F.G.Thomas was established in Sheffield in 1913 at 24 Angel street in the heart of the city centre. Advertisments dating from the 1920's in todays equivalent of the yellow pages had the shop listed as heraldic stationers,printers and sellers of fine gifts.Some of my more elderly customers told me the Angel street shop was more of a departmental store selling a large variety of goods.One lady told me the story of the nightmares she had as a child when seeing dead baby chicks sold at easter by F.G.Thomas.She seemed to hold me responsable for this around 70 years later.

In 1891 J.G.Graves Watch Repairer,was listed as the shops occupier.John George Graves went on from these small roots to become one of Sheffields most famous figures.He established himself the largest mail order company of its time in the early 20th century selling an assortment of fine gifts.You can still find J.G.Graves pocket watches on antique dealers websites and at auction houses .He was also a generous man,giving away over a £1m of his fortune during his lifetime. Contributing £30,000 towards the building of the Central Library and Graves art gallery on Surrey Street was one in a long list of gifts to the city.

During the late 1920's in an attempt to offset the Depression,two English companies manufactured fountain pens for commercial customers which they engraved with the customers details.The Mentmore Manufacturing Co was the first to undertake this work.The other company was Conway Stewart who continued to offer this service into the 1930's to stationers who sold their pens.I recently purchased an example of a 1930's Conway Stewart fountain pen which would have been sold in the F.G.Thomas(Sheffield) outlets.

The F.G.Thomas self filling pens for sale .

 

The Surrey street store was run by the same two employees for many years ,two sisters in fact.One ran the basement selling cards and cake decorations;the other,called Agnes,ran the upstairs stationery department.The two sisters must have run the store for many years,because most of the customers who told me about them thought they owned F.G.Thomas.When I purchased F.G.Thomas in 1990 Anne was the manageress,who was,in fact,Agnes's daughter.When the owner decided to sell the business,all of Anne's staff left for other jobs leaving her to run the store on her own.This forced Agnes out of retirement when she was well into her 70's.I can still remember her taking priority over everyone else when a customer came in to purchase a pen.

The store stocked mainly Sheaffer and Cross pens,with a small selection of Parker and Elysee.We started to introduced more Parker pens into the shop the 25's, 45's, 75's, 95's and Duofolds represented a great range of pens to sell in the early ninties

The shops main trade was stationery with the basement selling account books,printed wedding stationery and general stationery .The upstairs was open shelving stock with stationery , microfile organisers, leatherware etc.The basement is now close to the public and is used as a workshop and storage area.The upstairs has also changed with glass display cabinets replacing the open shelving.

Between 1990 and 2008 certain pen models have had good runs. A few that spring to mind are,the Diplomat's Classic.Waterman's Exclusive,L'etalon and Laureat and Elysee's slimline tortoiseshell and cobra.

Sheaffer pens have always been a favorite of mine, the Targa being one of the better selling models with such a large range in price and finishes to cover most customer needs.The Sheaffer Connaisseur was a quality pen but our customers seemed to prefer the Parker Duofold.With the Targa,Connaisseur,Crest,TRZ/Fashion,Oldtimer,Triumph and then later the Balance, Legacy and Prelude. Sheaffer become our best selling range of pens over our first decade of trading.Sadly this is no longer the case and with production stopping in Fort Madison i wonder if we will ever see Sheaffer back as a force in the modern pen trade.

Now the brands we sell most are Lamy,Cross and Montblanc.I still stock Sheaffers,Parkers,Watermans but they just don,t seem to appeal to the everyday customer like they did in the past.Visconti and Montegrappa give us something different in terms of colour and flare.At the lower price point Fisher Space pens are still popular and Faber Castell have sold well recently.

 

I never really appreciated the companys past when we first bought the shop 18 years ago.Purchasing the Conway Stewart pen made me curious to find out more about the history of F.G.Thomas. It's been interesting researching into the history of Sheffield and F.G.Thomas.It makes you feel very nostalgic searching through the books at the local history section at central library on Surrey Street,Sheffield.