This enterprise had links with John Nowill & Sons.  The original partners were Joseph Nowill (c.1716-1748) and Robert Kippax (d.1775).  The former was the grandson of Thomas Nowill (who had launched the Nowill enterprises in 1700) and the son of William Nowill, who had inherited the Nowill trade mark.  Little is known about Robert Kippax, except that he was a trained cutler (who may have been the Robert Kippax, who was granted his Freedom in 1751) and at some point launched a partnership with Joseph Nowill. 

They traded as merchants and hardware men, with a shop at 37 High Street.  In 1774, they were listed as Kippax & Nowel, wholesale and retail cutlers, hardware and toymen, High Street.  They used the marks ‘KIPPAX’ or ‘NOWEL’.  According to Leader (1905)¹, ‘On the opposite side, almost facing George Street, was the well-known ironmonger’s shop kept by Joseph Nowill and Robert Kippax, sometimes alone and sometimes in partnership.  Mr Nowill built the school-room at the top of the Paradise Square steps, as a Freemason’s Lodge; and he also erected for himself a house at East Bank.’ Intriguingly, a pen knife marked ‘KIPPAX’ once belonged to George Washington.  Family tradition has it that he used it to scrape mud from his boots (the knife is shown in Peterson, 1958²).  Evidence that Kippax and Nowill sometimes traded alone can also be found in the Sheffield Assay Office registers: Robert Kippax & Co, High Street, registered a silver mark in 1774.  According to Moore (2008), Robert Kippax was Sheffield’s most prolific maker of silver fruit-knives between 1770 and 1790.  Thomas Nowill, High Street, registered his own silver mark in 1800.

Robert Kippax died in 1775.  Thomas Nowill (1747-1825) – Joseph’s son – continued the business until Robert Kippax’s son (also named Robert) joined the partnership.  Robert Jun. appears to have been granted his Freedom in 1783 (part of his apprenticeship having been served under his father before his death).  The firm then became Nowill & Kippax.  The directory (1787) listed ‘Nowil and Kippax’ as cutlers and hardware men, High Street, with a trade mark of the same name.  Thomas Nowill became Master Cutler in 1788.  In 1802, a visitor to their workshops described how:

the knife manufactory of Messrs Noel [sic] and Kippax gratified us in a very interesting way.  Here upwards of ninety people are employed in forming those useful instruments, from the rude bar iron to the beautiful and complicated article which cost seven or eight guineas and contains twenty-different pieces within the handle.  Some, indeed, are not of so high value, as we were shewn specimens of knives, which, having passed through sixty different hands, from the ore to the last polishing, sold afterwards at the rate of twopence halfpenny each.  Five hundred different patterns of knives are made at this manufactory, and taken off by the London, East-Indian, and American markets.  Almost all the people employed work by the piece, and earn, if industrious, about four shillings per day (Warner, 1802³).

Robert Kippax died on 13 February 1804.  He was buried in St Peter’s churchyard, leaving bequests of £1,630.  The Kippax-Nowill interests had become intertwined.  Joseph Nowill’s widow had eventually married the first Robert Kippax, whose daughter Elizabeth later married Thomas Nowill (the latter having been apprenticed to Kippax).  After Robert Jun.’s death, the business passed to Nowill, who continued under his own name in High Street.  Thomas’s son, Joseph Nowill (1782-1859), High Street, registered a silver mark in 1813, when he took over the business.  However, after 1816 Nowill’s shop was acquired by James Crawshaw.  Thomas Nowill, East Bank, died on 5 June 1825, aged 78, and was buried in St Peter’s churchyard.  Joseph moved to London and died in 1859 on a trip to America to see his sons.

^1. Leader, R E, Sheffield in the Eighteenth Century (Sheffield, 2nd edn, 1905)

^2. Peterson, Harold L, American Knives: The First History and Collector’s Guide (Highland Park, NJ, 1958)

^3. Warner, Richard, A Tour Through the Northern Counties of England and the Border of Scotland (London, 2 vols, 1802)