A Touch of Elegance

 

QUESTION: At a recent antique show, I discovered a dealer with a display of unusual antiques. The sign on his booth said “Epergnes and Plateaus.” When I asked him what the many highly polished silver and silverplate and glass pieces were used for, he replied that they were centerpieces from the 19th century. While I couldn’t see a use for either type of ware in today’s casual lifestyle, I was intrigued. He couldn’t tell me very much about their history. What can you tell me about epergnes and plateaus? Are they still being used today?

ANSWER:  Nothing evokes the elegance of the Gilded Age as epergnes and plateaus. While the average person probably has never heard of them, wealthy hosts, who loved to show off to others in their class, would have seen them grace the tables at dinner parties in the late 18th and 19th centuries. The epergne became the highlight of these centerpieces. And to help reflect the candlelight on the table, it often sat on a mirrored glass plateau.

An epergne is a centerpiece which may be used to serve food, as well. At first they were long and low, with a bowl in the center and sweetmeat dishes on either end. Later models often had great height, with a fruit or flower dish in the center surrounded by hanging baskets. These hanging basket dishes could be used to serve nuts or candies. However, a piece like this would most likely have been used for decoration.

Epergnes came in clear glass, cut class in all sorts of colors and decorations, as well as both regular and Sheffield silver plate and, occasionally, sterling silver. 

Hostesses used plateaus, low, flat mirrored glass platforms, on the other hand, to serve light buffets, cookies and cakes, candies and hors d’oeuvres. They usually came with five serving bowls, often used for chips and dip. But the most important utilitarian use for plateaus was to reflect light from candles on the table.

Both plateaus and epergnes were symbols of wealth. Craftsmen used exotic animals to decorate them, fantasizing about what they looked like because they didn’t have prior knowledge.

Centerpieces for fruit and flowers were in great demand in the 19th century. Epergnes and plateaus allowed the designer to use his imagination and ingenuity both in the design and workmanship. Some featured Roman chariots drawn by cupids. Bas reliefs ornamented others. Craftsmen burnished the metal and touched the edges and rims with gold.  Bowls hung from trees and vines or were supported by classic male or female figures.

The typical epergne usually consisted of a tall fruit dish on a metal stand with two lower matching dishes. One by Reed and Barton had a peacock drawing a chariot which held a glass container for flowers. Another featured a rowboat holding children, while Meriden Britannia made a delicate sailboat set on a plateau. A bowl for fruit was set on a pedestal from which sprang a decorative vine-entwined arm holding a cornucopia-shaped glass vase for flowers. 

Craftsmen on both sides of the Atlantic fashioned epergnes, with the fanciest coming from France. Some featured a number of levels, with several shelves. Others had base consisting of a classic figure or exotic animal with dish or vases resting atop its head. Most silver companies made epergnes with sterling as well as gold decoration. 

The English made epergnes as early as the 1860s in Sheffield plate. To complement some of their most elaborate epergnes, manufacturers created plateaus of all shapes and sizes—oval, round, and rectangular—with gadroon or fluted borders in plain or satin finish. They also made them with repousse borders and fancy corners to complement the epergne designs.

The English made epergnes as early as the 1860s in Sheffield plate. To complement some of their most elaborate epergnes, manufacturers created plateaus of all shapes and sizes—oval, round, and rectangular—with gadroon or fluted borders in plain or satin finish. They also made them with repousse borders and fancy corners to complement the epergne designs.

By the mid-1870s, the introduction of silverplate by the Meriden Company stimulated the taste for beautiful pieces at a lower cost. Epergnes and plateaus produced in silverplate became popular on both sides of the Atlantic. However, the popularity of silverplate only lasted until the late 19th century when the falling price of silver made it possible for those who wanted silver epergnes to buy sterling. 

As ornate silver epergnes lost favor with the public for table centerpieces, the simpler glass epergnes came into style. After 1850, glass epergnes became popular, especially those made of frosted glass and opaque milk glass.

The Sandwich Glass Factory and the New England Glass Company, two American firms that both made epergnes. The former’s 1870 catalog offered dainty chalices of fragile glass springing up around a central vase and sometimes cone shaped glass baskets hanging from metal scrolls. Only the smallest flowers and most delicate ferns could be placed in these dainty baskets. While these companies usually made their epergnes of colored glass, in later years, they began to produce ones with clear glass etched bowls, highlighted in gold.

