How old is my Wade & Butcher?

As a period rather than a year, read from the wording of the tang stamp: the crown initials, the motto For Barbers Use, the arrow and its feathers, and whether the name is Wade alone or Wade & Butcher. The sources disagree on the exact span of one crown stamp, and the archive prints both positions.

Does the arrow mean anything?

It is the firm trademark, and the number of feathers is used by collectors to separate variants: three feathers for one late era, six on the Celebrated For Barbers Use, four on the late For Gentlemen Use.

The maker's archive

Wade & Butcher razors.

Wade & Butcher has no table of years and never had one. The key is the wording of the stamp on the tang, read against dated specimens in collections, so every year quoted here is an era window derived from captioned examples rather than a factory date.

Country: UK
Active since
Coverage: 1760–1950 · 3 code systems
Dating tier: Codes only
In the archive: 0 series · 3 code systems · 8 models
Years documented: 1760–1950

Eras

1810–1829

Wade before the partnership

The earliest stamps carry the name Wade alone — Robert or Jane — before the Butcher partnership appears, and these are the earliest razors of the line.

1820–1900

The partnership stamps

The great era of the firm runs through the patent tempered steel stamps, the crown initials of George IV and William IV, the For Barbers Use motto that made the name, and the arrow trademark with its three, four or six feathers.

1900–1920

The twentieth century

The late line is marked differently again: Special, Bow Razor, Lord Byron, Extra Hollow Ground, and a 1918 model.

What dates this maker

The wording of the stamp — WADE alone, Patent Tempered Steel, the crown initials GR, WR or VR, For Barbers Use, For Gentlemen Use, Celebrated, and the arrow with its feather count.
The crown initials are a rough era by reign: GR for the 1820s, WR from 1830, VR from 1837.
The twentieth-century model names, which sit in the last era of the firm.
The country mark ENGLAND, a lower bound of 1 March 1891, and the shared grind and scale markers for the shape of the blade.

Watch out

A tang stamp gives a period of operation, not a year. Every date read from a stamp here is a window derived from dated examples.
The crown stamps conflict in the sources: WR is given as 1830 to 1837 and also as 1840 to 1870, and the later use is recorded rather than discarded.
One name across several firms: Robert Wade, Wade & Butcher, and Butcher, Brown & Butcher are different concerns, and the same applies to the years printed for them.
A repolished blade has lost its evidence, and no feature elsewhere on the razor restores it.

8 Wade & Butcher models are catalogued with their production years, specs and safety notes.