Master Cutler Gordon Bridge visit some of Sheffield's most historic cutlery manufacturers when he toured the Shalesmoor works of the Eggington group.
The group incorporates centuries-old businesses such as Joseph Rodgers, George Wostenholm, George Ibberson and John Clarke and Son and is Europe's largest manufacturer of sharpening steels.
Eggington is a relative newcomer – formed in 1872 by the great grandfather of the group's current chairman – while pocket knife manufacturer Joseph Rodgers was granted its trademark by the Cutlers' Company two centuries earlier, in 1682.
George Wostenholm, whose famous I*XL (I excel) trademark dates back to 1787, was considered by some to be the greatest of England's cutlery manufacturers and is renowned as the developer of the first Bowie knife.
A knife bearing its trademark was found on the body of the legendary American frontiersman Colonel James Bowie at the Battle of the Alamo in 1836.
Ibberson, established in 1700, became the first company to make table cutlery from stainless steel.
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