As the Victorian era came to a close, low bowls of ornamental glass, known as berry bowls, began to replace the larger epergnes, which seemed so high and spreading that they seemed more suitable for formal dinners or banquets. It was a matter of convenience, for one thing, which made hostesses decide in favor of these glass berry bowls. They could fill them with fruit or flowers and  leave them on the table throughout the meal. 

Ornamental glass manufacturers like Fenton made berry bowls in many colors and types of glass, with some having two colors of glass fused together so that the lining and exterior surface formed a contrast in color. For example, they lined white opaque glass bowls with green, pink, deep rose; blue, amethyst, brownish-orange, apricot, or yellow glass. They applied a frosted surface to red glass bowls, giving them a satin-like finish. 

Though many ruffled-edge epergne berry bowls can be from 9 to 12 inches in diameter, some companies made them as small as 4 to 5 inches across. Glassmakers made them in various shapes with a variety of edges to go with the overall design of individual epergnes. They gave some a wavy, plaited edge while on others they used large petals which had a twist in the glass near the point of each petal. 

Visitors to the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago could purchase ruffled-edge berry bowls as souvenirs and gifts to relatives and friends. Women also loved to give these colorful and ornate dishes as wedding gifts. Often, they came mounted in a silver plated frame and made a striking table centerpiece, though not as large and elaborate as the traditional epergne. 

After a decline in the use of epergnes at the turn of the 20th century, the makers of carnival glass revived an interest in them by contributing some colorful variations to the traditional epergne designs. The Dugan Glass Company of Indiana, Pennsylvania, made a fishnet epergne using carnival glass. At the same time, the Sowerby Glass Company of Gateshead, England, made a fountain epergne, with glass holders in a sterling frame. The clear glass lilies of this epergne had twisted bases with fluted tops that were marigold in color. One of the rarest carnival glass epergnes, a four-lily version worth over $1,000 in today’s market, was made by Fenton-Imperial Glass Company. 

While epergnes and plateaus may have generally subsided in use, caters to large events like cocktail parties and banquets often use berry bowl epergnes and mirror glass plateaus to display canapes on elaborate buffet tables. 

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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. 

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All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go

 

QUESTION: Over the years, I’ve noticed dresser sets at flea markets and antique cooperatives. They seem to be made of some sort of plastic and look like they date from the 1940s and 1950s. I’d like to begin collecting these sets. They’re affordable and some are quite beautiful. What can you tell me about them?

ANSWER: Ever since Ancient Egypt, people, especially women, have been obsessed with their looks. As time went on, the utensils for maintaining a person’s looks evolved into a group with common elements—a brush, comb, mirror, hair receiver, powder puff holder, manicure set, and later on a pin box, atomizer, and button hook. And the material needed to make them evolved from that needed to make billiard balls and dentures. 

Dresser sets were the original make-up organizers. Manufactured from Victorian times through the 1950s, these sets changed in form but not in function. Women prominently displayed them on their vanities and men on their chests. 

The dresser sets you’ve been seeing are made of Celluloid. Most people associate Celluloid with motion picture film. But it was one of several plastics developed in the latter 19th and early 20th century.

Celluloid was first manufactured in 1870 and continued until 1947. After the Civil War there was a need for a substance with moldable properties that could replace dwindling supplies of natural materials, such as ivory. During the latter part of the 1860s, brothers John and Isaiah Hyatt worked on developing a thermoplastic material that not only simulated expensive luxury substances but also became widely used hi other applications In fact, Celluloid became so successful it ultimately gave birth to a thriving American industry. That industry lives on in the collecting of a great variety of Celluloid items that 'range from colorful advertising premiums, embossed albums and decorative storage boxes, to figural toys, ornate jewelry and fancy household and personal accessories.

The development of America’s plastics industry began in Albany, New York, around 1863 when a journeyman printer named John Hyatt began experimenting with various composition substances in an attempt to create an ivory for the manufacture of billiard balls. Elephant ivory was becoming scarce and the billiards industry had offered a $10,000 reward for the invention of a suitable re-placement material. In September 1865, Hyatt applied for a patent on his invention of a billiard ball coaled with a combination of shellac mixed with ivory and bone dust. In 1866 Hyatt and Peter Kinnear formed the Hyatt Billiard Ball Company.

