, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, has a courtesy-title, in essence, which he holds thanks to the permission of his great-grandmother, Elizabeth II.
The Perks of Aristocracy
Apart from a swanky title, being nobility used to come with all kinds of perks as well. Traditionally, this was in the form of land-grants. Exactly how much land you received depended on your ranking, and it was from this land that your wealth and status were expected to grow. Management of woodlands, farmlands, taxation and rent all went towards your lordly coffers. Apart from this, you were also expected to maintain law and order over your lands, as the king’s representative in the area. Collecting taxes, settling disputes, defending the king’s land from invaders or uprisings, and of course, maintaining the King’s Peace.
In times of war, nobility were expected to lead armies and command troops, but in times of peace, they would instead lavish the equivalent of millions of dollars on their private estates. This led to the creation of gigantic country houses and, just as it is now, and as it was then – the structure of the house itself, was yet another revenue stream. It was not uncommon for grand country houses to be besieged by curious commoners who were eager to look inside.
More open-minded nobility, who were held in good esteem by the public, turned this to their advantage – on days when the family was either away, or the house was not being used, the master of the house would permit upper servants such as butlers or housekeepers, to conduct tours of the house for the enjoyment of the paying public. For a small gratuity, anybody could enter the house and be shown around the rooms and chambers, where they could admire the furnishings and decorations.
At the end of the day, the takings were divided between the Master of the House, and the servant who had conducted the tour. In some houses, this practice was so common that some senior servants even wrote their own guidebooks, so that tourists could read them as they walked through the house!
Aristocracy without Royalty?
As you’ve seen, aristocratic titles and the landed estates that tend to go with them are intended to be passed down, father to son, father to son, through the generations, in some cases, for centuries! But what happens when the country that landed estate exists in suddenly ceases to be a monarchy? What happens to the aristocracy? Can they still keep the land? What happens to their titles?
Georg Ludwig Ritter von Trapp, the original “Captain von Trapp” and head of the von Trapp family in the 1920s and 30s. Coming from a family of formidable naval experience – both he and his father were in the Austro-Hungarian Navy, it was Georg’s father whose actions in combat, elevated his family so that his heirs and descendants could hold the title of ‘Ritter’, the German title of ‘Hereditary Knight’ (equivalent to ‘Baronet’ in the English heirarchy, and the lowest rank of hereditary nobility).
It depends. In Austria, all aristocratic and royal titles have been abolished by the government. In France, you can hold onto your ancestral estate, if you can prove ownership, and can actually afford the upkeep, but you can only lay claim to an aristocratic title if you can prove that you are directly descendant from an original title-holder. Even if you can, this doesn’t confer any special privileges on you in French society, except the right to use your title if you so wish. German nobility hasn’t officially existed since the end of the First World War, although current laws do still allow former noble families to retain aristocratic honorifics, such as ‘Von’ in their surnames (the musical ‘Von Trapp’ family continues to uphold this tradition).
The Aristocracy Today
Apart from social prestige, what exactly does being aristocracy mean in the modern world?
Honestly? Not much more than that. Sadly, retaining a title of nobility is mostly done for ceremonial reasons these days. There are a few perks, like having it printed on your passport, or if you live in Britain, then being able to sit in the House of Lords, but beside that…not much. The days of grand estates are long gone. Skyrocketing maintenance costs and dwindling inheritances make them less and less appealing to own, and even if you do want to own one, and are able to get one in one manner or another, they’re so expensive that most of them are white elephants – too expensive to keep, too valuable to destroy.
A few weeks ago, I attended the annual Melbourne Pen Show, the oldest continuous collector’s and dealer’s fair of writing equipment, writing accessories and antiques in the southern hemisphere. This year was our 20th anniversary!
I sold quite a few things at the show – not just pens, but also silverware and antiques. Eager to see what else was on offer, I left a friend to guard my sales table, and went off to have a look around. Ironically, for something labeled as a pen show, I didn’t find any pens which excited me enough, in a price-range I was comfortable with, to actually buy. But while poking around through all the related offerings of inkwells, ink bottles, leathergoods, diaries, desk accessories and assorted antiques, I did find a row of rather crusty old pocketknives.
None of them were particularly appealing, but after sifting through all the detritus, I came across a rather handsome specimen with nickel-silver bolsters, and clad all over in lovely shimmering, glossy mother of pearl scales. Like all the other knives, this one was crusted and grimy and dare I say it, rather overpriced, but I perceived that, with a bit of effort, it could be turned into something both elegant, and useful.
