This German pattern book was produced by Friedrich Schmiemann & Co in c. 1820 and contains 17 pages of designs for brass handles and handle plates. The company was established in Iserlohn, southeast of Dortmund, where a brass industry had originated in the 17th century in a region where there were once rich deposits of zinc ore. Metal buckles, buttons, thimbles, snuff boxes and metal fittings for furniture were exported to Austria, Italy, France, Spain, Scandinavia, Russia and Central and South America. The museum has two commemorative brass tobacco boxes made in Iserlohn in c. 1760-1774 in its collection, Museum numbers IS.282-1897 and IS.289.1897.

Schmiemann & Co is said to have been founded at the beginning of the 18th century when two businessmen, Johann Riedel and Friedrich Schmiemann persuaded a clockmaker, Johann Duncker, to copy an English brass mount. Historian, Thomas Dann has written that Iserlohn merchants regularly visited Matthew Boulton’s factory and were in contact with Birmingham agents from around 1750; his research has shown that the first pattern books produced contained exact copies of English designs. This would have been easy enough to achieve as pattern cards with English designs were in international circulation.

The designs share similiarities with other pattern books produced in Britain during this period, containing designs that incorporate neoclassical motifs such as vases, rosettes and cornucopia and scenes inspired by antiquity framed by ornamental beading. Symbols with iconographic significance in Britain are present such as a lion, Scottish thistle and a domed mausoleum, an architectural monument featured in the landscaped gardens of the great country houses designed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. A price list is included as a 'tipped-in' sheet in the front of the catalogue and products are numbered for ease of reference. Pages are kept clear of handwritten annotations which suggests that it functioned as a mode of presentation rather than a working document.