It was around this time when Hyatt discovered that collodion, a liquid solution of pyroxylin (cellulose nitrate and alcohol) that printers brushed on their hands to protect them from ink and paper cuts, formed into a hard, but pliable, clear substance when dried, Hyatt patented the use of liquid collodion as a coating for composition core billiard balls.

In his efforts to perfect the billiard ball, Hyatt enlisted the support of his older brother, Isaiah, a newspaper editor from Rockford, Ill. Together the Hyatts discovered that camphor acted as a plasticizer when combined with solid collodion (cellulose nitrate) and under certain conditions yielded a clear, moldable material. John further developed a "stuffing machine" that forced the material into shape using heat and pressure. They named their substance Celluloid, a word that Isaiah came up with by combining the two words cellulose and colloid.

Ultimately the scarcity of high priced rubber and the abundance of inexpensive Celluloid forced dentists into using the new material. Celluloid eventually became the most popular material for dentures until the introduction of cellulose acetate in 1929 in Newark, New Jersey. It was there that the mass production of the nation's first commercially successful plastic began.

The years that followed found John Hyatt diligently at work building molding machinery and finding successful applications for Celluloid. Harness rings, utensil, handles, knobs and dressing combs were among the earliest of molded articles, introduced for the first time to consumers around 1873.

Clear in its original state, celluloid could therefore be dyed in the finest imitation of expensive luxury substances. In 1874, chemists discovered successful formulas for flawless imitations of genuine coral and tortoiseshell, soon followed by convincing simulations of amber, onyx, and grained ivory. Suddenly, the potential for applications of molded Celluloid expanded, shifting from utilitarian and sporting goods, to decorative and ornamental objects. Beautiful accessories like jewelry, eyeglass frames, fans, hair ornaments, parasol handles and a myriad of other fancy items became available, and immensely popular with those who previously couldn’t afford such luxury items. As a result of its convincing appearance for the genuine material it imitated, Celluloid became coveted for its beauty and fine quality.

Four businessmen involved in the manufacture of natural plastic hair ornaments, dressing combs and novelties, formed the Viscoloid Company of Leominster, Massachusetts, in 1900. One of the founders, Bernard Doyle, had been traveling throughout Europe to purchase horn, when he became acquainted with pyroxylin plastic. Upon his return. Doyle began a series of experiments with the material and determined that it had qualities superior to that of natural materials for the molding of hair combs and accessories.

The more items included in a dresser set, the more rare and valuable it s to collectors. Most often, however, the sets will have a brush, a comb, and a hand mirror. 

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For My Lady’s Dressing Table

QUESTION: When I was a little girl back in the early 1950s, I remember my mother’s skirted dressing table with its many glass and silver boxes, which contained her combs and her perfumes and the fine white powder she used when she went out. Sometimes when she was busy doing something, I would sneak into her bedroom and sit at her dressing table and play with her dressing set, pretending to be a big girl. Now that I’m older and have been all grown up for quite a while, I’d like to find out more about those early dressing sets. I’ve seen some at flea markets, but I have no idea if they’re worth much. Can you help me?

ANSWER:  Dressing table sets first became fashionable in the 18th century. Back then, a variety of items may have graced a lady’s dressing table, including comb and brush sets, little boxes, and perfume bottles. 

Perhaps the most beautiful items of the Victorian lady's dressing table were the brush sets, which included hair brushes, clothes brushes, hat brushes, combs and a hand mirror. These sets became fashionable in the second half  of the 18th century.

Leading silversmiths of the time backed many of them with engraved silver. Others used ivory or tortoiseshell backs, sometimes inlaid with the fancy scrolled monogram of the owner in silver.

Combs have been in existence since ancient Egypt. The Romans taught the Britons to use  combs rather than go through their hair with four fingers. An early alternative to the comb was a scratching stick, often in the form of a hand or bird's foot carved in ivory or hardwood, which ladies might also use to relieve their itching scalps.

There were two categories of combs. Ladies used back, puff and side combs to hold their hair in place after having it styled. Both men and women used dressing and folding combs to arrange their hair, These dressing combs were often part of fancy brush sets.



Early comb makers used cattle horn, ivory, and tortoiseshell for their combs, as well as wood, bone and metal. Ivory and tortoiseshell were the most desirable and costly. At the end of the 19th century, a cheaper substitute for ivory was Xylonite, also called French Ivory, an early form of white plastic sold by the Xylonite Company. Few of these sets have survived because when the brushes wore out, a woman would discard the entire set.

