A SET OF EDWARDIAN SILVER POSTAL SCALES, GEORGE BETJEMAN & SONS, LONDON, 1905 the rectangular base with canted sides, the balance pivoting on bell-shaped openwork supports behind the set of five silvered brass weights of 1/2 to 4 ounces 16cm wide, loaded Although silver Edwardian and Victorian spring operated postal scales appear quite regularly, balance type scales in silver are rarely seen. For another set of balance scales on a glass base see Christie's South Kensington, The James Walker Collection of Silver and Vertu, 13th July 2006, lot 341, sold for £1,800 hammer. George Betjeman & Sons were perhaps the largest fancy goods manufacturers in the world at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries. Supplying luxury goods traders such as Asprey, it is stated (The Stationery Trades Journal, 31st January 1894) 'that Betjeman's is one of the few firms possessing the necessary machinery for putting a log of wood in at one end of the factory and turning it out as a highly-finished dressing case at the other, every portion of it being manufactured by them'. Their large works in Pentonville Road (noted by a scion of the family, the late poet laureate Sir John Betjeman, in his blank verse autobiography 'Summoned by Bells') is listed as making a bewildering array of objects, often desk and dressing table accessories, including in 1879: blotting books, inkstands and letter balances. (John Culme, The Directory of Gold and Silversmiths, Woodbridge, 1987, Vol.1, pp.43/44)