I've wondered how far back this practice goes, possibly much earlier in England? At any rate, later Mason and Hamlin took up the practice too, except that Chickering recycled the case numbers and kept them in the 4 digit range usually, while Mason and Hamlin never recycled their case numbers, which were only a few hundred to a couple thousand different, creating great confusion and potential mis-identification. For over 50 years Chickering used both a case number and a serial number the case number was immediately given upon inception of casemaking, while the serial number (sometimes called the shipping number) was not given until completion. ![]() The number you found was the case number, which is usually found on Chickerings in a number of places, unlike the serial number, which was only put in one place, until some point in the 20th century.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |