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WITH 97 ILLUSTRATION PLATES OF CAST IRON GOODS
[CATALOGUE - CAST IRON GOODS]. BUDERUS'SCHE EISENWERKE. Musterbuch Buderus'sche Eisenwerke[.] Eisengiesserei zu Main-Weser-Hütte Station Lollar Main-Weser-Bahn (Oberhessen).
[Lollar, near Giessen], (printed by Curt von Münchow, Grossh. Hof- u. Universitäts-Druckerei, Giessen), ca. 1885-ca. 1895. Oblong 4to (22 x 28 cm). With a letterpress title-page, 2-page alphabetical index and 1-page table, plus 63 tinted and 32 untinted lithographed plates and 2 photographic collotype plates, all together containing hundreds of illustrations of a very wide range of cast iron goods offered by Buderus and by Hirzenhain & Lollar (a related firm established by the Buderus family). Contemporary half black cloth, black textured-paper sides.
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An extensively illustrated catalogue of cast iron goods offered by the Buderus cast iron works in Loller (on the Main-Weser railway line near Giessen). The firm was known especially for its ovens and stoves (both for heating rooms and for cooking), and illustrates about 70 varieties (with ten further pages giving measured drawings of their doors), but many pages are devoted to window frames, and others to pots and pans, waffle irons and other kitchen wares, boilers, wheels and gears, plumbing fixtures, grates, fences, ornamental rosettes and spikes, clock weights, knobs and handles, urns, clothing irons, memorial plaques, etc. We have located no other copy of any catalogue of the firm dating earlier than the 1920s. The present one would be an invaluable guide for the dating or the reconstruction of ironwork of the late nineteenth century.
Many pages in the catalogue were probably printed and published ca. 1885 (one illustration shows an 1884 memorial plaque for the 1870/71 battle of Strasbourg), but in its present form the catalogue must have been issued soon after the incorporation of the Hirzenhain & Lollar iron works in 1895, for thirty-six pages bear the name Hirzenhein & Lollar instead of Buderus. The catalogue does not include radiators, which Buderus introduced in 1898. Some leaves were clearly reissued from an earlier catalogue: the alphabetical index has been updated by eight slips pasted over the eight columns of page numbers, and 6 (Buderus) pages have their page numbers corrected in manuscript (from the index it is clear that the manuscript page numbers 19 and 20 were accidentally interchanged).
Johann Wilhelm Buderus began manufacturing cast iron oven components in 1731. In 1861 the firm acquired the works at Lollar, on the Main-Weser railroad line running between Kassel and Hanau (completed 1852), where the present catalogue was issued. Buderus became a limited company as Buderus'sche Eisenwerke in 1884. Hugo Buderus split off their works at Hirzenhain as a private venture of in 1891 and it became a limited company as Hirzenhain und Lollar in 1895. The lithographed plates were produced by E. Kritzler in Herborn and by Köster & Schell in Marburg and Biedenkopf, and the collotypes by W. Hiehold & Sohn in Clausthal.
In spite of the irregularities in page numbering, the content of the catalogue itself agrees quite closely with that in the printed index (where the page numbering continues beyond 75 to 96). There is no page 65, but there is also no reference to it in the index. The last page (unnumbered) is an alternative version of page 10, rather than the page 96 noted in the index. With the (1920s?) stamp of Eisenwerke Hirzenhain Hugo Buderus G.m.b.H. on the title-page. In good condition. A rare and valuable historical record of nineteenth-century cast iron goods.
