Would like help in Identifying razor and case and any history of these:
Need Help.Gillette Norfolk or Sommerset in Silver
- Thread starter wscottb7862
- Start date
You can't hold me to this, but it looks like the blade case might not be from this set. Is the case open on the back side or is it completely enclosed? It looks to have very sharp 90 corners on it where the other cases from those sets would have a nice radius to them. The other thing that looks out of place on the blade case is the style pattern on it. It looks exactly like the pattern from a 46-47 Aristocrat blade case. These are just my observations, I'm sure Porter or someone else will chime in with a much more detailed answer for you. I hope to learn as well from this. Nice looking set btw.
I dont think that blade case belongs, it may be aftermarket.
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I may be wrong about the blade case, it looks like it does belong.
- Thread starter
- #5
It's open on the backside. It has very sharp corners. The set came from a box of razors I bought. It had the blade box and head but another handle in it that was badly cracked. Luckily I found this handle in the bottom of the box.
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You found the right parts, the blade case, razor and razor case match.
- Thread starter
- #8
So is the above pictures a Somerset or Norfolk, Alex?
Somerset
The case for the silver set does look like this , but not the gold set.
I'm looking on my phone but they share a resemblance. The earliest I can remember a open back case are from the early fat handle tech sets.
- Thread starter
- #11
I was having a hard time telling them apart, that's why I wanted some clarification. Time to do some more research. Also just the Gold set was showing up in my searches, I didn't know they made a silver set also?????
- Thread starter
- #12
There very well could be a back missing, I may find it in another case or with another set??
you had a post about that not long ago
Well, from the engine turning on the outside of the case I'd go ahead and call it a Somerset, but we may have a hard time finding out how it was originally sold by Gillette. The original Somerset was from the New Improved era and had a cigarette-pack blade case that was decorated to match the case:
Gillette seems to have gotten quite a bit mix-and-matchy with their set pieces towards the end of that run and then into the NEW era, though. For example, I have seen more than a handful of sets here and on eBay and in the wild with this same short-bar-handled, short-comb NEW in them that were still using the older Tuckaway cases with "Tuckaway" printed in the headliner. Your headliner is the later style that we would associate with with the NEW era -- nothing but the centered diamond with the small "Made in U.S.A." below -- so I have little difficulty believing that the set as you've assembled the pieces here could easily be proper.
Unfortunately, aside from other people's finds (which may or may not be 100% reliable), there just doesn't seem to be a much in the way of documentation that would help us confirm exactly what was going on here. This would have been during the Great Depression, and Gillette would have been under even more pressure having seen its stock slide even prior to the market crash. So it's not hard to believe that there would have been a great deal of "make it work" going on then.
Wow, that's not a bad deal at all. Just from what I can see sitting on top of the pile there. You'd get the majority of your money back just from the Hoffritz set there without even breaking a sweat, and clearly there was more fun stuff like this in the box, too.
No, this sleeve-style case is just what you have there. There wasn't another piece to it.
Something like this? http://www.ebay.com/itm/300898541480?ssPageName=STRK:MEDWX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1435.l2649
So what piece would that blade case have come from?
Yes, exactly like that. That's a great example actually, because assuming that it's all original -- and there's really not a whole lot of reason from the photos to doubt it -- you can see that it was sold as a Norfolk from the carton but used an old Tuckaway case. (Pulling some photos over for posterity.)
It's possible that Scott's was similar -- sold nominally as a Norfolk rather than a Somerset but used a leftover case body that had already received the Somerset decoration. That sort of thing is why I said it would be hard to know for certain.
No real reason to think that it couldn't possibly have come in that set originally. The gold one in the photo that Alex referenced seems to show the same style sleeve (although the chrome one looks more like the sandwich-style blade case):
It's the same style sleeve that you see with most of the post-WWII Aristocrats (below), which is about a full decade or more later than this would have been, so it's not a slam-dunk definite "yes." But neither would I definitively rule it out.
- Thread starter
- #17
The sides of the blade holder in the case doesn't have the etching on the sides like the Aristocrat does. It's smooth. You guys really have an attention to detail, stuff I would have just looked over. Those Gillette guys sure didn't waste their leftovers, huh???? But like Porter said it was the Depression and things were TIGHT!! I wonder what $9 then would be now??