A good bit of haggling managed to chip the price down and I bought it feeling happy for myself. Within just a few minutes of walking off with it and settling back behind my own sales table at the fair, I whipped out the knife and started thinking over what would need to be done to the knife to restore it to something resembling working condition…because it certainly wasn’t!
The knife was a standard, palm-sized slipjoint penknife, somewhat on the smaller end of medium, with two opposing blades contained within a pair of brass liners and a single backspring underneath, ornamented with nickel-silver bolsters and thick slabs of mother of pearl between, on either side. It could be a very attractive knife – if only the blades would open without ripping your fingernails out by the roots, and could cut anything worth a damn, without giving you tetanus at the same time, from all the surface-rust on the steel.
Who made the Knife?
The maker’s mark: Ed. Wusthof.
The knife was manufactured in the capital of European cutlery – the German town of Solingen – by the centuries old firm of Wusthof. Established in 1814, the Wusthof cutlery firm is still owned and operated by the Wusthof family, over two centuries after it was founded! Although more famous today for making kitchen-knives, it was common in the old days for cutlers to make all kinds of blades from scissors to razors, pocket-knives to silverware. Specialising in one particular type of blade (like what most companies do now) is a relatively recent phenomenon. Being a Solingen knife, I knew I’d bought something of unquestioned quality – it would have to be, if the company’s still family-run after 200 years!
Cleaning, cleaning, and…more cleaning
In my many years of collecting and tinkering with antiques, it’s long been my experience that the vast majority of antiques that are purchased from someplace – be it a fair, online, at an antiques shop, or from someone’s barn in the middle of nowhere – only require ‘restoration’ or ‘repairs’, and are ‘broken’ or ‘don’t work’ – not because they ARE broken, or don’t work, but rather, because they simply haven’t been cleaned. In decades!
Watches, clocks, sewing machines, typewriters, fountain pens, cars, record-players…anything, really…that’s been used rough and put away wet, as they say…will tend to seize up and not work after several years of use and absolutely no maintenance. The same goes for pocketknives.
Once I got the knife home, I opened it up and flooded it with oil. I stuffed it full of tissue-paper and started rubbing and scraping away at the inside of the knife. Even this half-hearted attempt at cleaning the knife yielded amazing…and…frankly…revolting…results! After their brief spelunk into the dark cavities of the knife, the tissues returned to the surfaceworld clagged up and caked in filth! Black, brown, sludgy GUNK all over!
Now came the really messy bit…removing all this grime.
Working out the Grime
Unless you have all the right tools, removing 60 years of encrusted grime and gunk (the accumulated decades of dust, pocket-lint, dead skin, coagulated oil and god knows what else) from the inside of a pocketknife can be a long, slow, sticky, oily and very, very, VERY messy process. Most people don’t have these tools…like me…and so you gotta restore the knife without them, the long way around…and this can take days.
The only way to do this is to repeatedly flood the knife with oil (I suggest sewing machine oil, but if you can stand the smell, WD-40 works as well, but keep in mind, you will be using a LOT of it, so best to get a lubricant that doesn’t smell…) and then work the blades open and shut, over and over and over again.
The oil seeps into the deepest nooks and crannies of the knife and dilutes the grime and crud that’s stuck inside the springs, pivots and liners. Opening and closing the knife the literally thousands of times that this will require, works the grime loose and it seeps out the bottom of the knife through the backspring with each working of the blades.
Get some tissues, paper-towels or toilet-paper. Fold it thick and lay it on a hard surface like a tabletop. Rub the knife – spring-side down – against the paper. Press it hard into the paper and rub it vigorously back and forth. The capillary action of the oil seeping out of the knife into the paper draws out all the grime stuck inside the springs and pivots. Now lift up the knife and stare in horror and revulsion at the THICK BLACK GREASY LINES on the paper. This is the grime that’s inside the knife which you MUST remove if the knife is to work properly.
Ever wondered why your pocketknife keeps jamming? This is why! All this gunk and grime, flushed out from between the springs and pivots with copious amounts of oil, represents just 15 minutes of cleaning, in a process that took EIGHT DAYS to complete.
“But this takes DAYS!!” I hear you say. “Can’t you just lubricate the pivots and have done with it!?”
Sure. You can. But you’re only lubricating the grime that’s stuck inside the knife. Once the oil dries up, the grime dries up, sticks to the springs and pivots all over again, and turns to glue. It fuses the blades shut through sheer friction and you’re back to square one all over again. The only way to get the knife working properly is to get ALL that crud out. And the only way to do that is to flush it through with oil.
