"I.D.FY" on C.Hill carving tool

[JohnPW]

I've got 2 C.Hill carving gouges, one side says "C.Hill, Sheffield", the other has a canon trademark and then "I.D.FY".

Does anyone what is "I.D.FY"?

I found the following on a Charles Hill of Sheffield:
http://sheffieldindexers.com/TradeDirec ... ent_page=2

Hill, Charles (, manftrs. of edge tools,carvers'&engravers' tools etc.).
Address: Spring Lane Works 120 Broomspring Lane, Sheffield in 1905.
Recorded in: Whites Directory of Sheffield & Rotherham.

Hill, Charles (, Edge Tool Manfr.).
Address: 120 Broomspring Lane, in 1911.
Recorded in: Whites Directory of Sheffield & Rotherham - 1911.

Incidentally, Marples was located in Broomspring Lane in the 19th C.

1837 William Marples Junior moved his company to bigger premises in Broomspring Lane.

1848 John Cartwright took out a patent for a carpenters brace, the rights to which William bought.

1856 The company moved to a workshop in Westfield Terrace, the company remaining there for 116 years.

 

[kwigly]

I think I.D.FY translates to "I Defy" and may be a spoof on the trademark used by Abram Brooksbank, and by George Wilkin, who used the exact same cannon logo with "Defiance" written below. (see "Trademarks on Base-Metal Tableware")
["Trademarks.." shows Charles Hill's trademark with a different cannon than on your chisel, and an indistinct IDFY]

 

[JohnPW]

Thanks, that's interesting!

https://sha.org/assets/documents/Tradem ... leware.pdf

Page 120 show the entry for Charles Hill:

Spring Lane Works, Sheffield, 1892, cutlery of all kinds

The logo seems to be a quarter view of a cannon where as mine is a side view.

p54

p290

Some info on Abram Brooksbank and George Wilkin, and also Charles S. Green.

http://www.silvercollection.it/electrop ... tml#CGREEN
http://www.silvercollection.it/electrop ... tml#WILKIN
http://www.futuremuseum.co.uk/collectio ... -fork.aspx

Maybe IDFY is a variation on Defiance. I wonder if there's any connection between these makers and if there isn't, it would seem a bit odd that they would use the same cannon trademark.

 

[AndyT]

May I make this even more complicated?

Although the Canadian Parks Department have done us all a favour by making their excellent little booklet freely available, it's not the whole story. Trade marks were really important to Sheffield manufacturers and the Cutlers' Company lobbied hard to win the right to control them. The Trademarks Act of 1875 established a national system, with the Cutlers' Company looking after knives and edge tools. So they had the job of maintaining a master list of marks.

TATHS have scanned and published the 1919 edition of the master register of marks, which is a really useful reference to Sheffield at its best. (It's a free download to members or can be bought on DVD for £6 here http://www.taths.org.uk/shop/70-dvd1.)

Here's a mark shown as belonging to Aaron Hildick and Co - not to Charles Hill!

It's worth reminding ourselves that there is nothing new about brands being traded as intellectual property, quite separate from any manufacturing capability. There are plenty of examples of old firms being bought up just for their trademarks, which then continued in use many years after their original owners had died. (For example, Marples used the long established London name of John Moseley well into the twentieth century.)

So it's possible that Hildick acquired their cannon mark and the I.D. FY motto from Charles Hill.

It's possible that Brooksbank (who are in the 1919 listing) acquired the similar cannon mark from Wilkins (who are not).

It's possible that there was some other link between Hill and Wilkins or Brooksbank and the similar marks were by arrangement - or it could have been an attempt to confuse customers that somehow got the Cutlers' Company's approval.

But this is all just my speculation - I don't know the dates and histories of these companies, or their mergers and acquisitions.

If anyone really does want to pursue this in full detail, I suspect the answers have already been found and documented by Sheffield knife collector and scholar Geoffrey Tweedale and are in his monumental "Tweedale's Directory of Sheffield Cutlery Manufacturers 1740-2013" available at Lulu.

For anyone not wanting 740 pages/1.97kg/1600 companies, there used to be a good selection of Mr Tweedale's articles on WK Fine Tools - now sadly unavailable.

So if anyone has his book, do speak up!

 

[JohnPW]

Thanks!

https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Aaron_Hildick
shows the cannon and I.D.FY logo was in use in 1938 by Aaron Hildick.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Just to add a further layer to the story, Aaron Hildick absorbed a small company by the name of Henry Taylor (owners of the Acorn Brand trademark), some time in the first half of the 20th century, I think. After WW2, looking to sound a bit more modern maybe, the firm of Aaron Hildick decided to trade under the name Henry Taylor. As we know, they still are trading under that name...

Thus, the successors of the firm of C. Hill are still active.

 

[AndyT]

Just to clarify, are you saying that my speculation above is correct and Aaron Hildick DID absorb Charles Hill, with their Cannon/I.D.FY trademark?
The Henry Taylor website is a bit light on company history, though it does stress a lineage back to 1834.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Ooops.

I've no evidence to support the Charles Hill absorption by Aaron Hildick, but it does sound very plausible...

(By the way, I'm fairly sure the Hildick lineage goes back to 18th century West Midlands, so they're even older than Taylor's.)

Edit to add - I was wrong; it was the 17th century. Family history explaining the origins of Aaron Hildick Ltd, and it's later morphing into Henry Taylor (Tools) Ltd here;

http://www.hildicksmith.com/page6.htm

 

[kwigly]

Also seems quite possible that the chisels were made expressly for C Hill, by the trademark owning company (whichever that was).
Many Merchants liked to have a full range of tools to sell and quite often sold tools under their name that had been made by others

 

[JohnPW]

Ooops.

I've no evidence to support the Charles Hill absorption by Aaron Hildick, but it does sound very plausible...

(By the way, I'm fairly sure the Hildick lineage goes back to 18th century West Midlands, so they're even older than Taylor's.)

Edit to add - I was wrong; it was the 17th century. Family history explaining the origins of Aaron Hildick Ltd, and it's later morphing into Henry Taylor (Tools) Ltd here;

http://www.hildicksmith.com/page6.htm

Obviously the family goes a way back, just like any family, but the start of Aaron Hildick Ltd seems to be 1853.

Aaron Hildick Ltd was based in Sheffield, the family had moved there from Walsall after Aarons marriage to Elizabeth Dukes. He founded the family firm together with his nephew Robert (1853), the son of Sarah Hildick who was Aaron and Elizabeth Hildicks eldest child.

 

[kwigly]

Hmmm... I sense some close family relationships if nephew Robert was the son of his eldest child (= grandchild)

 

[rxh]

Here is a photo of a cannon logo I found on a spoon gouge made by C. Arnoldi of Hamburg. Presumably

not related but I was interested to see that they used a cannon device too.