A New York bookseller, Warshaw assembled this collection over nearly fifty years. The Warshaw Collection of Business Americana: Accounting and Bookkeeping forms part of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Subseries 1.1: Subject Categories. The Subject Categories subseries is divided into 470 subject categories based on those created by Mr. Warshaw. These subject categories include topical subjects, types or forms of material, people, organizations, historical events, and other categories. An overview to the entire Warshaw collection is available here: Warshaw Collection of Business Americana
Scope and Contents:
Shears and Scissors contains material pertaining to merchants who either specialized in manufacturing shears and scissors, or who sold them alongside additional products. The bulk of material is company advertisements, records of purchases, and business correspondence.
No comprehensive records of any single company are represented within the records, with the exception of a historical overview of the J. Wiss and Sons Company that provides an overarching company narrative.
Arrangement:
Shears and Scissors is arranged in two subseries.
Business Records and Marketing Material
Subject
Business Records and Marketing Material
Subject
Forms Part Of:
Forms part of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana.
Series 1: Business Ephemera
Series 2: Other Collection Divisions
Series 3: Isadore Warshaw Personal Papers
Series 4: Photographic Reference Material
Provenance:
Shears and Scissors is a portion of the Business Ephemera Series of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Accession AC0060 purchased from Isadore Warshaw in 1967. Warshaw continued to accumulate similar material until his death, which was donated in 1971 by his widow, Augusta. For a period after acquisition, related materials from other sources (of mixed provenance) were added to the collection so there may be content produced or published after Warshaw's death in 1969. This practice has since ceased.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research. Some items may be restricted due to fragile condition.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
Warshaw Collection of Business Americana Subject Categories: Shears and Scissors, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for partial processing of the collection was supported by a grant from the Smithsonian Institution's Collections Care and Preservation Fund (CCPF).
Shugar, Aaron, Notis, Mike, Limata, Laura, Wong, DongNing, Hutapea, Parsaoran, and Rubin, Han. 2016. "Early Chinese Scissors and Shears: Category, Design and Shape: A Metallurgical Study." In Proceedings of the 34th International Symposium on Archaeometry, 3-7 May 2004, Zaragoza, Spain. 237–243. Zaragoza: Institucion 'Fernando el Catolico'.
Records of the J. Wiss and Sons Company, maker of shears and scissors.
Scope and Contents:
Catalog and Salesman's Fact Book, 1921-1925, and "A Story of Shears and Scissors". The book includes a 1925 Wiss Catalog of scissors, snips, and shears and a 1925 catalog of Kraeuter and Company Inc., Newark,manufacturers of pliers, wrenches, chisels, automobile and machinists' tools and ticket punches. Also, numerous price lists and advertisements for the tools, apparently clipped from publications.
Biographical / Historical:
J. Wiss & Sons Company was founded in 1848 by Jacob Wiss, a thirty-one-year-old immigrant from Switzerland who was an experienced cutler and gunsmith. The company, headed by Wiss and his descendants in Newark, N.J., emphasized high quality in its products, which became known world-wide and sold to the U.S. Government in the Civil War and the two World Wars. In 1914, Wiss acquired the manufacturing facilities of a competitor and became the largest producer of fine scissors and shears in the world. Following World War I, Wiss weathered a severe depression in scissors markets, partly caused by dumping of European products. Increased U.S. help remedied this situation. Cooper Industries purchased the company in 1976. After the purchase, the factory remained in Newark for a few years, then was moved south, and finally manufacturing was done overseas. According to a message from Don Wiss (April 22, 2010), Cooper bought the product line and the Wiss name to add to the other names they use in their Hand Tool Group (e.g., Weller, Lufkin, Crescent, Nicholson, etc).
Provenance:
Collection donated by J. Wiss & Sons Company, Newark, New Jersey, August 15, 1985.
Restrictions:
Collection is open for research.
Rights:
Collection items available for reproduction, but the Archives Center makes no guarantees concerning copyright restrictions. Other intellectual property rights may apply. Archives Center cost-recovery and use fees may apply when requesting reproductions.
[Trade catalogs on shears, trimmers, scissors, cutter and stripper, thread clipper, nail cutters, snips and snip panels, display cases for shears and scissors ... ]