“Can’t you speed it up somehow?”
Not unless you can rip the knife apart, clean it, and then competently put it back together. Using an ultrasonic cleaner does help somewhat, but it’s only effective once the grime has already been loosened. Ultrasonic cleaners work by vibrating and generating thousands of tiny bubbles that burst and explode against anything they come in contact with (like a knife placed inside an ultrasonic bath).
These thousands of explosions flush out and dislodge any grime and gunk they come into contact with. But it only works if the bubbles can reach the grime – in this case, the grime is trapped deep inside the knife. For the cleaner to be effective, you need to work the grime loose, first.
The knife is clean once all this grime has been removed from all the pivot points, gullies, crevices and chokepoints inside the spring mechanism. When the oil coming out of the knife is clear (or as clear as you can get it), and the blades swing open and shut smoothly with little (if any) resistance, then the knife is clean. If the blades keep jerking open and shut, then it needs more cleaning. You do not want jerky, unpredictable blades in your pocketknife AFTER you’ve sharpened those same blades – they become a serious safety risk!
Removing the Chip
As elegant as the knife was (or as elegant as I perceived it would be, after I was done with it), there was no hiding the fact that the blade had a tiny, but noticeable chip along its length. It was a tiny chip – probably less than a millimeter, but it was a chip, nonetheless, and I knew that it would be pointless to try and sharpen or use the knife if the chip wasn’t dealt with. The chip is a weak-spot in the blade, but it’s also an annoyance and a safety risk. And it prevents you from cutting anything properly, since you don’t have a straight, clean edge.
The chip in the blade (circled in blue) was tiny – barely a millimeter deep, but its presence was enough to effect the cutting ability of the knife, and so had to be removed.
The only way to remove the chip was to grind the blade down to the same level as the end of the chip. That’s right – you have to physically remove metal from the blade. Obviously, the bigger the chip, the more metal you have to remove, so ideally, any knives you buy should have no chips at all, or if they do, then they should be tiny chips like this, where grinding down the blade doesn’t affect it so badly.
Out came the sharpening stones!
I picked out the roughest sharpening stone I had. I laid it down and started grinding the blade back and forth, heel to toe along the stone in a sawing or slicing action. The aim was to slowly grind down the metal until the edge of the blade met the top of the chip, thereby eliminating it. Obviously to do this well, the blade needs to be level on the grinding stone, or else you end up with a wonky-looking blade. So if you do have to do this, make sure the blade’s edge is level against the stone as you grind. Stop every few strokes to check progress and stop grinding entirely when the chip is ALMOST gone.
Once you reach that stage, regular sharpening of the now dulled knife-edge should remove the rest of the chip and restore the blade to its proper profile.
The same spot on the blade, after the chip was ground out on a stone. Nice and straight again!
Keep in mind that, because the only way to remove a chip or nick in the blade is to remove the metal around the chip, smaller chips are easier to remove from blades than larger chips. A knife with a big chips in the blade should generally be avoided.
Polishing the Blades
Knives which are this old are typically made of carbon steel. That means that they’re very susceptible to rusting. Back in the old days, the way to stop this was to give the blades a protective coating. 60 or 70 years ago or more, this was accomplished by plating the blades in a non-corrosive metal…like nickel. Nickel not only gave the knife a sheeny silver shine, but it also prevented the blades and other steel parts of the knife from corroding.
50, 70, 100 years later, and all that nickel-plating is gone. The blades will probably be growing rust and starting to pit, by now. Heavy rusting and pitting on blades should be red-alert signs that the knife is not to be touched, let alone purchased, but light surface rust can generally be removed by careful polishing.
To do this, you’ll need fine-grit sandpaper of varying degrees of roughness, and a polishing compound of your choice (or if you don’t want to use a metal polish, the oil that you used to loosen out the grime inside the springs and pivots can also be used).
With enough persistence, and the right degrees of abrasiveness, a combination of fine sandpaper and a lubricating/polishing liquid can restore a knife’s blades to a stunning shine. If you really put effort into it, you can even get a glossy, mirror finish, but don’t forget that your main task is to remove the rust.
Sharpening the Blades
Once you’re done removing the grime from the springs and pivots and got the blades opening and closing smoothly, once you’ve removed any chips from the blades and have given them a good polish, the last step is to sharpen the blades. I always leave blade sharpening as the last step to prevent any nasty cuts during the cleaning process.
