A Stitch in Time Saves Nine

 

QUESTION: My grandmother loved to sew. She made her own clothes and some of those of her family. Over the years, she assembled quite a collection of sewing items. Some of the most interesting were the old sewing kits and baskets from the 19th and early 20th century. One thing I inherited from my grandmother was her love of sewing. I, too, love to sew. After she died, I got her collection of sewing items. I have no idea about the sewing kits and would like to learn more about them so that I can date them. Can you help me?

ANSWER: Before the introduction of mass-produced clothing, sewing was a way of life for every household. Usually, it was the women who took care of the making and mending of clothing. Your girls, required to master complicated sewing skills, used a variety of containers to hold their sewing tools.

The earliest sewing containers consisted of simple bags made of fabric or leather. But by the 18th century in Europe, metalworkers, jewelers, and other craftspeople had begun making fine sewing tools for ladies of the court who also required handsome boxes to hold them. Artisans used rare woods, leather, ivory, or precious metals inlaid with gems and mother of pearl on the outsides of their boxes and lined the interiors with silk or velvet. They fitted larger boxes with two or even three levels or sections.

By the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, the rise of the middle class created a market for less expensive and more practical sewing boxes that were both attractive and durable. Inside, they tightly wrapped tools and notions made of steel, such as needles, pins, scissors, bodkins, buttons, hooks, and eyes to prevent them from rusting. They also used brown paper to protect delicate, colored threads from light and air, while shielding sewing silks from the elements by soft, washed leather.

A typical Victorian sewing box would be just big enough to keep all of a woman’s sewing tools, as well as a little bit of her handiwork. Inside, you’d find a needle book with a large range of sizes, along with an assortment of thread made of cotton, linen, and silk, plus buttons formed from shells, acorns, wood, and metal. Sewing implements included different types of shears and scissors, a pin cushion and needle emery, a jar of beeswax, and a folding measure or measuring tape. Some boxes even housed tools to make lace or square cords.

Victorian women considered their sewing boxes to be private—for their eyes only. Many of these boxes had locks, and ladies often kept love tokens, such as a romantic letter, a book of poetry, or an image of her beloved inside it.

Small sewing boxes known as étui in France and "lady’s companions" in England and Germany became very popular. These portable containers usually held basic tools---scissors, needles bodkin, and a thimble—required for sewing on a day trip or for a sewing circle:. Larger lady’s companions often held a small mirror, a tiny perfume bottle, a little New Testament, a lady’s knife, tweezers, or a button hook. Some containers took the shape of books with “Lady’s Companion” printed on the spine, while others resembled fold-up leather pocketbooks. Other whimsical sewing boxes had shapes like hearts, eggs, and flasks.

With the introduction of the first sewing machines in 1860, ladies discovered that their thread was too stiff to run through the new invention. As a result, George Clark introduced a six-cord, soft cotton thread for these machines in 1864, and branded it as Clark’s O.N.T. (for “Our New Thread’). In the late 19th century, the Clark Thread Company issued many sewing kits and boxes advertising this brand.

Small, lidded baskets—woven from cane, grass, rushes, willow, honeysuckle, or bamboo—also made suitable sewing containers. In 19th-century China, a bride would be presented small gifts in ornate baskets during her wedding. These baskets were exported by the thousands to the United States starting around 1880, and were popular as sewing baskets until around 1930.

By the beginning of the 20th century, baskets had become the most common sewing containers in America. Often manufacturers lined them and created spaces for a pin cushion, scissors sheath, and thimble holder sewn into the lining. Starting around 1930, wicker bucket totes became sewing containers for many women. These usually had cord handles and decal images of flowers, poodles, and sewing tools on their wooden lids.

Besides the more elaborate sewing boxes and baskets, many women created their own mending kits to hold all the necessary implements to sew or repair anything, anywhere. These mending kits also functioned as travel kits that people could easily pack and take with them.

During the 18th century, women made mending kits called “housewifes” or “hussifs” from scraps of velvet, burlap, or leather by rolling them into a pouch with compartments for tools. They also came in other forms like purses or satchels. Wealthier women purchased kits made of ivory, wood, or silver at finer stores. Mending kits included a small pair of scissors, one or more thimbles, a needle case, spools of thread, bodkins, stilettos, clamps, buttons, and pleat makers. 

During the first half of the 20th century, women often upcycled their old clothes into the season’s latest fashions by shortening skirts or changing hat trim. They completed this intricate work by hand, using tools found in their mending kits. Because these kits were small, ladies could take them everywhere. 