In addition to comb and brush sets, a variety of boxes adorned ladies’ dressing tables. First made in the 17th century, dresser boxes contained a number of tiny compartments and drawers to hold trinkets, jewelry, and other items, and often had a mirror fitted in the inside of them. Today, these have become known generically as “jewelry boxes.”

Patch boxes are small elegant boxes used to store patchet, worn by wealthy women to hide an imperfection or to draw attention to a pleasing facial feature. Made from a variety of materials, patchet were often shaped
like tiny hearts, circles or diamonds.

But powder boxes were the most essential item on the dressing table. Figural ones took the form of half dolls or ballet dancers. From 1870 to 1920 a woman could wear powder without being considered a prostitute, so these boxes appeared in large quantities. A few of them contained a tiny puff, made of fibers or cotton with a tiny handle sticking up.

Another container to hold powder was the talc, a small elongated container similar to a salt  shaker. A lady shook some talc out on her fingers to help ease the often tight-fitting kid gloves onto her hands.

But one of the largest and most ornate containers found on a dressing table was the porcelain trinket box, made by Limoges, Capodimonte, and other European and Asian porcelain companies. Ladies used it to hold button-cufflinks. odd pieces of jewelry, or small souvenirs,. Some featured hand-painted flowers, designs and portraits and came lined with colored plush or velvet. The more elaborate boxes had interior division and trays.

Another required item on a lady’s dressing table was the perfume bottle. The tradition of encasing perfumes in expensive and beautiful containers is an ancient one. Ancient Egyptians used alabaster bottles to store perfumes, due to its density and coolness to prevent evaporation, but they also used elaborate blown glass perfume containers.


The variety of 18th century perfume containers was as wide as that of their fragrances and uses. Liquid perfume came in beautiful Louis XIV-style pear-shaped porcelain bottles. Glass perfume bottles became increasingly popular.



Fine china makers brought out all sorts of dainty things for the dressing table. The hairpin holder, hair receiver, pin tray, manicure set and the small tray upon which it lies, powder boxes, cold-cream casket, lotion bottles, rouge pot, comb and brush, jewel boxes, frames of the hand and triple mirrors, bonbonniere, perfume bottles, sachet holders and the cunning little barrel for small change were all of china and all matched and decorated with small isolated flowers pansies, violets or daisies—scattered carelessly over the entire surface.

Although not as common as porcelain dresser sets, matched dresser sets in cut glass, pressed glass and milk glass appeared in the late 19th century. Cut glass colognes came in a variety of shapes. The stoppers might have matched the design or have been made of silver.

Dressing table sets can range from perhaps $25 at a flea market to over $300,000 at auction, depending on when they were made. Finding one from the 18th century in one piece will be a challenge.

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A Furniture Re-Awakening

QUESTION: I recently purchased a mirror from an antique store in Thomasville, Georgia. The shop owner said the piece belonged to her grandfather, and she thinks the mirror dates back to the 1870's. I bought the mirror because I love the ornate carving on the frame. I'm also curious about the two round "stands" on the sides. Did people place candles on those platforms? What style do you think the mirror is? My best guess is Renaissance Revival.

ANSWER: You’re exactly right. Your mirror is in the Renaissance Revival style that was popular from 1855 to 1875. One of seven different revival styles prevalent during the Victorian Era, Renaissance Revival was an architectural style that easily made the transition from the custom, one-of-a-kind furniture shops in New York and Philadelphia to the mass-production factories of the Midwest.

Introduced in the early 1850's as a counter balance to the flowery Rococo Revival, Renaissance Revival borrowed elements from just about every furniture period since the 1400's. Originating in the French court of Napoleon III, the style soon took on a life of its own.

Furniture makers built pieces that consisted of an eclectic mix of 14th-century Renaissance, Neoclassical and 16th-century French derivation, based on a rectangular form with various embellishments.

While pieces of this style of furniture came in a myriad of shapes and sizes, they generally featured turned and fluted legs, raised or inset burled panels, heavily carved finials and crests, inset marble tops, and cookie-cut corners. On many mass-produced pieces, manufacturers added black and gold incising dn banding, and on finer, one-of-a-kind models, marquetry inlay and bronze or brass mounts. Most pieces of Renaissance Revival furniture were very large—ideal for the Victorian "more is more" philosophy. Makers of finer pieces preferred to use walnut, as it had been in the 16th century. And that was the most accurate thing about this revival style, which also borrowed heavily from the 17th-century Baroque and the earlier Gothic periods.