There’s a million articles on the internet about how to sharpen everything from corkscrews to axes, so I won’t go into the intricacies of the action, but I will say that a pocketknife has been sufficiently sharpened when you can slice cleanly through a sheet of paper or cardboard from point to shank, without the blade sticking to, or tearing up, the paper or card as it makes the cut.
The main blade.
Hold the edge of the sheet of paper or cardboard in the thumb and index finger of your left hand, three or four inches from the corner. Holding your knife in your right hand, slice downwards, from the edge of the paper ahead of your fingers, from one side of the sheet to the other. A sharp knife will cut cleanly into the edge of the paper, through the middle and down to the bottom, the whole length of the blade without stopping. You should be able to do this really fast. If the blade sticks, jams, catches or fails to cut in any way, or if it tears the paper in half while this happens, then it’s not sharp enough.
Once the blades have been thoroughly sharpened, then your knife is ready for use!
The smaller pen-blade.
This is the process that I went through to restore this knife back to working condition. It was a long, drawn out process that took over a week (removing 60, 70 years of grime was never going to be easy!), but it was worth it. Now I have another beautiful vintage pocketknife to add to my collection.
Keeping it Clean and Sharp
Once you’ve finished the arduous task of restoring your pocketknife, it’s important to keep it in good condition. Don’t force the blades, always keep your knife dry, and every now and then (not often, once or twice a year should be enough, if you use it regularly), flush out the springs and pivots with oil again to keep the action smooth and free of grime. And don’t forget to sharpen it – ideally after any heavy use, if you feel that the blades are starting to lose their edges. Used correctly, a sharp knife is safer than a blunt one.
For a lot of aficionados of traditional wet shaving, mastering the use of a classic cutthroat straight-edge razor is often seen as the zenith of one’s learning-curve and the peak of one’s skill-acquisition when it comes to reverting back to this more relaxed, eco-friendly, and most masculine of grooming rituals. Often perceived as being phenomenally dangerous, once mastered, the use of a cutthroat razor is both relaxing, enjoyable, and dare I say it – far more fun than shaving with a toss-out plastic cartridge razor. Cutthroat razors shave smoother, cleaner, and due to the significant length of the blade’s cutting-edge, remove more stubble with fewer strokes, than conventional modern razors. This means that they also shave much faster than modern razors.
Kept sharp, smooth and dry, stropped smoothly and honed correctly, a cutthroat razor will last for decades – even centuries, before it has to be thrown out. If ever! This, along with all its other attributes, is why the traditional straight razor is coming back into fashion with a vengeance!
Three of my antique straight razors, ivory, horn, and ivory. The strop and the toothpaste jar are also antiques. The razors are from the 1880s/1890s, the toothpaste jar is from about 1875.
I’ve been using a cutthroat razor for the past eight years. I typically shave every other day, strop each razor before and after each use, and touch up the blades every six to eight weeks, to keep them sharp. In my time, I’ve come to appreciate the amazing variety which is available when you turn to the art of using a straight razor, over that of a cartridge monstrosity. The different blade-shapes, point-styles, scale-materials, razor-sizes, blade-widths…the amount of variation found in razor to razor, even within a single manufacturer – is almost endless. This is why a lot of straight razor users claim to suffer from a condition known as “R.A.D.” – Razor Acquisition Disorder! And it’s not hard to see why – these beautiful, useful, long-lasting tools come in an almost infinite variety of sizes, styles, designs, materials and finishes.
In my time I’ve owned razors made in Germany, Britain and France. I’ve had razors from Solingen, razors from Sheffield, razors from companies that don’t even exist anymore, and razors from manufacturers whose names have gone down in history as famous cutlers. I’ve had razors with scales made of horn, snakewood, celluloid, stainless steel…even ivory!…I have two of those!
But from the very earliest days of attempting to master the use of the straight razor, of all the razors I’ve collected, sharpened, stropped, cleaned, sold or kept on, of all the razors I’ve cut myself with (Thank goodness, not many!) – there was one type of razor that I’ve always wanted…and never managed to get my hands on. Until about a month ago.
Seven Day Razor Sets
Among users and collectors of straight razors, there’s always various types of razors which people love to try and collect. The thinnest blades, the widest blades, ivory-scaled, horn-scaled, silver-scaled (yes, silver scaled razors do exist. They’re rare, but they do exist), two-razor sets, four-razor sets, the oldest, the newest, the most beautifully decorated…the list of variations, and of collecting goals and of ‘grail acquisitions’ go on, and on, and on.
