Paul Revere art deco patented wood brass hemisphere book end

This neat book end says “Revere, Rome, NY, Patent applied for”. As it turns out, the patent was issued January11, 1935. See the patent here. The fellow that invented it was employed by Revere Copper and Brass incorporated.

The company is still going strong, known today as Revere Copper Products incorporated and is one of the oldest manufacturing companies in the United States. The company was founded in 1801 by Paul Revere, the very same fellow we all read about whom on April 18^th, 1775 made his famous ride from Boston to Concord warning the colonists that the British were coming. Turns out he wasn’t just good at riding horses and shouting warnings, he was also a great artisan / craftsmen, who later turned into an equally fantastic industrialist / manufacturer.

Early on he was a prominent silversmith making utensils, bronze bells, and other such things. By 1800 he had figured out how to roll copper into sheets, freeing the fledgling country from it’s necessity to import copper sheets from England to strengthen the hulls of their warships. In 1801 he rolled the first copper sheets in America, refining up to 1800 pounds of copper at a time using only wood for fuel, and supplying the navy with copper sheets without the need to import any. In addition to rolling copper sheathing for ships, Paul Revere made sheathing for the State House in Boston, which required 7,675 lbs. of copper sheathing and 789 lbs. of copper nails, at a cost of $4,232. The roof of the State House in Boston lasted 100 years.

So as it turns out, what appears to be a brass sheathing coil attached to a hemisphere shaped piece of wood, made at some point prior to 1935, is in fact a piece of American history.

Here are a few great resources:

http://www.oldcopper.org/revere_copper.htm

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeoywo4/theshineshop2/id9.html

http://www.reverecopper.com/

http://www.americanrevolution.org/revere.html

The vintage Revere bookend pictured here has been sold.

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