1880'S ANTIQUE SHEFFIELD HARRISON BROS HOWSON CUTLERS TO HER MAJESTY CARVING SET

Description: 1880'S ANTIQUE SHEFFIELD HARRISON BROS HOWSON CUTLERS TO HER MAJESTY CARVING SET This is an exquisite Antique Sheffield 3 pieces carving set and case.All pieces marked and some detail Harrison Bros & Howson46 Norfolk St Sheffield Cutlery to Her Majesty.Made in England.Handle made with stag horn and sterling silver repousse hand-chase around handle, blade is stainless steel.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Measured: carving knife long included handle- 16'" Sharpener long with handle- 13 1/2" Serving fork long with handle- 11 1/2" inches-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Normal vintage wear and case and it's contents have aged properly with time.All details on the photos. Please message me for further questions! HARRISON BROTHERS & HOWSONGeorge Howson. Image courtesy of Geoff TweedaleThis was one of the biggest cutlery firms in Sheffield by 1900. It originated with George Howson, who was probably apprenticed as a cutler in 1803, and became a merchant’s clerk (and later partner) at Thomas Sansom & Sons. He died in Norfolk Street on 9 December 1847, aged 59, but his son, William Howson (10 February 1822-5 July 1884), took over his father’s interests. Later company advertisements dated the enterprise from 1836 (which may relate to the trade mark). In 1849, William partnered two brothers – James William Harrison (1816-1897) and Henry Harrison (c.1825-1893) – and the trio took over Sansom to form Harrison Brothers & Howson. The capital of the business, at 45 Norfolk Street, was £7,000. The mother of the Harrisons had once been married to John Brocksopp, a Derbyshire ironmaster, so that linkage helped finance the new venture (Jenkins, 1996).William Howson became traveller for the firm, while Henry Harrison moved to America. The company had agents in New York City during the 1850s and 1860s, including W.C. Corsan. Henry Harrison became Master Cutler in 1862. His business was organised along traditional Sheffield lines. In the 1860s, he told a government commission that: ‘Much of our work, probably half is done off the premises, by outworkers in small places … We have all our grinding done off our premises; the men are perhaps in a dozen different wheels’ (White, 1865). By 1875, the firm’s capital had increased to £75,000. In that year, William Howson resigned from the partnership. He died on 5 July 1884, aged 62, at Tapton Park – his mansion in Ranmoor (Warr, 2009). The funeral was at Fulwood Church. He left a substantial fortune: £50,095.Under the Harrisons, the business continued to expand. A silver mark had been registered in 1849 and the firm acquired a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria (and later one from King Edward VII). In the 1870s, an office was opened in Hatton Garden, London. The Harrisons targeted the growing silver and electro-plate trade and in 1879 the firm transferred this work to Shoreham Plate Works (R.M. Johnson & Co and Roberts & Co) in Shoreham Street. In 1881, the firm employed 257 workers (139 men, 61 boys, 39 women, and 18 girls). The Industries of Sheffield (1888) stated:At their cutlery works three hundred men are in constant work. On the first floor of this building are the offices – large, handsome and well-appointed rooms; adjoining is a heavily stocked showroom, where ivory stock of every description is exhibited; near this is another showroom devoted to the display of butchers’ and other knives, carvers and forks to match, and smaller knives of chaste design and wonderfully fine and careful finish. These goods are packed in handsome plush cases, and from this room are dispatched to various parts of the world, North America and Australia absorbing an immense quantity. Descending from these rooms into a large and spacious yard, we found about twenty forges in operation, two skilled artisans attending to each. At the side of this is the ivory-cutting shop, and underneath the yard are extensive and well-lighted cellars, which are utilized as warehouses for the Egyptian horns and African elephants tusks, which the firm import direct in immense quantities, and which are destined eventually to find their way to the dinner-table in the shape of knife handles. A great point of interest is found here in the powerful steam engine, by means of which the machinery throughout the factory is set in motion. Above the yard are seven shops for the seven different departments into which the manufacture of the products of the factory is divided. By 1900, most of the Harrisons had passed out of the business. Henry Harrison, who lived at Abbeydale House, retired in 1892 and died at York House Hotel in Bath on 20 