Date: Circa 1930s
Material: Nickel plated
Production:
This is a solid cast brass ‘ring’ plate, with a highly-burnished finish. It’s a variant of the N657/V40 Bridge handle which appears in the 1960s’ Newman Brothers’ catalogue. Dr Julian Litten, expert in English coffin furniture calls them “Art Deco Oden Cinema Style” fittings.
Newman Brothers produced a select range of high-quality Art Deco handles during this period, all of which were registered with the Board of Trade. Unfortunately, they do not appear in any of the surviving Newman Brothers’ catalogues, so we can only prove that they were manufactured by the Newman Brothers based on their Registered Design numbers. It seems that the company did not produce new catalogues every time a batch of new products came into production. Rather, it would appear that many of the Registered Designs did not feature in trade catalogues because Newman Brothers did not have new catalogues printed regularly. Instead many of their Registered Designs would have fallen out of fashion by the time they came to print a new catalogue. Presumably, this was a cost-saving exercise as they couldn’t justify producing updated catalogues for the sake of featuring a handful of new designs.
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