Hello all, I have just today taken delivery of a quite down at heel Mitchell and Co. Now I am pretty sure that it is not the Joseph Mitchell of 1787 which then leaves me with Samuel Mitchell 1821 to 1825 (my favourite guess) or William B Mitchell of 1834 to 1837 (a possibility). But the best thing about this and something that I did not know when I bought it, is that it is another "cast 'hyphen' steel". So we can more or less reliably put this mark to between 1821 -ish and 1837 -ish, depending upon when, between directories, the firms started and finished. Always assuming that is that the mark was not continued by another firm after these dates. These are the Sheffield Mitchells that I have got from HSMOB. There are also a load of London ones but for the sake of brevity and sanity, I have discounted these as candidates. Does anyone know if the Sheffield Mitchells were successor companies or otherwise related, especially the ones using the "& Co." I am assuming that they are as the "& Co." is probably trade marked. Fred The blade is 12" in length.
Hey Fred What a great looking saw. Back in 2009 I posted a Mitchell and Co saw and Ray with a lot of research and some of Simon's info posted a good response that that will really help fill some of the gaps for you. As with mine we still don't have a specific maker and time but I would say they would be very close in dates because the stamps are identical. When you mentioned the hyphen, I took a closer look at mine also and sure enough there it was, another maker who used hyphens. Love that handle Joe S.
Hi Joe, Thanks for the nudge towards your Mitchell. The fonts are very similar but yours has a line under the "o" of Co. Apart from that and the final "L" of Mitchell they are so similar that they should be the same firm. But which firm? I hope that you do have a J in front of yours because then it would be Joseph of 1787 and mine may well then be the same firm, with a possibly slightly later stamp. But I still have a niggling feeling that mine is the 1821 Mitchell and Co. if based mainly on the "I should be so lucky" principle and the fact that mine definitely lacks the "J", or indeed any initial. Now, back to the final "L". I suspect that this may be more in my imagination than reality, but is your final "L" separate from the main stamp? There is a lot of distance between the L's. This may be explained by the fact the the eye is drawn to the top of the L's, whereas if the bottom could be seen clearly the distance from the tail of the first L to the bottom left hand serif of the last L may not be that great. My mark has a touch of this, but the reason that I question yours is that the final L seems to be slightly out of line with the rest of the Mitchel mark. The "Mitchel" is rising in relation to the chamfer but the final L seems to be level with it ( or at least the upright seems to be nearer to 90 degrees with the chamfer than the rest of the stamp's uprights). Anyway I supect that this is of little import even if it is true, but it would be a nice idiosyncracy to have. And you definitely have the "Cast hyphen". I actually like your saw more than mine. It is far more substantial a beast and open tote handles don't do as lot for me as compared to a nice closed one. Fred