Clerk of the Fur Trade: Fish nets, fish nets, roly poly fish nets . . .

Clerk, Trader, and Merchant

The term "clerk", like "merchant", covers a wide range of endeavor. Indeed, qualifications needed for success as a clerk were much like that of the merchant as detailed by Postlethwayt in The Merchant's Public Counting House (1750): some acquaintance with the commodities of trade, command of foreign languages, knowledge of bookkeeping, shipping, foreign weights and measures, tariffs, foreign exchange, and the stock and produce markets.

No one clerk, as no one merchant, could have complete command of all these particulars and so specialization in trade and commerce took place. For one aspiring to the merchant or trader class, or one of the specialized commercial adjuncts, a term, usually as apprentice, as a clerk in the countinghouse was to be expected.

Thus, the clerk was no lowly scrivner, though some there might be. From the ranks of the clerk came literary notables such as Charles Lamb, the insurance brokers of England, and many of the trading partners of North America's North West Company, the largest fur company in the world during it's time in the late 18th and early 19th century.

The Clerk is available for presentations regarding the life of the clerk, the fur trade of the North West Company, accounting and paperwork of the era as it relates to the fur trade. The Clerk's skills are also demonstrated by way of the cutting of quills and the manufacture of ink using the correct recipe of the 18th century.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Fish nets, fish nets, roly poly fish nets . . .

As promised, a couple of photos of the completed fishnet.

It ended up much longer than expected.

The whole net ended up about 16' long. I would like to have made it wider, but to be honest, I was really getting restless and needed to complete other work. I ended around 2 1/2'.

I wanted to try making the fishnet in the manner of the pictures in Diderot and others. I have found some very much simpler instructions, but not documentation that anyone "did it that way".

So . . . after much mindless monotony, a fishnet made with period hemp material is born. The "diamonds" are about an 1 1/2 to 2" on a side.

The Clerk

2 comments:

KeithMay 25, 2009 at 1:15 PM
Well done, excellent.
Regards, Keith.
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HMSAcasta.comJune 26, 2009 at 9:07 PM
Whatever has become of you sir? It has been quite some time since you have written in your journal.

Have you been busy with your accounting?
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Clerk, Trader, and Merchant

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

Fish nets, fish nets, roly poly fish nets . . .

2 comments: