A& J Zimmerman was a silverware company founded in 1879 by Arthur S. Zimmerman and John Ulrich Zimmerman. The company was registered as a limited company in 1902, and finished trading in 1930.
A& J Zimmerman owned workshops in Birmingham and London, as well as holding a London Showroom, though most of their pieces were assayed to Birmingham.
Most of the items created under the name A & J Zimmerman were small, simple items of silverware such as photo frames and boxes, most surviving items are hallmarked between 1890 and 1910, which suggests that this period was the firms most prolific and successful.
Little information survives of the history of the firm of A & J Zimmerman, however the lasting nature of so many of their items of silverware speaks to the quality and craftsmanship of their pieces.
Coromandel wood or Calamander wood
is a valuable wood from India, Sri Lanka and South East Asia. It is of a hazel-brown color, with black stripes (or the other way about), very heavy and hard. It is also known as Macassar Ebony or variegated ebony and is closely related to genuine ebony, but is obtained from different species in the same genus; one of these is Diospyros quaesita Thwaites, from Sri Lanka. The name Calamander comes from the local sinhalese name, 'kalu-medhiriya', which means dark chamber; referring to the characteristic ebony black wood.
Coromandel wood has been logged to extinction over the last 2 to 3 hundred years and is no longer available for new work in any quantity. Furniture in coromandel is so expensive and so well looked after that even recycling it is an unlikely source. A substitute, Macassar Ebony, has similar characteristics and to the untrained eye is nearly the same but it lacks the depth of colour seen in genuine Coromandel.
Humidor
is any kind of box or room with constant humidity that is used to store cigars, cigarettes, orpipe tobacco. For private use, small wooden or acrylic glass humidor boxes for a few dozen cigars are used, while cigar shops may have walk-in humidors.
Humidors can be used to store other goods for which a certain level of humidity is desirable; the Colorado Rockies Major League Baseball team stores game balls in a large humidor at their home stadium, Coors Field, to counteract the effects of Denver's high altitude and generally low humidity. Humidors of all sizes use hygrometers to keep track of the humidity levels.
