Basic HTML Version

|  | Table of Contents |  | View Full Version

Page 35 - pp-Suter-Miscellany
P. 35

    father may have owned it and passed it on.  One thing
                                  is certain – Suter cannot have bought it with his own
                                  money  from  the  Albermarle  St.  shop, since  he  was  a
                                  very young boy when it ceased trading.

                                  Networking

                                  It seems that the bulk of Suter’s work did not reach the
                                  optical shops.  His mounts continue to appear on eBay
                                  in quantity, and only a few contemporaries rivalled his
                                  output  (the  Flatters  outfit  springs  to  mind).
                                  Interestingly, both John E. Barnett and Suter made the
                                  move  from  central  London  to  Tottenham:  the  two
                                  men’s  time  there  may  have  briefly  overlapped,  and
                                  Suter could have inherited Barnett’s list of clients (and,
                                  of course, the Solomons microscope) after the latter’s
                                  death in 1882.  Barnett’s mounts sold as far away as the
                                  antipodes, and Suter certainly had global ambitions for
                                  his  own  business.    His  catalogue  claims  that  his
                                  histology slides were

                                  “used  at  almost  every  Science  Class  and  Medical
                                  School in the British Empire” –

                                  a  claim  unlikely  to  have  been  based  on  substantial
                                  evidence, but doubtless written in hopeful anticipation.

                                  Given sparse sales via retail shops, what were Suter’s
                                  commercial networks?  There are some likely answers.
                                  His 1900 catalogue features boxed sets of 72 histology
                                  slides,  aimed  at  science  and  medical  students,
                                  educational  institutes,  and  presumably  clubs  such  as
                                  Mechanics  Institutes,  Schools  of  Arts,  and  the  like.
                                  Suter was a school teacher in both central London and
                                  then in Tottenham, so would have had contacts in the
                                  teaching  profession,  probably  augmented  when
                                  William  Peirce  junior  became  a  science  teacher.
                                  Tertiary  educational  institutes  may  have  been
                                  customers during his early  mounting career, but from
                                                                  th
                                  the  last  quarter  of  the  19   century  onwards  these
                                  increasingly  satisfied  their  requirements  internally  by
                                  appointing full time technical staff.  That seems to be
                                  borne out by a page from his 1900 catalogue, where the
                                  sets  are  marked  as  cancelled,  presumably  by  Suter
                                  himself.

| 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 |