Book of Steel Toys

by [TRADE CATALOGUE - STEEL GOODS.]

$20,498 · Offered by Biblio

First edition

TRADE CATALOGUE - STEEL GOODS. Book of Steel Toys. Birmingham, [n.p.] c.1812. A remarkable trade catalogue of steel goods for the household, ladies and gentlemen's personal effects, gardening tools, and instruments for trades and professions. This is a treasure trove of visual information about a vast range of now obsolete tools and the objects required for daily life in the age of Jane Austen: spinet tuning keys, muffin toasters, cheese tasters, sugar hatchets, teeth cleaning sets, netting vices, boot hooks and so on. Particularly fascinating is the distinction between tradesmen's tools and those specifically marketed for amateurs. These are described in the individual engravings as well as in the engraved and letterpress leaf after the index leaf where the contents of 9 oak chests of tools for gentlemen are itemised, as well as chests of garden tools, turners tools, and mahogany chests of tools for cleaning gentlemen's guns. Among the articles listed in the index are 'Lady's hammers' and 'Lady's sets of garden tools' but these do not seem to be the articles engraved on the corresponding plates. Engraved trade catalogues of this sort were used by salesmen to solicit orders from retailers. The prices entered in manuscript are selling prices, on which the retailer received a discount, probably 25% (see below). Stamped brass and silverware catalogues turn up from time to time but catalogues of steel goods are much rarer. Unusually too, this catalogue is provided with a letterpr

• Publisher: n.p.
• Year: 1812
• Edition: First Edition
• Binding: hardcover

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