Stubai began life way back in the 15th century with a bunch of blacksmiths making tools for agriculture and daily life in the valley of the same name. They got together as a co-operative in 1897 to form Stubai, the outdoor equipment manufacturer that we know today (2025) making a vast array of gear for the outdoors. Their earliest products were ice axes and crampons, of which we have many examples elsewhere in the collection, karabiners came later, circa 1950, and the ones we have here in the collection date from a little later, circa 1960, a time when there were very few of the recently invented aluminium alloy karabiners on the market and ‘heavy metal’ was the norm.

There was back then, and more so today, a market for industrial karabiners and the wide end of these karabiners could cater for bigger ropes, or more smaller ones, making them usable by climbers, rescuers and industry.

We’re not quite sure when, but it became a requirement at some point to stamp the breaking strain on karabiners, these ones don’t have the stamp but the info in our Graham Tiso catalogue gives them a breaking strain of 2,200kg.