It is Mrs Pudding's birthday this week. I had a brilliant idea to buy her a voucher for the massage of her choice. However, when I asked if there was anything she wanted for her birthday she told me she would like some new teaspoons.
Several years ago and at some expense we bought a full set of Sheffield-made cutlery in the famous rattail design. Only three of the original eight teaspoons have survived. Who knows what happened to the other five - probably accidentally tossed into the kitchen waste bin or taken out of the house in lunchboxes - never to return.
Anyway, over in the Hillsborough suburb of the city there's a business called The Sheffield Cutlery Shop. They have a website - see here. This morning I phoned them. Though they normally sell their goods through online orders, the respondent at the other end checked his spoon stock and said that they did have six rattail spoons in and I could come over to buy them directly.
As I drove over there in Clint, my luxury South Korean automobile, I expected to soon be standing at a shop counter, whipping my bank card out and simply paying for the six spoons. But it wasn't like that.
First of all, there was no actual shop. It was a workplace dedicated to cutlery with machines, lathes, boxes, polishing instruments and different types of cutlery at different stages of preparation all over the place. The owner was a man of around fifty called Lee. His father and grandfather had owned the business before him.
Lee made a very positive impression upon me. He was infectiously passionate about cutlery and very much a hands-on boss. In half an hour I learnt so much more about making and finishing cutlery as Lee whizzed me around the premises randomly pointing things out including packages containing knives and boxes of cutlery that were about to be dispatched around the world.
He told me that he has recently taken an order to make six thousand serrated table knives to be sent to Irish embassies and consulates around the globe. He also showed me an antler bone handled carving set to be sent to a customer in Minneapolis. Wistfully, I told him that I had been there and thought of it as a beautiful city with its lakes and spacious suburbs. Maybe George Floyd saw it differently.
You might say that the work environment was chaotic but everything had its place. In one room, Lee showed me boxes of antlers - some from Scotland, some from the Woburn Abbey estate in Bedfordshire and some from Scandinavia. I wished I had taken my camera but the last thing I was expecting was a guided tour. It was utterly fascinating and I would have happily spent the rest of the day there.
One of the rattail spoons had not been "stamped" so Lee did it there and then using an amazing laser machine. I reminded him that I needed to pay for the teaspoons and he said I could do it online when I got home. He didn't even know my name but he trusted me to do the honest thing which of course I did this very afternoon.
Oh and shhhh! Please don't tell Shirley that I have bought her spoons as requested. Being the perfect husband can be quite demanding I find.
I love touring factories, especially ones that have been in operation for decades if not a century plus.
ReplyDeleteEvery corner of Lee's workplace told several stories. Such a beautiful jumble.
DeleteWhat an instructive and amazing experience, unexpected too! I hope Mrs. Pudding doesn't read your blog. ;)
ReplyDeleteShe gets enough of me talking I would say.
DeleteHow refreshing to find a genuinely local manufacturer so passionate about their craft, and so trusting too. Mrs P will no doubt be delighted with her birthday gift.
ReplyDeleteI do wonder, though, where all the teaspoons go to. Ours are always disappearing.
It is one of the mysteries of the universe.
DeleteWe have an Arthur Price Sheffield stainless steel rattail 8 place, wedding present, used every day, still complete. Picture reminds me how shiny and lustrous it once was.
ReplyDeleteAre you referring to the cutlery?
DeleteI'm relieved to know that someone else has an incomplete cutlery set, I lose pieces to lunch boxes and at times when we eat outside we have been known to drop a fork or knife through the gaps in the deck.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that if you went back to take photos Lee would be more than happy to do another tour. You could even start an instagram account for them... or maybe they have one.
I love this whole story
I wonder if I am told old to begin an apprenticeship in those works.
DeleteNever too old!
DeleteYou sweet talker!
DeleteI have several pieces from Sheffield Cutlery Shop
ReplyDeleteA lot of the stuff is beautiful and made with love.
DeleteI remember Drew and T from Salvage Hunters visiting Jericho Work. The steel city should be championed for its industry.
ReplyDeleteThere are still plenty of pockets of the cutlery industry remaining.
DeleteYou find the odd little shop that caters to a very narrow interest. They caught your interest. Great tour.
ReplyDeleteIt was like a living museum.
DeleteHow lovely to find people still passionate about their work. What an amazing tour. I am a bit curious as to the serrated knives going to the Irish embassies around the world. No forks? No spoons?
ReplyDeleteI think that the forks and spoons are the easy bit.
