˜ AN EXCEPTIONAL GOLD AND GILT-BRASS MOUNTED MINIATURE... Lot 230

˜ AN EXCEPTIONAL GOLD AND GILT-BRASS MOUNTED MINIATURE PENKIFE FOR ROYAL PRESENTATION, JOSEPH RODGERS & SONS, SHEFFIELD, THIRD QUARTER OF THE 19TH CENTURY with over forty eight folding blades and accessories including fleams, saw, awls, corkscrew, fork and picks, many signed and some elements in gold, finely filed fillets, mother-of-pearl scales over gold fillet each retained by three gold rivets, one side with a vacant rectangular escutcheon and the other with a shield shaped escutcheon engraved with the crowned letter ’A’, spirally-fluted burnished steel stem, cast and chiselled gilt-copper alloy stand engraved with foliage against a frosted ground, on its carved ivory two-piece base carved with neo-gothic foliage on the top and the base encircled by rectangular panels filled with further designs of foliage and the Royal initial ‘A’ beneath a royal coronet front and back, on an associated moulded wooden base with glass dome cover, 11.5 cm (the knife and ivory stand, opened), 1.8 cm (the knife, closed) Provenance The initial A beneath a British Royal coronet suggests a presentation by the makers to one of Queen Victoria’s children, Princess Alice (1843-78), Prince Alfred (1844-1900) or Prince Arthur (1850-1942). David Hayden-Wright (1936-2006) Stated by the vendor to have been part of the celebrated displays at Joseph Rodgers & Sons showrooms at 9 Norfolk Street. Literature David Hayden-Wright, The Heritage of English Knives, Atglen, Pennsylvania, 2008, p. 87. In the nineteenth century, Rodgers had an unsurpassed reputation and history that was synonymous with the cutlery trade. The family's first cutler, John Rodgers (1701-85), is recorded around 1724, with a workshop near the present cathedral. In the same year the Company of Cutlers 'let' him a mark, a Star and Maltese Cross, which became world famous in later years. The company began making exhibitions knives and presented George IV with a minute specimen of cutlery with 57 blades, which occupied only an inch [25mm] when closed. In 1822, Rodgers’ was awarded its first Royal Warrant. Another fourteen royal appointments, from British and overseas royal dignitaries, followed over the next eighty years, and its company history was duly titled: Under Five Sovereigns. The McKinley Tariff Act of 1890 halved their American business and consequently they toured South Africa. Despite increasing foreign competition and the decline of the American market, Rodgers’ prospered before the First World War. Joseph Rodgers & Sons left an enduring legacy in its knives. Its dazzling exhibition pieces and other fine cutlery show that the company’s reputation as Sheffield’s foremost knife maker was well founded. Abbreviated from Geoffrey Tweedale 2019. This lot is offered with UK Ivory Act 2018 certificate number HOGO0K0X