This Lichfield cutlery and silverware company was founded by Arthur Price (1865-1936). He was born at Birmingham, the son of Thomas George Price (1827-1893) – a warehouse packer – and his wife, Mary Anne Elizabeth nee Collins. Arthur found work in the local metal trades and eventually became works manager at John Yates & Sons, Pritchett Street, which manufactured spoons, forks, and flasks (Jones, 1981).  In 1902, Arthur started his own company, with a nominal capital of £3,000.  Arthur Price was a director; so, too, was Herbert Lawrence, a local fender manufacturer, who was one of the half dozen subscribers. Lawrence apparently played no part in the business. Arthur Price & Co Ltd traded at Atlas Works, Gem Street. Despite the grand-sounding name, it was no more than a backstreet operation, which employed about a dozen workers in the manufacture of spoons and forks (flatware). The company did not make cutlery: like most Birmingham firms, Price bought in table knives from Sheffield.  Atlas Works ‘had no electricity. A small gas engine provided both power and lighting. Heat was a luxury [Price] could not afford. Transport was by horse drawn carriage. The streets were cobbled. Communication was by slow letter post’ (Price, 1997)¹.

The firm, too, had a slow start.  But by 1911 business was brisk enough for Arthur Price to move to new premises at adjacent Vauxhall Street (with extra capacity later added at another nearby building at Old Cross Street).  His workforce was apparently about fifty (Birmingham Post, 3 October 1962). He concentrated on high-grade nickel-silver pieces (especially for South America and Cuba) and silver pieces on 12 per cent nickel-silver (for Russia). His sons, Arthur (1892-1942) and Frederick (1897-1985), were readied to join the business.
The First World War disrupted the export trade, so in the 1920s Price turned to the home market.  This meant investing in the latest technologies, such as the machine grinding and glazing of fork prongs. Hand-swung presses and drop stamps were discarded in favour of Continental friction screw-presses. The company claimed several ‘firsts’: chromium plating spoons and forks (1928); making stainless steel flatware (1928); and selling sterling-silver plated gift cutlery in hand-cases (1930).  The firm may have been the largest customer of the Birmingham Assay Office before 1939.  Arthur Price, Wake Green Road, Moseley, died on 20 February 1936, leaving £29,505. He was remembered as ‘a big man in every sense, standing 6ʹ 2ʺ tall and in his later years nearly 18 stone’ (Price, 1997)¹. 

His sons inherited the business, but Arthur died from cancer in 1942, aged 50. This left his brother, Frederick, to deal with wartime disruptions and the adaptation to munitions work. In 1946 he bought Parkfield Rolling Mills, Saltley, to roll ingots and in 1948 acquired Sheffield workshops in Petre Street, Brightside, for making knives.  Both ventures lost money, but the post-war boom meant that he had a full order-book with 70 per cent of production sent overseas.  Frederick’s only son was Arthur John Mason Price (1928-2017).  He joined the business in 1949, gaining experience on the shop floor in Birmingham and Sheffield, while studying accountancy, design, and tool making in his spare time.  John, by his own admission, had an unhappy childhood and an increasingly antagonistic relationship with his father.  The latter saw the company as a means to a comfortable lifestyle; his son had ambitions to make the company a market leader.  They were soon at loggerheads and John Price faced a quarter-century battle to wrest control.

The post-war years were difficult. In 1951, John Price began running the Sheffield factory. In 1954, he created John Mason (Sheffield) Ltd, which traded in products at the more popular end of the market (until it was dissolved in 1967). The trade marks were ‘JAYEM’, ‘COOKSPRICE’, and ‘JM’.  He eventually made the company profitable. Later Price’s Sheffield subsidiary was relocated to Trafalgar Street and then to Scotland Street.  John Price recalled:

Everyone was working flat out, but they were hampered by raw material shortages and lack of labour.  The great cutlery names were still intact and, with their full order-books (up to two years), were still operating as in pre-war times.  Then in 1951 Australia put up barriers to imports with its duties.  Within a matter of weeks, Sheffield was on a two-week order book (interview with G. Tweedale, 1994).

As a response, in 1958 he joined David Mappin (a friend whose family was linked to Mappin & Webb) to form David Mappin (Sheffield) Ltd.  It traded until 1967.  Mappin was involved in the ‘premium’ business, in which the manufacturer of a product would offer a free gift to encourage sales (Hughes, 1967)².  Mappin and Price provided cutlery products (such as spoons and fruit sets) as part of product promotions with household names such as ‘Weetabix’ and ‘Maxwell House’.  This proved successful and gave Price valuable marketing experience.  But the turning point was in 1964, when he embarked on a three-week tour of Hong Kong and Japan.  These were then the only producers of cutlery in the Far East.  However, as Price soon discovered, they had the capacity to supply the whole world.  As he recalled (in an interview with Tweedale):  ‘I went into all the factories there, so I could see exactly what was happening.  It was quite a staggering experience.  I became fully aware of the Far Eastern threat and of the importance of marketing’.