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Coffee--The Brew of Life" in the 2023 Summer Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Mysterious Mauchline Ware

 

QUESTION: As I browse the booths of antique shows in my area, I’ve come upon small ochre-colored wooden boxes in various shapes with a black printed image of a historical landmark, most of which seem to be from America. The prices of these little boxes are through the roof. What are these items, and why are they so pricey?

ANSWER: What you’ve been seeing is known as Mauchline (pronounced Moch’lin) Ware, a form of souvenir ware made by the Smith family of Mauchline, Ayrshire, now Strathclyde, Scotland, and favored by affluent Victorians traveling abroad.

Adorned with transfer ware scenes of landmarks, this Scottish wooden ware dates from about 1880 to 1900. Though the Smiths sold it throughout the United Kingdom, they also exported to North America, Europe, South Africa, Australia, and elsewhere.

Mauchline, located 11 miles inland from the Scottish coastal resort of Ayr, was the center of the Mauchline Ware industry, which at its peak in the 1860s, employed over 400 people in the manufacture of small, but beautifully made and invariably useful wooden souvenirs and gift ware. Because of the contribution its originators, W. & A. Smith of Mauchline, the majority of souvenirs produced in southwest Scotland from the early 19th-century to the 1930s has come to be commonly known as "Mauchline Ware."

Mauchline Ware developed partly by accident and partly through necessity. Towards the end of the 18th century in the town of Alyth, Perthshire (now Tayside), a man named John Sandy invented the "hidden hinge" snuff box. His invention eventually spread to at least 50 other Scottish snuff box manufacturers in the early 1820s, most of them in Ayrshire, including William and Andrew Smith of Mauchline. 

With so many manufacturers, snuff box production continued at an all-time high, but the habit of taking snuff was on its way out. Although they made mostly snuff boxes, manufacturers like W.& A. Smith also produced other items, from postage stamp boxes to tea trays, all out of wood. The first of the new products were tea caddies utilizing the hidden hinge. In fact, they were so highly prized that when a female employee got married, the Smith’s Box Works gave her one of their tea caddies as a present.

Over the next century, the Smiths of Mauchline and their competitors produced tens of thousands of articles in hundreds of styles and in several different finishes. They generally used sycamore wood, which has a very close grain and a pleasing color. The precise date of the first transfer wares isn’t known, but companies manufactured them from the early 1850s until 1933.

Woodworkers created more items with transfer decoration than any other finish. These were true souvenir wares, since they decorated each piece with a view associated with the place of purchase.

Skilled craftsman applied transfers to the finished articles prior to coating them with several layers of slow drying copal varnish. This process took from 6 to 12 weeks to complete, although it seems that they must of developed an accelerated means of varnishing to cope with the sheer scale of production. However, this lengthy and careful process of manufacture accounted for the extreme durability of these products, many of which have survived in near mint condition.

As with earlier hand-decorated snuff boxes, manufacturers used sycamore wood, known as "plane" in Scotland, its pale color making an excellent background for the black transfers. While the majority of Mauchline Ware items were small, thus warranting only a single transfer, it was by no means unusual for craftsmen to apply six or more transfers to some of the larger pieces. Where they applied more than one transfer, the Smiths related views to one another, either by subject or geography.

Views of Scotland dominated the transfer ware. "Burnsian" views, by far, formed the largest single grouping and views associated with Sir Walter Scott probably the second. In addition to virtually every town and village, producers immortalized a great number of beauty spots, country houses, churches, schools, ruins and even cottage hospitals in transfer ware. Other views included seaside resorts and the inland spa towns of Malvern, Cheltenham, Chester, Bath and Harrogate, which became increasingly accessible to a growing number of people as a result of the rapidly expanding rail network. The Isle of Wight was particularly popular, probably due to Victoria's love of the place. And the popular south and east coast resorts--Brighton, Eastbourne, Hastings, Margate and Scarborough--saw their share.

From the 1830s on, makers produced a steadily decreasing number of snuff boxes while producing an increasing array of needlework, stationery, domestic and cosmetic items as well as articles for personal decoration and amusement. In addition, companies created an incredible range of boxes in every conceivable size and shape and for limitless purposes.

A great many cotton, thread and ribbon manufacturers—J & P Coates, Chadwicks, Clarks Glenfield, Kerr and Medlock—purchased Mauchline Ware containers for their products, their names clearly yet discreetly displayed either inside the lid or on the base. Thus, manufacturers transformed rather mundane accessories into attractive gifts.

Producers also turned out novelty inkwells, pens, pencils, pencil boxes and letter openers, as well as many designs of bookmarks including a patented combined bookmark and paper cutter.