And, for a lot of collectors, one of their goals is often the procurement of a classic ‘seven day set’. And that was one of my goals until a few weeks ago, when I finally got my hands on one!
What is a ‘Seven Day Set’?
A seven day set refers to a boxed set of seven identical cutthroat razors, one razor for each day of the week. Such sets were (and still are) sold as luxury male grooming accessories, and their price reflects that. Whether antique or modern, such sets often cost inordinate amounts of money. A modern seven day set, with decorated scales and handsome, wooden case, made by a well-respected company in modern times, currently retails for $3,500. By comparison, the average price of a secondhand straight razor at a flea market is anywhere from $5.00 to $50.00, depending on how old it is, its condition, and where and by whom, and of what it was made. So yes, when I said that seven day sets were expensive, I mean they’re REALLY expensive.
The full set, all lined up in its box.
And they can be rare, and if they’re antique, they can also be in questionable condition, and if they’re not, then they cost a mint to purchase. Because of all these reasons, such sets are often out of the reach and price-range of most collectors.
But, I digress.
Seven day sets date back to the earliest days of straight razors. Back when most people were unable to sharpen their razors themselves (that’s if they owned a razor at all), it was often the duty of the local barber to maintain the razors of his customers by periodically freshening up the edges. To lengthen the gap between sharpenings, men often kept two or three spare razors around to use while their main razor was being touched up at the barbershop. The practice of occasionally swapping out razors and changing them around meant that apart from needing less frequent sharpening, the bodies of the razors’ blades themselves, would last a lot longer.
The blades. They’re 5/8 extra hollow, with a rounded point. The edges are so thin that they’re almost ‘singing’ blades, meaning that they let off this high-pitched ‘sching!’ when they’re struck or rubbed on something…like when they’re being used to shave with!
Catching onto this trend, it became the fashion for cutlery firms which manufactured and sold razors, to start selling them in sets. Two- and four-razor sets are relatively common, the idea being that you could chop and change razors as you worked your way through the week, preventing excessive wear or overuse on any one blade. For those who could afford it, however, manufacturers started coming out with the much flashier-looking ‘seven day sets’ – with one razor for each day of the week. By using each razor only once every seven days, the edge of each razor’s blade was preserved and would last a lot longer between sharpenings.
Are such sets common items?
Not really. Most men only ever owned one or two razors, and simply sharpened, stropped and cleaned that one, or those two razors, for the rest of their lives. Seven day sets were often seen as luxury items, usually purchased by wealthy gentlemen who had money to burn, and who had the servants (such as a personal valet) whose job it was to maintain his master’s wardrobe and personal grooming accessories, and whose duties included sharpening and stropping their master’s seven piece razor set at regular intervals to keep the blades clean, smooth and sharp. But since such sets are generally rarer, but also of higher overall quality, they’re also highly collectible, and high-quality antique seven day sets from famous cutlers and retail establishments can fetch several hundred, or even thousands of dollars.
My Seven Day Set
As you may have surmised from what you’ve read so far, I’ve been chasing one of these sets for a long time. The better part of eight years! And after a long and exhausting hunt, I finally have one! The reason it’s taken so long for me to find one should now be pretty self-evident. They’re not exactly common, finding one in good condition can be tricky, and they’re also very, very expensive! But the gods of good fortune smiled on me, and I finally managed to get my hands on one!
The original manufacturer’s guarantee paper that came with the set. It’s 120 years old and still in such fantastic condition! Pretty incredible, huh? I’ve since laminated this slip of paper in a sheet of clear adhesive plastic, to prevent it from being torn and damaged or water-marked. I wanted it to last another 120 years, after all!
The set which I purchased – at a local flea-market – was made in the English city of Sheffield in about 1900. Sheffield, like Solingen in Germany, has had a long and proud history of manufacturing cutlery of all kinds, from scissors to pocketknives, straight razors to silverware. If you’ve purchased a bladed implement of any kind, which has the names of either of these two towns marks on it, then you can be assured that they are blades of quality!