In 1965, Price attempted to alert Sheffield industrialists to developments in the Far East: ‘I spoke at Mappin Hall to 400 cutlery directors about the Far East trip. I said we all needed to get together. I’ve never had zero applause before’ (Tweedale interview, 1994). Regardless, on his return he restyled the company name as Arthur Price of England and began to abandon low-cost table cutlery – a plan he had evolved flying back over the Pacific. He decided that the firm would be British and would sell directly to retail outlets and not wholesalers, who in his view depressed manufacturing. While new technologies were introduced, Price began increasing the company’s presence in the home market by following the example of chinaware companies Wedgwood and Doulton. Price asked: why not sell cutlery, too, from shops within shops?  He widened his range with special patterns and giftware to get ‘concessions’ in retail stores, following the same approach as the porcelain firms. 

In 1976, John Price finally succeeded his father (who died on 5 October 1985, aged 87, leaving £41,773). In 1977, the company was granted its first Royal Warrant (followed by another in 1988).  Price developed a hundred ‘shops’, which accounted for 40 per cent of company sales. The result was a consumer/market led company that was the antithesis of his father’s vision. In 1982, he moved the company headquarters to Lichfield, Staffordshire, though cutlery manufacturing was still based in Sheffield.

Price had become involved in Sheffield cutlery politics in the face of the import invasion. In 1977, he was the driving force behind the Federation of British Cutlery Manufacturers, which he launched to counterbalance what he described as the ‘old guard’ Cutlery & Silverware Association (the president of which was Brian J. Viner). Price’s emphasis on English products had made him the implacable foe of Ruben Viner. Price accused Viners of pretending to support Sheffield industries, while treacherously importing cutlery from the Far East. Price complained about the ‘enemy ... on our own doorstep’ in an article in the journal of the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce (Quality, March/April, 1979)³. Diplomatically, the Chamber felt obliged to add that Price was expressing a ‘personal view’ and that importing blanks was ‘quite legal’. 

Ironically, the iron hand of the product cycle meant that Price, too, eventually had to import some cutlery to buttress the firm’s market share. In 1991, it placed its first order for cutlery from South Korea, which was branded as ‘Arthur Price International’ to differentiate it from ‘Arthur Price of England’ (Sheffield-made) tableware. John Price stated that he only went ahead with this plan once he had satisfied himself that ‘it wouldn’t rob Sheffield of a single, knife, fork, or spoon’ (Price, 1997)¹.

Price’s continued emphasis on English products (albeit with a dash of the Orient) proved successful and in the 1990s his company thrived. In 1993, he took over the Handsworth factory of A. Deeley Ltd, and combined it with another acquisition, George Butler & Co Ltd. Sanders & Bowers was another purchase. In 1997, Price published The Cutler’s Tale – one of the few autobiographies written by a cutlery manufacturer – that was remarkably candid for a company clothed in Royal Warrants and carefully crafted marketing.  He wrote of bitter battles with his father, two broken marriages, problems with drinking, and in-fighting with Sheffield industrialists. However, the story was leavened by Price’s love for his sons (Simon and Nigel) and his English company, which he described as ‘the greatest cutlery and silverware company of [the 20th] century’. Walker & Hall and Mappin & Webb might have challenged that assertion. But certainly ‘Arthur Price of England’ cutlery had been – alongside Richardson Sheffield’s Laser knives – one of the few success stories of that era.

In 1997, John Price was appointed OBE for services to the cutlery industry. He retired in favour of his sons, though remained chairman almost until his death on 26 April 2017 (aged 88). The present CEO of the company, Simon Price, joined the family firm in 1982. He brought his son, James, into the business – ensuring that a fifth generation of the Price family was active in the firm. It continued to be based at Lichfield and employed about 140 workers. Its silverware and cutlery remained popular, though the company’s focus shifted from manufacturing to outsourcing, design, and marketing.

References

^1. Price, John, The Cutlers Tale (Lichfield, 1997)

^2. Hughes, Graham, Modern Silver Throughout the World 1880-1967 (London, 1967).

^3. Sheffield Chamber of Commerce, Quality of Sheffield (1938)