And it’s because of Mauchline Ware’s uniqueness that prices for it have risen to such high levels.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Coffee--The Brew of Life" in the 2023 Summer Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Keeping the Railroads on Time

 

QUESTION: My grandfather worked as a conductor on the Pennsylvania Railroad. When he died some years ago, I inherited his pocket watch. For a long time, I thought it was just another old pocket watch. Then a friend, who’s father was a watch repairman, told me it was a special kind of pocket watch—a railroad pocket watch. Other than that, he didn’t know why it was so special. Can you give me some insight into antique and vintage railroad watches?

ANSWER: The answer to your question goes back to the last decade of the 19th century. On April 19, 1891, a train engineer's watch stopped for four minutes and then started again. This temporary mechanical failure resulted in a train wreck that killed nine people in Kipton, Ohio. The railroads set up a commission to create new standards for the railroad pocket watch, to be used by all railroads.

A railroad grade pocket watch was a watch that a particular railroad approved for use by its engineers and conductors. 

The Railroad Commission required every engineer to have his pocket watch inspected regularly and to submit a certificate stating its reliability to his supervisors. When there was only one track for trains barreling in both directions, being on time was a matter of life and death. As the Kipton wreck proved, an engineer's railroad watch being off by as little as four minutes could mean disaster.

The new standards dictated that a railroad pocket watch had to have at least 15 jewels. After 1886, the number of jewels increased. They also had to be accurate to within 30 seconds per week, as well as have a white dial—although the railroads allowed silvered dials until around 1910—with black Arabic numbers for each minute delineated; adjust to five positions, and be temperature compensated.

Although a pocket watch’s size, ranging from 0 to 23, didn’t refer to its width or length or casing but rather to the size of its movement, to meet railroad requirements, a watch's movement had to be either a size 16 (1 7/10 inches) or a size 18 (1 23/30inches).

Manufacturers sometimes broke the rules and made railroad watches with Roman numerals. The last two requirements were critical. As the early watchmakers discovered, not only could cold and heat cause a watch’s movement to slow or speed up, but so did the watch's position. Imagine a conductor trying to carry a watch in one position all the time, especially while working on a train. Railroad watches had to stand up to constant abuse from the jarring and swaying of early trains.

Contrary to common belief, there were many regulations in place before railroad officials commissioned Webb C. Ball to create a standard set of railroad watch qualifiers in the 1890’s. 

Before then, and until the entire railroad industry accepted Ball’s standards, different railroads had different standards for the watches their crews used. One line might have had a list of accepted makes and models while another might have only listed necessary features or timekeeping performance thresholds. This made evaluating older watches as railroad grade a difficult task, because a watch may have met the standards of one company but not another. 

As the rail industry grew in the United States, the number of active trains grew with it. In order to use a particular track efficiently, railroads had to create time schedules identifying when each section of that track was safe to use. The timekeeping accuracy of the engineer’s and conductor’s watches was crucial if two trains were moving in opposite directions. If one of the two engineers’ or conductors’ watches were keeping bad time, a collision could occur. Railroad watches became known as “standard” watches because they met a railroad’s standard of timekeeping.

Companies like Waltham, Elgin, and Hamilton made the “best” railroad watches after 1900. An important part of standard watch regulations included service intervals and testing, but there was also a list of features that almost all railroad watches shared. 

The most prominent feature of 1900’s railroad watches was their lever actuated setting mechanisms–commonly referred to as "lever-set.". Most watches were put in time-setting mode by pulling the crown, or winding knob, away from the watch, then pushing the crown back towards the watch to return to winding mode—referred to as "pendant-set."

A lever-set mechanism required the user to remove the bezel of the watch—the convex glass protecting the dial---and engage a lever to place the watch in setting mode. This tedious process of removing the bezel had a very important purpose. It ensured that the time on the watch was never accidentally changed by catching the winding knob on a pocket or any number of other unintentional situations.

Another important feature of railroad watches was their big, bold, black, Arabic numerals on highly contrasting white enamel dials with large bold hands. This feature made telling the time as clear and easy as possible while creating a distinctive and functional railroad watch design.

Mechanically speaking, almost all 1900’s railroad watches shared a number of performance and reliability enhancing features. Most had a fixed regulator to avoid timekeeping variation from impact, a double roller balance wheel to avoid going out of action, 19 or more jewels to reduce friction and increase consistency of the gear train, timekeeping adjustment in five or more positions to make sure the watch kept accurate time regardless of its orientation, and adjustment for temperature to ensure accuracy in a variety of climates. Many railroad watches had solid gold or gold plated gear trains and jewel settings to reduce the effects of magnetism as well as reduce tarnishing, and later watches had features such as magnetically resistant balance wheels.

