An attractive and highly detailed Georgian engraved trade card for Samuel Slater of Sunbury in Middlesex, advertising a substantial timber, ironmongery and coal business.

The card reads:

“Samuel Slater of Sunbury in Middlesex Sells all Sorts of Fir Timber, as Deals, Yenfir-Baulks, Fir Quarter, Oak and Fir Laths & wainscott, also Barr Iron, & all Sorts of Ironmongers Ware, & Coals by Wholesale or Retail at Reasonable Rates.”

A particularly appealing example, the engraving incorporates extensive trade imagery associated with the timber industry. Shown are a woodsman felling trees, stacks of timber baulks, woodworking and surveying tools, and a riverside shipping scene illustrating the transport of timber by water. These features make the card an excellent visual record of the eighteenth-century Thames timber trade.

The combination of timber, ironmongery and coal suggests a merchant supplying the building trade on a substantial scale. Sunbury’s position on the River Thames would have provided convenient access to the transport of bulky building materials and imported timber.

The term “Yenfir-Baulks” appears in the engraved text and is left unidentified here, being described exactly as printed.

A desirable piece of Georgian commercial ephemera with strong appeal for collectors of trade cards, London and Middlesex history, Thames commerce, building trades, timber merchants and eighteenth-century advertising.

Provenance: 

From the collection of a long established Richmond-upon-Thames resident, focusing on 17th to 19th century trade ephemera, theatre handbills and Acts of Parliament.