Prominent Renaissance and Neoclassical motifs such as columns, pediments, cartouches, rosettes, and carved masks, as well as plaques in porcelain, bronze, and mother-of-pearl became common types of decoration. Factory pieces had turned or cutout parts while finer examples featured carving or elaborate inlay of ebony and other exotic woods.

Before 1870 nearly all fine Renaissance Revival furniture came from small cabinetmaker shops in the East that made pieces to order. As the style gained popularity, furniture factories in the Midwest figured out how to mass produce the style for the Middle Class market. While some still used walnut, many chose to use cheaper ash or pine, painting it to look more high-style. The Renaissance Revival styles of the 1860s and 1870s marked the first time furniture makers used fine designs for mass-produced furnishings.

Large Midwestern factories, centered primarily in Grand Rapids, Michigan, manufactured pieces with turned and cut elements that could be produced more readily in volume and at lower cost. A few of the larger companies in Grand Rapids had committed to using the latest technology by the 1870's, among them Berkey & Gay, Nelson Matter and Phoenix. Renaissance Revival became the style of the Centennial Exposition and Grand Rapids was the star, but by that time it was already on its way out. The overpowering bedroom sets presented by Berkey & Gay cemented the reputation of the Grand Rapids factories as the manufacturers of bedroom sets or "chamber suites" as they became known.

New York cabinetmakers, such as Herter Brothers, on the other hand, produced pieces with elegant detail and elaborate inlays. They interpreted 16th- and 17th-century designs. And their motifs ranged from curvilinear and florid early in the period to angular and almost severe by the end of the period. Walnut veneer panels were a real favorite in their 1870s designs. Upholstery, usually of a more generous nature, was also often incorporated into this design style. Ornamentation and high relief carving included flowers, fruits, game, classical busts, acanthus scrolls, strapwork, tassels and masks. Architectural motifs, such as pilasters, columns, pediments, balusters and brackets, were another prominent design feature. Makers usually employed cabriole or substantially turned legs on their pieces.

The inevitable end came when the public desired to return to simplicity, the antithesis of Renaissance Revival, which embodied itself in the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th and early 20th century and the resurgence of interest in American heritage which presaged the coming, and long running, Colonial Revival period.

Renaissance Revival furniture, while not the most favored by many of today's collectors because of its size and obvious statement, nevertheless played a pivotal role in American furniture history.

The Sweet Smell of Success

QUESTION: My grandmother has what she calls a “Larkin” desk. It doesn’t look like a normal desk but more like a tall oak bookshelf with a drop-down writing surface. She remembers her parents acquiring it around 1911.  Can you tell me more about it?

ANSWER: One of the most popular items from the Larkin Company was the drop-front combination bookcase/desk, also known as the Chautauqua desk. This desk became a common piece in homes at the beginning of the 20th Century.

In 1875, John D. Larkin opened a soap factory in Buffalo, New York, where he made two products— a yellow laundry soap he marketed as Sweet Home Soap and a toilet soap he called Crème Oatmeal. He sold both products using wholesalers and retailers. Larking originally sold his Sweet Home Soap to street vendors, who in turn sold it to customers along their routes. By 1878, he had expanded his product line to nine types of soap products.

His brother-in-law, Elbert Hubbard, the eventual founder of the Roycroft Arts and Crafts Community, came up with what he called "The Larkin Idea"—door-to-door sales to private residences. To establish brand identity, Hubbard, inserted a color picture with the company's logo into every box of soap as an incentive for customers to buy more soap. Housewives accumulated and traded these picture cards, and eventually the cards became more elaborate. This concept of offering a gift directly to customers was a new approach to marketing. And by the 1890's, Larkin’s premiums had become an overwhelming success and a vital part of the company’s   marketing plan.

The premiums Larkin offered included handkerchiefs with toilet soap, towels with soap powder, or one-cent coins. Eventually, Larkin inserted certificates into the packaged products which could be redeemed by mail at the company’s Buffalo headquarters. A $10 order of soap resulted in the awarding of a premium with a retail value of the same $10. By 1891 he placed his first wholesale order of items to be given as premiums, $40,000 worth of piano lamps. The next year he acquired 80,000 Morris chairs and 100,000 oak dining chairs—all to be given away with the purchase of soap.

