Book of Steel Toys by [TRADE CATALOGUE - STEEL GOODS.] - ca 1812.: GEORGIAN HOUSEHOLD GOODS AND PERSONAL EFFECTS

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 letterpress index. Normally the engraved leaves would be gathered up in different combinations for individual salesmen, hence the plates are numbered in manuscript. In this example they do not exactly follow the printed index, so the 'missing' engravings 49 and 50 may never have been present, but the presence of stubs suggests that pls. 35–40, which from the index showed corkscrews, were once present and have been removed from the volume.

There is a similar volume in the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, also with a printed index, and 51 leaves of plates. There is a printer's imprint, W. Tolley and Son, on the first plate. This may be the William Tolley, engraver and copperplate printer active in Birmingham, from before 1790 to 1830. The name of the agent is on a label on the upper cover: 'Muntz & Purden, Book no. 29, discount 25%', indicating that the MS prices are retail prices.

Oblong folio (235 x 375mm); letterpress 'Index to book of steel toys', folding letterpress and engraved leaf 'Gentlemen's Tool Chests', and 46 leaves of plates, many printed recto and verso from 80 engraved plates. There is a gap in the pagination and stubs between 34 and 41 and these leaves have presumably been removed; pls 49 and 50 are also missing but there are no stubs so may never have been present.

Manuscript additions. The index leaf is annotated 'Livre 64456 W&L' (this has been varnished over); every item is neatly priced and in some cases additional products are described, for example the ice skates, 48 shillings plain or 60 shillings hollow ground, could be had with leather straps and buckles for another 18 shillings per dozen (pl. 70); small marginal tears in first two and last leaf strengthened with tissue on verso; recent half morocco and marbled boards; from the Forschungsinstitut für Geschichte der Zahnheilkunde with stamp on index leaf and several plates.