Mark makers were highly-skilled craftsmen, who produced the steel punches and dies for stamping makers’ names and marks into the steel blades and silver products.  Perhaps the best known and enduring name in the trade was Edward Pryor & Son.  It was launched in 1849, when George Pryor – a scissors grinder in Walkley – purchased the mark-making business of William White (Quality, February 1957).  This enabled George’s son, Edward (who had been apprenticed to White), to start his own business in a courtyard in West Street.  Edward briefly partnered John Lawson in Carver Street, where they also traded as coal merchants.   This was dissolved in 1869 and Edward continued as a mark maker.   He died on 3 October 1894, aged 64, leaving £491.  He was buried in Fulwood.  His son, George Albert Pryor, was the next family owner.   

After the First World War, the company was based in Rockingham Street and G. Ronald Pryor (1901-1984) – the founder’s grandson – entered the firm.  He became chairman and managing director in 1938.  Pryor’s responded to the slump in the 1920s by relocating to new premises and investing in precision marking machines – then new in Sheffield.  Pryor’s became a limited company in 1936 and acquired a new factory three years later.  In the 1950s, it expanded in Egerton Street and the workforce reached 380 by the 1960s.  As the cutlery industry withered, Pryor’s survived by adopting the latest die-making and marking technologies (Quality, November / December 1980).  Ronnie Pryor and his wife, Kathleen, died within days of each other (Quality, September / October 1984).  They had no children and so they set up a charitable trust to own the company.  In 2022, Pryor Marking Technology Ltd was still based in Egerton Street.