Hi Jim
I think it's all a bit harder and we will often have to be satisfied with the answer that a tool is 'quite old!' Designs were standardised and remained available for long periods; respected trade marks outlived their original namesakes.
There's some thorough looking research, by Gary Laroff, aided by the good people at the Hawley Trust, into the Ward and Payne dynasty here on the Old Tools list: http://swingleydev.com/archive/get.php?message_id=157681&submit_thread=1
It notes:
"Henry Payne appears as an edge tool maker in 1837 and joins the company
prior to 1845. Perhaps he joined in 1837 and caused the name change to
David Ward & Co. In 1843 Henry Payne registered the well-known Ward & Payne
trade mark of the crossed hammers above an anvil with W to the left and P to
the right. Henry Payne became junior partner in 1845 and died in 1850 and
ownership of the company reverted back to the Ward family. After 1845 the
firm built a large business in edge tools concentrating on carving tools,
chisels and gouges."
Taking that alongside the gallery of trade marks at http://alte-beitel.de/ward_payne.html - and being careful of the logic as you can't prove a negative - I think the message is that Ward (before Payne) did not use any sort of anvil mark; it came in with Mr Payne, with both W and P letters, even if the main spelled out name was just Ward.
It would be nice to think of old stock being used up with extra letters added, but I don't see the evidence - unless your collection has some more examples of course!
Also, I expect it was quite difficult to make an even impression with a stamp, a hammer and a piece of red hot steel, all under the pressure of piece work - so we should expect a lot of natural variation in the depth and clarity of the marks.
You mentioned the 1911 Ward and Payne catalogue. It must have been a wonderful thing - 501 pages worth of every possible variety of tool - Sheffield at its peak before the First World War. I certainly don't have a copy but there are plenty of pages from it reproduced elsewhere - and on page 132 of Salaman's Dictionary of Woodworking Tools is an illustration of the eighteen different patterns of chisel handle they offered - including the "plain beech octagon" with no ferrule. So although some tools with those handles will be very old, not all tools with them will be. Maybe they didn't stay available for much longer - they don't appear in Marples 1938 catalogue - but they are not all mid Victorian. Sorry!
I think it's all a bit harder and we will often have to be satisfied with the answer that a tool is 'quite old!' Designs were standardised and remained available for long periods; respected trade marks outlived their original namesakes.
There's some thorough looking research, by Gary Laroff, aided by the good people at the Hawley Trust, into the Ward and Payne dynasty here on the Old Tools list: http://swingleydev.com/archive/get.php?message_id=157681&submit_thread=1
It notes:
"Henry Payne appears as an edge tool maker in 1837 and joins the company
prior to 1845. Perhaps he joined in 1837 and caused the name change to
David Ward & Co. In 1843 Henry Payne registered the well-known Ward & Payne
trade mark of the crossed hammers above an anvil with W to the left and P to
the right. Henry Payne became junior partner in 1845 and died in 1850 and
ownership of the company reverted back to the Ward family. After 1845 the
firm built a large business in edge tools concentrating on carving tools,
chisels and gouges."
Taking that alongside the gallery of trade marks at http://alte-beitel.de/ward_payne.html - and being careful of the logic as you can't prove a negative - I think the message is that Ward (before Payne) did not use any sort of anvil mark; it came in with Mr Payne, with both W and P letters, even if the main spelled out name was just Ward.
It would be nice to think of old stock being used up with extra letters added, but I don't see the evidence - unless your collection has some more examples of course!
Also, I expect it was quite difficult to make an even impression with a stamp, a hammer and a piece of red hot steel, all under the pressure of piece work - so we should expect a lot of natural variation in the depth and clarity of the marks.
You mentioned the 1911 Ward and Payne catalogue. It must have been a wonderful thing - 501 pages worth of every possible variety of tool - Sheffield at its peak before the First World War. I certainly don't have a copy but there are plenty of pages from it reproduced elsewhere - and on page 132 of Salaman's Dictionary of Woodworking Tools is an illustration of the eighteen different patterns of chisel handle they offered - including the "plain beech octagon" with no ferrule. So although some tools with those handles will be very old, not all tools with them will be. Maybe they didn't stay available for much longer - they don't appear in Marples 1938 catalogue - but they are not all mid Victorian. Sorry!
