My mind’s on knife history right now. I’ve always heard if you think on a thing a lot you develop ruts in your mind and your thinking tends to run along those lines, so I guess this is why my last few post have related to cutlery company history.
The second reason cutlery history is top of mind for me right now- I found a knife box at Parkers Knife Show yesterday. This knife box is different from the typical old paper box commonly found. Yep. This is a wood knife box. Rarely will you find a wooden knife box.
On top of that most knife boxes are made for a single knife, whereas this knife box was used to contain up to at least a dozen knives. How cool is that?! But wait- it gets even better!
Wood Case Brothers Knife Box c.1907/1908
Case Brothers Cutlery Company
This knife box was used by Case Brothers Cutlery Company (c.1900- 1914). You probably already know Case Brothers is one of my all-time favorite old knife companies. This box is guesstimated to have been used around 1907/08 based on its reference to their Kane, Pa. factory.
Marked Pattern No. 6250 1/2 Dozen
Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you this particular box contained a half dozen of their 6250 pattern (their “bone stag” handle material number) knives. Do you know what knife that is? The answer is what we call the Elephant Toenail, of course. As we’ve discussed in Pieces of cutlery history travel down through time together, you know anytime I can link items from cutlery history I am ecstatic, and particularly, when one of the items is my favorite knife.
1904 Case Brothers Cutlery Co. '50 catalog listing
Cutlery News Journal 
My Case Brothers Cutlery toenail was from Little Valley as the “ey” is visible under the company name. The back side tang is marked TESTED XX. What is it worth in good shape?? Bone with the “diamond” shaped worm grove jigged in and with double pulls.