DeleteI would love to have a tour like that, I find such things fascinating, seeing how they are made from start to finish. I have never had any Sheffield cutlery, my current set is Stanley Rogers, 13 years old and not a single piece missing. I also still have two teaspoons and one knife from the set I received as a wedding gift back in 1971, I know where the missing ones went, hubby would take them to work and lose them or just leave them there.
ReplyDeleteOnce upon a time Sheffield-made cutlery dominated the world - especially the former British Empire.
DeleteThat's all rather interesting is so many ways. We were recently in an 'antiques' shop and the were three large crates full of souveneir (spell checker insists I have the wrong spelling but I think I am correct) teaspoons. There must have been thousands of them. If I knew you were short, I could picked up a dozen Australian teaspoons, made of course in the Peoples' Republic of....not Australia.
ReplyDeleteSheffield is the home of fine cutlery. We wouldn't have any other.
DeleteP.S. The spell checker was right about "souvenir". In French "souvenir" means to remember but you probably knew that already.
What a great place and great guy by the sound of it! I love to look behind the scenes, where you would normally never go. You probably never look at cutlery the same way again, now that you know so much more about how it is made and what is involved.
ReplyDeleteShirley will like that story when you present it to her along with the spoons!
I wonder whether there is a special place in some parallel universe where all the lost socks and lost teaspoons go. (By the way, I have never had the disappearing sock syndrome with my washing machine, but I have accidentally chucked out a spuds peeler and a kitchen knife.)
It could make a great children's story..."The Land of The Lost Socks".
DeleteI like that title, maybe I'll write something for it.
DeleteI was thinking of a children's story, too, when I wrote that last bit :-)
DeleteWhat an interesting and unexpected trip out!
ReplyDeleteI would have happily paid twenty quid for such a tour. I felt like a prince - but not Harry or Andrew!
DeleteWhat an interesting tour you had. It's good to know that there are still places with the human touch. I wonder if every customer has the same guided tour?
ReplyDeleteI've had several sets of cutlery. The first - a wedding present was made by Mappin and Webb, but which we never really liked so eventually gave to a local children's home. The second set collected in the 1970's - is Old Hall and not a piece missing - there are even fish knives and forks! This was the "posh" set for when we entertained and now lies in a draw unused. The third set is Viners, an everyday set still in use, inherited from my mother - but all were made in Sheffield. How many of the companies still exist I wonder?
It was some time in the early 1990's when we looked in our cutlery drawer and realised all our cutlery was from Korea. That's why we decided to buy a good, usable set of Sheffield cutlery. You still get unused old sets of Sheffield cutlery turning up in junk or antique shops - probably wedding gifts from decades past.
DeleteMy first Mother in law would always count the spoons after washing up, and if missing we would do a delve in the compost bin. What a lovely way to see the place where they were actually made.
ReplyDeleteIt was a rare privilege and I said that to Lee.
DeleteWhat a great adventure, buying six teaspoons! I love it. I hope Ms. P. loves the spoons. I am sure she will.
ReplyDeleteI think she'll love them and we are going out for a kebab meal in a very good local restaurant.
DeleteThanks for taking us along for the tour.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome young man.
DeleteI went on a fork hunt a few months ago. My forks were seriously depleted from lunch box losses as well. We tried buying a reasonable facsimile but they didn't work. It's weird how you can get attached to cutlery over the years and nothing else feels right in the hand or the mouth. Anyway, after much sleuthing, I found our pattern on eBay and purchased six. Oh, the excitement when my package arrived. Shirley is going to be thrilled.
ReplyDeleteI think it is an age thing. I am the same with drinking mugs. There are only a few mugs that I like to drink from.
DeleteKudos to you for asking Shirley what she wanted and then listening and getting the spoons! Then you got an unexpected adventure, Neil! Pays to listen to your sweet bride! I didn't know about Sheffield cutlery. Thanks for the info!
ReplyDeleteYes. It always best to listen to one's spouse - especially if that person is of the female persuasion.
DeleteHow amazing to get the personal touch and see where it was made.
ReplyDeleteHow exciting! And after handing you your spoons he trusted you to make the payment on-line when you got home. That's a businessman from a previous century!
ReplyDeleteI just don't understand why a "silver spoon shop" would also deal in bones and send them off to Minnesota! What animal do their bones come from? (BTW, the Princess lives right near Minneapolis/St. Paul. The twin cities as they have become known.). Does seem like an interesting day that you had. I know Mrs. Pudding will love the fact that you were listening to her and when to the trouble to get precisely what she wants.
ReplyDeleteWhat a cool experience!
ReplyDelete