Seattle Hardware Company - Vintage Axe Shirt

The Seattle Hardware Company was founded by brothers Charles H. Black, Frank D. Black and Clarence A. Black in 1883 at 819-823 First Ave, Seattle Washington (Pioneer Square).  Seattle Hardware originally started as a retail hardware store as well as a jobber.
 
The original Seattle Hardware buidling was a total loss in the Great Fire of June 6, 1889 where over 125 acres and 30 city blocks were gone within 12 hours.  The heart of the town and business district up in ashes.  Not to be deterred by the losses of the fire, Seattle Hardware then leased a barn from the Seattle Street Railway Company on the corner of Pike Street and Second Avenue.  They stayed in this location for one year.   
 
In 1890, the Seattle Hardware Company returned to the Pioneer Square neighbourhood and occupied the Colman building on First Avenue and Marion Street.
 
In 1900 they did away with the retail business and devoted their efforts toward their rapidly increasing jobbing trade.  They stayed at First Avenue and Marion Street until 1905, when they moved to their own (now famous Seattle landmark) seven-story building on the corner of First Avenue South and King Street.
 
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In a highly competitive turn of the century market of over 400 axe makers in the US, axe makers used catchy names, beautiful artwork and forged high-quality axes that people wanted to own. Names like "True American", "Black Raven", "Forest King", and Cock of the Woods" created excitement and gave beauty and persona to the axe.
 
This shirt celebrates the artwork of Seattle Hardware for their "Occident" axe. You get a high quality, exact reproduction of the advertising used for some of the Seattle Hardware axes.  The back of the shirt reads "Occident" across the upper back.