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A synoptical view of the qualities and adaptations of the sundry kinds of steel manufactured by Naylor & Co. of Sheffield. The process of using their metallic bath for hardening and tempering edge tools, &c. &c. is also described in detail.
New York: Printed by G.F. Hopkins & Son, No. 44 Nassau-Street, 1831. 8vo (8.25” x 5.25”), marbled wrappers with pasted label “Steel tempering edge tools 1831.” 18 pp., 2 folding plates printed on yellow paper (6” x 14.25” plus margins; 8.25” x 6.75” plus margins). The second plate credited to “Browne, del.” Text signed in type on p. 18: “New York, November, 1830 T[homas] P[earson].” Ownership inscription on ffep, “Jn Hutchinson 25 Maiden Lane.” Early inscription on ffep, “Important axe-makers, factories, and foundries.” CONDITION: Good, minor losses and chipping to wrappers, paper largely perished at spine; some toning and light foxing to contents, but generally well preserved and attractive. A scarce promotional work by the important British steel manufacturer Naylor & Co., published in New York and including two lithographic plates by Pendleton, one depicting the company’s steel works and the other its metallic bath. The Sheffield, England steel manufacturer Naylor & Co. (later Naylor, Vickers & Co., and then Vickers, Sons, & Co.) operated an extensive business in the U.S. and was crucial to its rapid industrialization. The company’s steel was used widely in America for the manufacture of a range of hardware such as axes, tools, knives, and cutlery, and was used by engravers, machinists, tool-makers, and others. The text covers over a dozen different types of steel the company produced and their uses. A portion of the text describes the plate depicting the company’s metallic bath and provides detailed instructions on how to use it to harden and temper edge tools. This publication was intended not only to provide technical insight but also as an advertising and promotional tool to underscore the firm’s high quality products. While this was before the revolutionary Bessemer process was developed in the 1850s, the U.S. offices of Naylor & Co. were important players in the key advancements behind the Second Industrial Revolution. One of the company’s techniques was to send sales representatives to American customers to provide technical advice on their metallurgical problems. An early and leading lithographic firm operating from 1825 to 1836, Pendleton’s was founded by brothers William Pendleton (1795–1879) and John Pendleton (1798–1866) and was located at Harvard Place in Boston—the city’s first shop of its kind. A splinter group from Pendleton’s Lithography comprising Thomas Edwards and Moses Swett founded Senefelder Lithographic Co. in 1828 in Boston, but by 1831 the firm was absorbed by Pendleton Lithography. A range of artists—some of whom would become quite prominent—learned the art of lithography while working at Pendleton’s, including Fitz Henry Lane, John H. Bufford, Nathaniel Currier, Benjamin Champney, David Claypoole Johnston, Robert Cooke, and John W. A. Scott. These artists created a variety of materials: maps, plans, portraits, fashion plates, topographical views, sheet-music covers, advertisements, and historical prints. In 1826, the brothers won a silver medal for the “Best Specimen of Lithography” at the annual exhibition of the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia. In 1829 John Pendleton went to Philadelphia to start the firm of Pendleton, Kearney & Childs, and moved later in the same year to New York to start his own company. OCLC records three copies in the US and one in the UK. REFERENCES: Last, Jay. The Color Explosion : Nineteenth-Century American Lithography (Santa Ana, California, 2005), pp. 122–23, 161; Pierce, Sally and Catharina Slautterback. Boston Lithography, 1825–1880 (Boston, 1991), pp. 146–47, 175.
Item #6484
Price: $775.00
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