Larkin and Hubbard knew the key to mass merchandising was to eliminate the sales force and sell directly to the consumer via direct-mail catalog. Larkin realized he would be better off if he made not only the products he sold, but also the premiums he distributed. His pitch was that since he manufactured the products he sold, unlike Sears & Roebuck and Montgomery Ward and sold them directly to the consumer, he was eliminating the "middleman" and giving the customer better value for the money. The Larkin Company motto became "Factory to Family." By the end of the 19th century, catalogs jammed people’s mailboxes.

The plan worked. Both his product line and his premium line expanded. By 1893, the Larkin Soap Manufacturing Company was sending semiannual catalogs to 1.5 million customers.

His first venture was the furniture assembly plant in Buffalo that made furniture from parts cut and milled in Tennessee. Here for the first time was a major catalog distributor who actually made the furniture they shipped. Furniture was one of the company’s primary premiums. Since Larkin was appealing to the mass market, he made sure to offer furniture premiums that appealed to ordinary people and not the wealthy.

His most famous premium was his oak drop-front desk with open bottom storage, first appearing in the 1901 catalog, that the company gave as a premium for a $10 purchase of soap. Constructed of either cold or quarter sewn oak plank, assembled with nail and glue construction, with a golden finish, each desk featured applied ash or maple molding and trim and back panels of three-layer plywood. Better desks also had stamped-brass escutcheons and brass hinges on the drop panel. Cheaper ones had iron-butt hinges. A somewhat oval French beveled mirror finished off each piece. Variations included a glass front case with a drop-front desk attached to the side, two glass front cases with a desk in the middle, or simply a drop-front desk with a small open bookcase below the drop and candle stands above it, with a mirror in the high splashboard. This small desk reflected the taste and style of the Golden Oak period of American furniture in a form modest enough fit into any middle-class home.

This type of desk became "Everyman's" desk and was a common item in most homes of the period. It became a trendy decorating item and remained so for many years. People began to associate Larkin's name to the form, even though his wasn’t the only company to manufacture them, and so evolved what has become known as the "Larkin Desk." Today, Larkin desks sell on eBay for around $400 and sometimes higher.

John Larkin and Elbert Hubbard not only provided the means for a growing American population to stay clean at a reasonable cost, but they also helped them furnish their homes for free.

The Beauty of Christmas Kugels

QUESTION: I came across a heavy white glass ornament with what appears to be some sort of decals on the bulbs. Also each one has a colored stone–almost like birth stones–indented into the ornament. All the tops are a gold finish. I have seen a lot of ornaments but none like these. Any ideas?

ANSWER: It sounds like this person has discovered a kugel, a type of heavy glass Christmas ornament made in Germany from about 1840 until 1914. The word kugel means “ball” in German. The first ones were smooth, heavy glass balls that were too heavy to hang on anything but a stout pine in the yard, so people hung them in their windows.

Louis Greiner-Schlotfeger invented the kugel to compete with the glassblowers of neighboring Bohemia who had perfected blowing glass beads lined with lead mirroring solution with produced a brilliant shine. And though he was able to duplicate the lead mirroring solution, he couldn’t hand blow his kugels thin enough. The result was heavy pieces of glass shaped as balls in a rainbow of colors in sizes ranging from an inch in diameter to over 30 inches.

Originally, the glassblowers hung their kugels with bits of wire. After blowing a glass bubble, they snipped it from the blowing tube which resulted in a small neck with a hole leading to the inside of the kugel. They ground the neck down leaving just a hole and attached a decorative brass cap, held in place with wire arms that spread apart inside the glass sphere. Finally, they attached hanging rings to the caps and hung them with wire hooks.

It wasn’t until 1867, when Greiner-Schlotfeger’s village built a gas works that he had a steady, hot, adjustable flame, enabling him to blow thin-walled glass balls. From that point, it was a simple step to blowing glass into cookie molds shaped like fruits and pine cones. While the glassblowers still called them kugels–more specifically Biedermeierkugeln, referring to the Beidermeier Period in which they were made–they technically weren’t any longer and soon people called them Christmas ornaments.

By 1880, full-sized trees decorated with expensive imported German glass ornaments became all the rage among the wealthy. American retailer, F.W. Woolworth, saw these ornaments on a trip to Germany, but was reluctant to order any for his stores–at least at first. To his amazement, his original order sold out in two days.

For more information on kugels, read my article on antique Christmas ornaments.