Hand tools, until the end of the 18th century, were produced by hand, most often by the workers themselves. The irons and cutting edges by the blacksmiths of towns and villages.

The beginning of the 19th century saw the production of good quality steel intensify and the society of the time, very progressive, with a dominant rural character, generating enormous needs in the fields of building and furnishing, opening up a fabulous market for hand tools.

Gustave Goldenberg, craftsman, manufactures edged weapons with a small team of workers. He then understood that this market was in decline and convinced himself that the hand tools market had great potential.

In 1835, he built a first factory in Dorlisheim, then in Zornhoff, near Saverne, in the Bas-Rhin. Rapidly, the growing demand confirmed the merits of its reconversion, and annex factories were built on the same site, where three rivers provided the essential hydraulic power. Industrialization is in full swing and, around 1850, G. Goldenberg founded a first company which he called “Goldenberg and Co.”. About twenty years later, another industrial site was established, this time in the Meuse, at Tronville en Barrois, where the "Manufacture française d'outils, formerly Goldenberg et Cie" was created. It develops on the national market and on that of the colonies, already numerous at the time. At the same time, and for export, the parent company of Zornhoff was also transformed into a public limited company under the name of "Manufacture Alsacienne d'outils-Zornhoff, formerly Goldenberg et Cie." A merger of the two companies took place in 1924, and gave birth to the "Old establishments Goldenberg et Cie".

The more recent evolution of the Goldenberg house will be marked by agreements signed with "Peugeot outillage à main" in the seventies, creating the S.I.F.C.O., which will be absorbed by the British group Stanley in 1986, the Goldenberg commercial brand still having been retained.

Gustave Goldenberg began producing tools in agriculture and forestry, then in basic craft tools. Mounted tools - planes, planks, etc. - see their first series manufactured around 1893. Around 1900, the range is almost complete.

Manufacturing was little automated until the war of 1870. As it was unfortunately verified later, military needs accelerated technological development and industrialization took on a new impetus. Thus the production of forged files and rasps, cut by hand, which mobilized three hundred workers, was carried out from 1872, with the first forges and automatic cutters, later replaced by hot rolling mills, already inexorably reducing the workforce.

Coffee grinders occupy an important place in the catalog, because colonization allowed all of Europe to have coffee in quantity, and the Goldenberg range had nothing to envy to that of the great competitor of the Doubs - Peugeot brothers - but it was mainly produced for export.

What strikes today's enthusiast is a profusion of models and variants for each type of tool, Goldenberg wanting to provide a choice that is both functional and aesthetic, often dictated by habits and regional particularities. One imagines Mr. Goldenberg and his close collaborators traveling the provinces in search of a typical model likely to increase the sales of a tool. These assortments also made it possible, due to their differences in manufacturing or materials, to stagger prices in order to satisfy all budgets without ever sacrificing quality. The rustic economy of the time demanded a parsimonious renewal of the tools and the parts of the tools used, thus only the irons that were handled by themselves were changed.

The foreign designations of the "Brazilian type" or "Hungarian style" style had no doubt only a distant relationship with the forms and characteristics of the tool of the country cited, but had the advantage of denominating in a very distinctive way the models.

By leafing through this magnificent catalog, one feels the robustness and efficiency inherited and inspired by the tools created by the Companions. These feelings are well revealed by sketches with generous and precise graphics.

Browsing through these pages like the shelves of a wonderful hardware store where you would like to make your choice and immediately place an order, it is in fact a museum dedicated to the tool you are visiting, the "function" tool, the “work” tool which reveals a laborious time when the social link passed through learning, know-how and a taste for “beautiful work”.

Andre Mercuzot.