The scales on the razors which make up my set are certainly nothing flashy – plain black celluloid plastic. Although to be honest, if the scales were made of anything else, I doubt I would be able to afford a set of any kind at all! The blades are 5/8, extra-hollow ground, with wafer thin, almost ‘singing-blade’ edges. For those who have never heard of something like this, that means that the blade edges are so thin that they vibrate and flex when the razor’s being used, causing it to emit high-pitched rasping noises. Such blades can be tricky to use just due to how thin and flexible they are, but if you can pull it off, they give the most amazing shaves…
The case itself is made of wood and covered in red Morocco leather on the outside, and soft, purple felt and velvet on the inside, with the maker’s name and model of the razor stamped on the underside of the lid in beautiful gold leaf. Although not easy to read, the spine of each razor-blade is actually marked with a day of the week on it.
The case, closed. Wine red moroccan leather, with gold leaf border around the edge.
Is it a top of the range seven day set? Probably not. Something like this was likely more in the “plain but serviceable” range of merchandise. But regardless of that, it was in great condition when I bought it. It required all the usual things done to it – clean the blades, sharpen the edges, strop the razors, blow out the dust, etc, but the razors and the box that they came in didn’t have any real issues, beyond one or two cosmetic flaws – the result of being, at a pinch, nearly 120 years old!
Along with all that, it even came with a little bonus – the original product warranty slip inside the box!…probably way out of date by now…but it is interesting to read about what constituted a product warranty or guarantee 120 years ago! Fascinating to read. One wonders if such things will happen with old iPhones in 120 years? I doubt it. Most of them barely last 120 days…
Restoring the Set
Honestly, restoring this set was pretty easy. It really didn’t need that much attention. A bit of glue to stop the leather from coming off the wooden case, blowing out the dust and lint, and the usual cleaning, polishing and sharpening and a bit of rust-removal on the blades of the razors was all that was required. I spent ages at the market just looking at the set, weighing it up and scrutinising every part of it in minute detail before I ever decided to buy it, so I was very certain that there wasn’t anything wrong with the set that I wouldn’t be able to sort out myself. Thank goodness I was right!
I want to buy a seven day set! Help me…?
Seven day razor sets are pretty easy to find – just check eBay or any of the major straight razor manufacturers which are still in business – but not so easy to buy. As I explained already, they can be prohibitively expensive…especially if you’re buying one brand-new!
Given that state of affairs, perhaps you decide that buying a secondhand set might be more within your price-range? If so, then there are a few more things that you need to consider.
First, you need to be sure that all the razors actually match. The whole point of a seven day set is that all seven razors are identical! Every razor in the box should look exactly the same (except for the days of the week, should your set have these included).
The beautiful gold leafing on the interior liner reads “The Legion (Reg’d.) Razor”. Tested Finest Grade Steel. Sheffield, England.
Check in particular for things like warped or cracked scales, chipped or cracked blades, excessive rust, blade-wear and water-spots. Antique razors are made of carbon steel, not stainless steel. This means that they can rust very, very easily. Check for “frowning” or “smiling” blades (blades with too much wear in the middle – frowning, or on either end – smiling) – this is a sign that the razor was poorly maintained and sharpened incorrectly.
Light rust can be polished or sanded off with ultrafine sandpaper or steel wool, and a touch of metal polish. Heavy rusting which would impact the structural integrity of the blade should be avoided.
The next thing to do is to check the condition of the box or case. The majority of seven day sets were sold in handsome, wooden cases, some were plain wood, some had glass lids (although this is more of a modern innovation), and some were covered in beautifully decorated Moroccan leather, with gold-leaf edges. Check for any rips, tears or wear in the leather, and any damage to the box. Minor things which can be fixed with glue and a bit of patience shouldn’t put you off. Major damage like faulty hinges, catches, or cracks should be approached with caution. If you have the skills to repair such damage, then go ahead and buy it, however.
Interiors of these boxes are usually lined in silk and velvet, if they’re lined at all (some had simple, plain wooden interiors). Make sure that the linings are undamaged and that seams aren’t split or worn (especially around the hinges). Any gold-leaf decoration should be crisp, whole and legible. In some cases, it can be touched up slightly with a gold-paint pen if you can find one of the right shade, without ruining the overall look of the box.
Of particular importance – make sure that the box’s closure mechanism is sound. You’ll be in for a nasty (and possibly very painful) shock if the box falls open accidentally when you’re carrying it or picking it up, scattering your razors all over the floor – or even worse, all over your feet! Spring-loaded catches should snap shut securely, and clasps should close firmly. A case that’s held shut with a rubber band is a case to beware of.
Fortunately, my razors and the case which they came in were largely free of issues like this, so I was able to buy them and enjoy them without investing much time and effort into their restoration and repair. There really wasn’t much to worry about, and it’s been a lot of fun writing about them, and being able to share them with the world.
