The Virtual Corkscrew Museum's Weekly Newspaper

Lund Levers - Take a Closer Look

On April 2, 1855 William Lund and William Edward Hipkins were granted British Patent Number 736 for "Improvements in the manufacture of corkscrews". The patent drawings include a rack and pinion, a roundlet, and a lever. The lever drawing is shown above. The operation is simple. First screw the worm into the cork. Next slip the bottle under the collar on the lower arm and hook the hole in the worm handle with the end of the upper arm. Squeeze the arms together and the cork is extracted. Variations do exists and the hinges of each lever are worthy of close examination.

A Lund Lever in an original presentation case. The wood insert is cut to fit each piece. A dowel keeps the corkscrew in position. The corkscrew is marked LUND PATENTEE & MAKER or one side and 57 CORNHILL & 24 FLEET ST. LONDON on the other side. There are cutouts for the Champagne knife and capsule cutter.

The top blade is marked LUND'S EPERNAY HOOK / CORNHILL & FLEET ST. The bottom blade is marked LUND'S CORK KNIFE CORNHILL & FLEET ST

Detail on top of the handle from the presentation set

Hinges used in the presentation set

Other Hinges

Lever with the Milestone trademark

"For Drawing Corks"

The Patent Lever

The Patentee (like the one in the presentation set)

No markings

Can you tell what this is?

Turn it sideways and you can see a hand operating a lever

A few additional variations that have been found:

BEST LONDON EVER

IMPROVED LEVER FOR DRAWING CORKS

LEVER with royal crest

NEW LEVER CORKSCREW LONDON

PERRY & CO. LONDON / PATENT LEVER LONDON

SOLD BY THE PATENTEE / LUND PATENTEE LONDON

THE LEVER CORKSCREW

THE LEVER with Fleur-de-Lis

THE PATENT LEVER with a crown in a circle

THE PATENT LEVER with Heeley & Sons Trademark rooster

TJ LEVER

Handle lengths can vary

So the next time you see a lever, examine it closely, it may be different than those already in your collection!

These are a great variety of worms made for use with the levers. Here are a few:

Corkscrew for the Milestone lever

---

Lund - The French Connection

The Lund and Hipkins British patent expired in 1880 and several manufacturers copied the design. A notable copy was made by Prosper Théodore Batard in France. He obtained French Patent Number 135,606 on April 8, 1880 for his lever. Pictured here is 20th Century reproduction by Ph. Barbier. We cannot explain the 1875 year on the box.

---

More Heidsieck

After viewing the Heidsieck Gallery in last week's issue, reader Ron MacLean emailed the above photo with the notation "Attached is an image of a Canadian Piper Heidsieck Plug Tobacco tin with naive corkscrews on label."

News Index