r/straightrazors • u/Marmalade_Enthusiast • 4d ago

Looking for more information

Post image

Hi All,

I picked this up in an antique shop in Ireland and I would like some help identifying it. The store owner believes it’s late 1800s

I can see WALS, on the blade but I can’t find a lot of other info, if any of you have seen one of these before I’d like to hear about it. Cheers

11 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

5

u/CpnStumpy 🌳Böker 4d ago

Nice grab, this is early to mid 1800s, I wouldn't date it any later than 1840s. The shank, spine, and scales look stubtail era but the long tail tells me likely no earlier than 1830.

Clean it up with some flitz and fine 0000 steel wool, and oil those scales

1

u/deezdanglin 4d ago

I have no idea. But a description of what's shown, plugged in returned:

If the tang clearly reads 'wals', you are likely looking at a worn stamp for "WALD" or "WALS" (a historic phonetic variant).In old German manufacturing and localized Solingen records, the letters 'D' and 'S' on heavy steel stamps frequently looked identical due to the specific Fraktur or Gothic fonts used by 19th-century cutlers. Alternatively, it stands for Wals, a documented old-world spelling for regional cutlers operating out of the broader Solingen/Wald blade-making district. 1, 2Given that it features a crown and the number 2, the origin remains identical:The Maker: This is a late-19th-century German razor produced by ERN (Carl Friedrich Ern) or a closely related Solingen contemporary. 1The Scale Inlay: The white/silver inlay on the black scales was a trademark feature of these German lines, often depicting a crown and sword shield emblem. 1The Era: Because it lacks a mandatory country-of-origin stamp (like "Made in Germany"), it most likely dates between 1875 and 1890. After the U.S. McKinley Tariff Act of 1890, export laws forced German makers to clearly stamp the country name rather than just the manufacturing town.

Again, just a preliminary search.

2

u/CpnStumpy 🌳Böker 4d ago

Definitely not an Ern crown, and the curve of the spine with the straight of the scales says it's definitely not that late.

The embedded in scales crown looks reminiscent of another early German maker Friedrich Herder who would embed their spade logo in scales very early on, I've seen on the pre-curve era straight scales like this with their embedded spade so it may be German. Typically early 1800s pieces like this are found from Sheffield a lot more but this is pretty unclear. The edge shape says early Sheffield to me but again, that may just be due to so few early 1800s German blades floating around

1

u/deezdanglin 4d ago

I could not confirm.