Newly acquired Gem Cutlery Co razor..... Any info?

[4ckb]

I recently acquired this SE but can't find out much, if any info, about it. Patent dates of Aug 1900 and Nov 1901. Z engraved on spine holder.

Figured someone here would know some more about it! Thanks!

 

[ouchyfoot]

The “Z” is my last name monogram. Thanks for finding it for me. I’ll send you my address so you can return it.
Thanks.

 

[ouchyfoot]

All I know is between 1900 & 1905 there was a Zinn Gem and a Z model, and a couple others.
sit back and someone knowledgable in these early GEMs will give you the exact poop.

 

[Ron R]

That is one of the earlier models that they came out with for sure, Zinn is the last name of Mary Zinn who backed the company in the early days.
Here is some information that @mata_66 found for us who is a historian of the Gem and ASR company who provided us with timelines of the different models.
Some early history (unbearable wall of text!):

At the end of the 19th Century, in the lower Manhattan area east of Broadway, there were many cutlery shops, mainly owned and operated by German immigrants and their families. The Kampfe brothers owned one of these shops. In those times barbers and the so-called “self-shavers” were using straight razors; by the ’70s of the 19th century the Kampfe brothers had the idea to produce another kind of razor. In 1875 they founded the “Star Company” and a few years later, in 1880, they produced a hoe-type razor with a protection before the wedge blade. They baptized it the “Safety Razor”, the first ever produced in the US, preceding Gillette by more than twenty years.

Many years and many models after, in a day of 1898 Jeremiah “Jerry” Reichard, a former employee of the Kampfe, founded his own company: the “Gem Cutlery Company” with the company headquarters just a few doors down the Kampfe Bros Cutlery Shop in Reade Street.

In those days everybody knew everybody, more if they were of the same German heritage and if they shared the same profession. The Kampfe, Reichard, the Zinn family and another actor of this old tale, August W. Scheuber.


Scheuber filed seven patents between June 1898 and June 1901 and all these patents were assigned to Mary Zinn. Also, Reichard’s first two safety razor patents were filed to Mary Zinn. Zinn was a wealthy German lady in her fifties, the widow of the recently passed away Simon Zinn. She inherited a successful metal goods manufacturing enterprise in Manhattan so she had the money and she had the tools.

The Zinn family stood in the shadows although a couple of razors, the “Zinn Gem” and the “Z” were named after them. Everything suggests they financed the start-up of Reichard’s Gem Cutlery Co and probably they were the real stockholders of the company.

I imagine them meeting along Reade St: “Guten tag Herr Kampfe”, “Guten tag Frau Zinn, wie sind sie?” Maybe they were discussing their projects and their sales numbers sitting at a table, sharing some German delikatessen and drinking Bavarian beer.
It is plausible that after all the small talk and the laughs, in the back of their respective shops they were studying and trying to copy their rivals in business products.

In 1903 Jerry Reichard and August Scheuber decided to join forces and founded the R&S Manufacturing Co. R&S first acted as a contract manufacturer. Reichard 1898 patent appears on many razors: the “Daisy”, the “Wanamaker”, the “Wilbert” (sold by Sears in 1904), the “Winchester”.

R&S produced quite a few “wedge blade hoe type” safety razors under its own brand, notably the “Mohican”, the “Winner”, the “Yankee” and, in 1904, the “Ever Ready”. The company briefly changed its name in “Yankee Razor Co.” and finally, in 1905 the company became the “Ever-Ready Co.”

I still haven’t discovered if Reichard held his feet in two shoes owning Gem and Ever-Ready at the same time or if Gem Cutlery Co. had a new owner by 1903.

1906 was quite a pivotal year in the history of SE razors. Two main events made it such an important year: the introduction by Ever-Ready of the first single edge “rib-back” (spine) blade and Joseph Kaufmann (yet another German descendant) became the first president of the newly-founded American Safety Razor Company (ASR) According to some faded information, Reichard stayed with ASR while Scheuber returned to the Gem Cutlery Co.

ASR was first located in 34, Reade Street, Manhattan. 34, Reade St. was also the address of the Zinn Building. It all suggests that Ever-Ready Co. and Gem Cutlery Co. converged in American Safety Razor Co. still maintaining separated brand identities.

In March 1906 Reichard filed his first new patent in years regarding a “thin strip of sheet steel the opposite embraced by a substantially U-shaped metal strip which forms a stiffener and back of the blade”. The first single edge spined blade that we still use today.

Ever-Ready abandoned the wedge blade and started producing two new razors that made use of the new just patented “rib-backed” blade: the “ASR” and the “ER” (or at least this is how are known by modern collectors). They were practically identical razors that only differed by the letters pierced on the top lid. They came with either a two-piece tubular metal or black wood (“Ebonoid”) handle.

The Gem Cutlery Co. did the same and started producing the new style of blades and a new line of razors, the “Junior”. The Gem Junior was very similar to the Ever-Ready razor maybe because both were modeled after a 1901 patent filed by August Scheuber.
Here is a couple of sites that might help you find some information.

Gem Razor Models

Some of the razors that had script stamped on the top cap are oddities and rare and a lot of early brass colored razors had a gold wash to make them more appealing to the eye and finding ads for everything is hard to pin point exact dates would take extensive newspaper & magazine archive...

www.badgerandblade.com

Some more information that starts on page 426 that is helpful also.

A Safety Razor Compendium: The Book

A Book for Safety Razor Collectors -- This book is a black and white version of a color digital edition, first published in 2005 as a limited edition CD-ROM. There are over 1300 entries including pictures of safety razors, advertisements, and patents. Alphabetical entries are organized by razor...

books.google.ca

American Safety Razor Dating Chart - Gem, Ever Ready, Kampfe Star

After weeks browsing through period paper ads, catalogs, consulting private collectors, even digging through the pages of the Library of Congress, here's the long-overdue updated version of this humble work of passion. If Gillette razors are easy to date because of their serial numbers and date...

www.badgerandblade.com

Have some great shaves!

 

[4ckb]

Thank you, Ron!

 

[Flintstone65]

@4ckb -- great find. you may want to check out this thread: The Association of Lather Catchers (TALC), I've booked mark where I shaved with mine (which I think is identical to yours) and I've posted a little history. I'm on the run today, but I'll try to make a point of coming back to this thread with some more info. Congrats, and feel free to "join" the TALC -- you're already a member with that beauty!

 

[mycarver]

Ironically I chose this razor for this evenings shave , a basic Gem junior.

( new to the whole SE thing) but yours is just beautiful!
Very cool razor.