October 1893 (aged 68). He was buried in Ecclesall. He left £123,938. James William Harrison died at Tapton Grange, on 1 March 1897, aged 80. His mansion was one of the biggest in Ranmoor and he was one of the wealthiest men in the city. He left £239,675 and was buried in Fulwood. Francis (Frank) W. Harrison, the son of Henry, died in Bath on 8 March 1898, aged 38, and was also buried in Ecclesall. He left £61,918. The Howsons then became dominant. George Howson (1851-1930), the son of William, had joined the business in 1867 and became partner in 1875 on the retirement of his father. Later Howson partnered Frank W. Harrison and John Brocksopp Wilkinson (1849-1919), who was J.W. Harrison’s nephew (and who moved into Tapton Grange after his death). George Howson became Master Cutler in 1893 and three years later registered his own silver mark, ‘GH’. He made two world tours to promote the company’s products. He was described as ‘plain to the point of bluntness in speech and manner, clubbable and characteristically Sheffield’ (Derry, 1902).In the 1890s, Harrison Bros & Howson had agencies in New York, at No. 66 West Broadway, and in San Francisco, on Sutter Street. This was despite American cutlery tariffs. The company also had London showrooms at Holborn Viaduct. Yet it never seems to have advertised at this time. Following the purchase of William Webster in 1895, it was claimed that Harrison Bros & Howson employed over 700 hands (Men of the Period, 1896). The Norfolk and Shoreham Street premises became cramped and so the firm relocated in 1900 to a new building fronting Carver Street and bounded by West and Division Streets. Above the main entrance to Alpha Works (which can still be seen on Carver Street) was the corporate trade mark: a coronet with the word ‘ALPHA’, which appears to have been granted to Samuel Harwood in 1836. The firm also used the ‘Stag’s Head’ mark of William Webster. In 1902, Charles Ibbotson, the pocket-knife maker (trade mark, ‘SLASH’), was acquired. By now the firm was amongst the top half dozen or so cutlery firms in the city, with a workforce of perhaps about 500 in 1911. In a review of the new premises, The Sheffield Independent, 20 October 1900, contrasted them with the ‘shabby, inconvenient, makeshift, sort of premises’ that were the norm in Sheffield. George Howson, too, when interviewed by a local journalist, shortly after moving into the works, painted a rosy picture. Machinery was turning out barrow loads of blank blades and working conditions had been transformed. ‘Half a century ago you did not see’, remarked Howson, ‘a cutler wearing a collar, and it was most unlikely that he had a Sunday suit’ (Callis, 1903). However, although Howson had high hopes for the firm’s mechanized future, the expected profits did not materialize. He told a government inquiry (House of Commons, Departmental Committee on the Truck Acts, 1908) that: ‘there was not only no profit, but there was a distinct loss on having built that new factory, [and] that if he had employed outworkers and built no workshops he would have been better off than with the factory’.The First World War gave Harrison Brothers & Howson little opportunity to recoup its outlay. Like other large, family-owned firms – such as Walker & Hall – the overall impression is one of stagnation between the wars. The company was still listed in Carver Street in Kelly's Directory of the Engineering, Hardware & Metal Trades, 1934. The boardroom was still staffed by the family owners, who were increasingly brigadiers and colonels. The firm’s steady decline did not prevent them retiring with a fortune. John Brocksopp Wilkinson died at Tapton Grange on 28 May 1919, leaving £71,476. George Howson was still nominal head of the firm, when he died at Tapton Park on 13 December 1930. He was buried in Fulwood, leaving £37,851. Ownership passed to descendants. These included George Howson’s sons: Brevet-Colonel William Howson (1887-1967) and Brigadier Harold George Howson (1891-1958). John Brocksopp Wilkinson’s sons – Colonel Edgar William Wilkinson (1881-1965) and Frederick Harrison Wilkinson (1883-1946) – also became partners. The latter died at No. 9 Gladstone Road, Sheffield, on 21 November 1946, leaving £27,784. His brother died at that address on 20 July 1965, leaving £98,140. The last Howson in the business, Harold George, died on 13 April 1958, aged 66, at his residence North House, Carlton-in-Lindrick, and was buried at St John’s Church, Carlton (Quality, April 1959). He left £22,522. In 1959, the company – which to the last was privately owned – was bought by Viners.

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End Time: 2024-08-30T19:43:52.000Z

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