Harry Brearley (1871-1948), metallurgist and stainless steel pioneer, recounted in his Autobiographical Notes (1989), how he began the Amalgams venture after an enquiry about a furnace material.  He opened a small workshop in the Wicker with a friend, Colin Moorwood.  Brearley recalled: ‘Every evening and every weekend I worked for the Amalgams Co, sometimes in the workshop and sometimes at home.  One room of our house was littered with experimental bits and pieces and packages of the new material’.  In 1908, the firm became a private limited company with £2,000 capital (Sheffield Daily Independent, 6 May 1908).  Brearley and Moorwood were directors, alongside W. H. Dyson (who was managing director).  From its office at Attercliffe Road, it specialised in pyrometers and heat treatment materials and operated throughout the twentieth century.

Amalgams Co did not make cutlery.  However, Brearley recorded in his autobiography, Knotted String (1941) that in about 1914 – when he was attempting to encourage local cutlery manufacturers to use stainless steel – he ordered through the Amalgams Co a hundredweight of the new material from Thomas Firth & Sons (his employer).  The order was for Firth’s F.A.S. Steel (Firth’s Aeroplane Steel).  Samples of this steel were supplied by Brearley to the local cutlery manufacturer, R. F. Mosley at Portland Works.  Mosley’s succeeded in producing satisfactory stainless table knife blades.  Mosley was soon ordering seven tons of stainless steel at a time from the Amalgams Co.  Not surprisingly, Brearley was unable to resist the temptation to order table knives marked ‘The Amalgams Co Ltd’.  (See Picture Sheffield, s26429).  Presumably, these were produced in relatively small numbers after the First World War.