Although there were many other fine pocket watches made in America, the quality of the workmanship made them second only to chronometers for being precise—they had to be.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Coffee--The Brew of Life" in the 2023 Summer Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Seeing the World in Almost 3-D

 

QUESTION: When I was a kid in the 1950s, I received a View-Master stereoscope for Christmas. It came with several reels of photos, plus I could buy additional ones. I loved viewing photos of my favorite TV show characters, especially the westerns, as well as scenes of faraway places. As an adult, I continued my fascination with the stereoscope when I discovered an antique one at a fleamarket. It came with a box of paired photos mounted on cardboard. I’ve always wondered how the stereoscope came about? Can you give me some insight into its history?

ANSWER: A stereoscope was an instrument in which two photographs of the same object, taken from slightly different angles, could simultaneously be presented, one to each eye. This recreated the way which in natural vision, each eye views an object from a slightly different angle, separated by several inches. This is what gives humans natural depth perception. A separate lens focused each picture, and by showing each eye a photograph taken several inches apart from each other and focused on the same point, the stereoscope recreated the natural effect of seeing things in three dimensions.

Sir Charles Wheatstone invented the earliest stereoscopes, which optician R. Murray made for him in 1832. On June 21, 1838, Wheatstone gave a presentation of his invention at the Royal College of London in which he used a pair of mirrors at 45 degree angles to the user's eyes, each reflecting a picture located off to the side. It demonstrated the importance of binocular depth perception by showing that when two pictures simulating left-eye and right-eye views of the same object are presented so that each eye sees only the image designed for it, but apparently in the same location, the brain will fuse the two and accept them as a view of one solid three-dimensional object. Unfortunately, Wheatstone introduced his stereoscope the year before the first practical photographic processes became available, so he had to use drawings at first. This mirror stereoscope allowed two pictures to be used if desired.

Though David Brewster didn’t invent the stereoscope, he built a simple stereoscope without lenses or mirrors, consisting of a wooden box 18 inches long, 7 inches wide, and 4 inches high, which he used to view drawn landscape transparencies. In 1849, he suggested using lenses to unite the dissimilar pictures. This allowed a reduction in picture size, creating hand-held devices, which became known as Brewster Stereoscopes, which Queen Victoria admired when he demonstrated them at the Great Exhibition of 1851.

But Brewster couldn’t find a British instrument maker capable of constructing his design, so he took it to France, where Jules Duboscq , who made stereoscopes and stereoscopic daguerreotypes, improved the design, allowing the display of Queen Victoria’s likeness to be displayed at The Great Exhibition. Thanks to her, stereoscopes became a huge success, with 250,000 of them produced, along with a great number of stereoviews, stereo cards, stereo pairs or stereographs. Stereoscope makers sent stereographers throughout the world to capture views for the new medium and feed the demand for 3D images. They then had cards printed with these views often with explanatory text. When a user looked at them through the double-lensed viewer,  also called a stereopticon, they could see both. 

In 1861 Oliver Wendell Holmes created but deliberately didn’t patent a handheld, streamlined, much more economical viewer than had been available before. This stereoscope from the 1850s, consisted of two prismatic lenses and a wooden stand to hold the stereo card. This type of stereoscope remained in production for a century and is the type most associated with the name.

Another type of viewer was the multiple view stereoscope which allowed viewing multiple stereoscopic images in sequence by turning a knob or crank, or pushing down a lever. Antoine Claudet patented the first one in 1855, but the design of Alexander Beckers from 1857 formed the basis for many revolving stereoscopes manufactured from the 1860s onward. The user placed the images in holders attached to a rotating belt. The belt could usually hold 50 paper card or glass stereoviews, but there were also large floor standing models capable of holding 100 or 200 views.

A more advanced multiple view stereoscope was only intended for glass slides and was especially popular in France, as the printing of stereo images on glass was a French specialty popular until the 1930s. The French made most of these devices, but ICA and Ernemann also made them in Germany. Users placed the glass slides in a bakelite or wooden tray. Turning a crank or pushing down a lever to lift a slide from the tray, bringing it into the viewing position. Turning further placed the slide back in the tray and moved the tray over a rail to select the next slide. The most sophisticated and well known design was the Taxiphote by Jules Richard, patented in 1899.

In the mid-20th century, the View-Master stereoscope, first patented in 1939, featured a rotating cardboard disk which contained image pairs. It was originally popular as a way for people to virtually travel to faraway places, but by the 1950s had become a popular toy. 

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "Coffee--The Brew of Life" in the 2023 Summer Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.