Making Tennis Racquets

In this image men are making tennis racquets. The location and date of this image are unknown. Up to the mid 1920′s most racquets were being imported from England and the USA, but tennis’ popularity reached levels which justified local production of racquets and balls.

While there were some boutique racket makers such as A.H.Moore in NSW who promoted his range in the late 1890′s, the first high volume and successful local maker may well be South Australian firm Stevens & Rowe. J.T.Stevens was the former head stringer at UK tennis firm F.A.Davis, while E.T Rowe was a local champion player. Based on newspaper articles they produced around a 1000 racquets per year over the 1914 -1924 period and distributed them around the country.

Source : http://tennishistory.com.au/2010/04/australian-racquets/