Description
Clabrough & Golcher 1895-6 Catalog (San Francisco)
Measures about 8.5" x 11" with full color covers and contains 64 pages of pictures and text. This is a top notch reprint printed on super-white paper.
John P. Clabrough was born in England and migrated to San Francisco California in 1863. He learned the American gun trade by working for various gun shops in San Francisco and in 1867 he opened a gun shop of his own at 630 Montgomery Street, San Francisco.
By 1870 John P. Clabrough had taken his two brothers, Joseph and George, as partners; the business became known as Clabrough & Bros. In 1871 or 1872, John P. and Joseph left George in charge of the store and John returned to England to manufacture guns and pistols in Birmingham, England for export to his (now larger) store in San Francisco. Eventually he added sales offices in New York City, Philadelphia and Chicago, and then in other countries. George Clabrough of the San Francisco store became ill about 1876 and died in 1879.
In 1877 John Clabrough met William Golcher who had retired from the gun business in Minnesota, and persuaded Golcher to take a look at the San Francisco store. In 1878 Golcher took charge of the store, liking the area and the climate so much that he purchased half interest in the operation in 1883. After this date the guns were marked Clabrough and Golcher. In the late l880s, Clabrough reached its peak production of 10,000 to 12,000 guns a year, produced in factories on Birmingham’s Whittall Street and the now-legendary St. Mary’s Row.
When the l890 US Tariff was enacted, English exports to America began to decline. In l893 Clabrough sold his company to an employee named Douglas Johnstone and retired to San Francisco. Johnstone added another line of guns, under the name Clabrough & Johnstone, and he carried on the business until World War I. Like many English gunmaking firms, C&J was forced to amalgamate with other firms. In l9l4, they joined forces with Hollis, Bentley & Playfair, which were all under the management of John O. Redgrave, a lifelong Clabrough employee who became the proprietor in l9l8. In l937, battered by import taxes, then the Great War and finally the Depression, Clabrough & Johnstone closed its doors. All that remains today is the unique legacy of a gunmaker that had roots both in England and the American West Coast."
One of the most unusual and least known of all English gunmakers, J.P. Clabrough built high-quality guns in Birmingham specifically for the American West Coast.
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