Collection of trade literature from companies including Cunliffe & Croom, Craven Brothers and Kearns-Richards, c 1930-c 1989.

The Cunliffe & Croom catalogue of machine tools dates from the 1930s and includes descriptions of planing machines and horizontal milling machines, amongst other machine tools manufactured by the company.

The Craven Brothers brochure documents the range of machine tools manufactured in the 1960s, at a time when the company had already begun to reduce its operations.

The Kearns-Richards brochures date from the 1970s and 1980s.

The Cunliffe & Croom catalogue of machine tools dates from the 1930s and supports two objects in the collection: Y1974.39 Planing Machine and Y1976.21.1 Cunliffe & Croom horizontal milling machine. The catalogue provides information on a range of machine tools manufactured by the company, besides milling machines.

The Craven Brothers and Kearns-Richards catalogues date from the post-industrial period. Both companies have connections to Staveley Industries Ltd, which acquired and merged various machine tool companies in 1967 as a result of the contraction of the machine tool industry. Craven Brothers was acquired outright and Kearns-Richards was formed from the merger of H W Kearns and George Richards & Co. The brochures enhance our knowledge of the decline of the machine tool industry.

The Craven Brothers brochure documents the range of machine tools manufactured in the 1960s, at a time when the company had already begun to reduce its operations. Craven Brothers Ltd ceased trading in 1970. Within the Craven Brothers archive held by the Science and Industry Museum there are earlier catalogues for individual machine tool types but none with the title or date of the present brochure.

The Kearns-Richards brochures date from the 1970s and 1980s and provide evidence of the type of machine tools still in production in the years running up to the company going into receivership, adding to our knowledge of the products manufactured by the company.