Curply Brand Base Ball Gloves

[vintagebrett]

Found this ad in the Sporting Goods dealer from 1904. Never seen this brand before and thought it looked like a well made mitt.

[mikesglove]

The Curtain Supply Co. designed and manufactured curtains for passenger railway cars. They had offices in Newark and Chicago. Who would have thought they would be into sporting goods. I guess if inventor Ted Kennedy could use the Peoria Tent and Awning Co. to manufacture his gloves and mitts, then this other company's venture into sporting goods is plausible . The "Curply" mitt of 1904 with the wrap around crescent pad is awesome. There is a patent from 1905 I found some time ago that always puzzled me. It was a catchers mitt web design assigned to the Curtain Supply Co. The patent was really cool but I never pursued it because the company seemed to obscure and then Brett found some pretty interesting info of the company from the Sporting Goods Dealer archives. By some weird coincidence, the design feature of the 1905 web is on a mitt that just closed on ebay.

The 1905 patent web consists of two leather straps with rings at the ends. The rings are held by a fixed riveted strap. The ebay glove below shows the two straps joined by makeshift lacing since the original riveted strap apparently broke.