Ernest George Reuss (1844-1898) was born at Monswiller (Alsace) in France, the son of Felix Charles Maximilian and Sophie Jeanne Reuss.  In 1868, he came to England and married in the following year Sophie, the daughter of John Henry Carter, at Leeds parish church.  Reuss partnered Joseph T. Deakin in Deakin, Reuss & Co at Tiger Works, West Street (see Deakin, Sons & Co), which exported cutlery to Spain and South America.  After leaving Deakin in 1895, Reuss acquired Samuel Hancock & Sons and its ‘MAZEPPA’ mark.  He launched Reuss & Co, Mazeppa Works, Charlotte Street (off West Street), and continued to sell cutlery to Spanish and South American markets.  Reuss was naturalised in 1889.  He died, aged 53, on 2 February 1898 at his home Leavesdale in Tapton House Road.  He had been an enthusiastic Freemason (Britannia Lodge) but took no part in public life.  He was buried in Fulwood, leaving £6,927.

His son, Percy Albert Reuss (1872-1956), was born at Tapton House Road and educated at Wesley College.  According to his own account, he dreamed of exploring the Amazon regions of South America (Reuss, 1954¹).  He spent two years in Spain and Portugal perfecting himself in both languages, before becoming a South American agent for an export house in Liverpool.  His travelled to Buenos Aires in 1893 and returned two years later.  He bartered hardware (especially machetes) for raw rubber directly from the Amazon natives.  After his father’s death, Percy assumed control of the family firm at Mazeppa Works, Charlotte Street.  In 1906, the words ‘PLATA REUSS’ were registered for use on plated wares; and the skull and crossbones mark of John Crossland was acquired.  Woodhead (1991)² shows another Reuss mark, with a lion and shield and the word ‘VIZCAYA’.  Reuss continued to supply South American customers by buying (and then selling) cutlery made by other Sheffield firms.  He apparently made fifteen trips to South America.  Besides the West Street and Charlotte Street offices/workshops, Reuss had a German office at Remscheid (Sheffield Independent, 8 February 1908).

During the First World War, Reuss won plaudits in Sheffield for his plans to capture German markets and for his committee work in dealing with the problems of trading in foreign countries.  His schemes were outlined in a series of newspaper articles (Sheffield Yearbook and Record, 1915).  At the end of the war, Reuss changed the company name to Overseas Exporters (1919) Ltd, which was registered in London with a nominal (and inflated) capital of £500,000.  The firm was liquidated in 1922 and the Mazeppa mark was sold first for £1,000 to Charles Henry (presumably the managing director of W. K. & C. Peace), then to Viners, and finally to Worth & Co.  The family owner of Worth’s – Joseph B. Himsworth – later related (in notes amongst the Himsworth papers in the Hawley Collection) that when his firm bought the Mazeppa mark it came with two large volumes in gilt-leather.  These volumes (one of which was apparently given to Sheffield Museum) contained 500 full-page drawings of pocket cutlery, butcher, table, Bowie knives, and machetes.  Reuss is also said to have donated Inca pottery to the Museum.

Reuss lived in London during the interwar years, though he later returned to Sheffield.  At the start of the 1950s, he penned The Amazon Trail (1954), which related his quest for gold in 1902 in the jungles of Brazilian-Amazonia.  In his words, the book told of ‘the discovery of great treasure in an unknown, lost city of great age, so deeply hidden in the primeval forest that it escaped discovery by Pizarro … in 1531’.  His London publisher, The Batchworth Press, originally thought the subject too fantastic for consideration, but when they visited Reuss, they found a ‘man of parts, 82, hale and hearty, though unable to travel far afield, living in comfortable circumstances, seeking neither fame nor glory, but wishing to set down in book form a little of his astonishing career’. Cigarette in hand, Reuss posed for a photograph.  Batchworth Press checked his story, became convinced that Reuss ‘knew his stuff’, and published the book shortly before his death.  Apart from a brief mention of machetes, however, Reuss’s reminiscences contain no mention of Sheffield or cutlery.  Percy A. Reuss, of Rutland Hotel, Glossop Road, died on 9 March 1956 at the Royal Hospital Sheffield.  He left £772.  An obituarist stated that his story of the lost ‘City of the Incas … was widely disbelieved’ (Quality, March 1956). 

^1. Reuss, Percy, The Amazon Trail: An Epic Journey through the Amazon Jungle, and the Discovery of a Lost City (London, 1954)

^2. Woodhead, Eileen, Trademarks on Base-Metal Tableware (Ottawa, Canada Parks Service, 1991)