Condiments Anyone?

QUESTION: Can you tell me something about a Victorian rotating castor with 5 or 6 little "doors" decorated with hunting animals. Turn a knob and the doors open to reveal places for condiment bottles which are missing. What metal is this made of, and who would typically have owned it.  The story goes that our great grandfather was in the Civil War and brought it back to Illinois/Minnesota as a souvenir after the war. It’s in excellent condition and is currently owned by my 95-year-old sister who plans to give it to one of her grandchildren one day.

ANSWER: Just about every Victorian dinner table had a castor, filled with jars and bottles of condiments, sitting in its center. The revolving castor set was one of the most widely used pieces of Victorian tableware. It was such an important part of the table setting  that no matter how humble, a family would have one sitting in the middle of their table. But castor sets go back even further.

While castor sets holding just salt and pepper shakers have been around since the 17th century, the American Victorian version, the type most collected today, appeared in the early 19th century. A castor set held condiments. It usually contained shakers for salt and pepper, bottles for vinegar and oil, a mustard pot, and a spice shaker of some sort. Manufacturers usually made these castor sets in white Britannia metal, then silver plated them. During the latter half of the 19th century, they began to use the newly developed quadruple-plate process. Though some fancy castor sets came with cut or etched glass  cruets and spice holders plus figurines—some even had a bell to ring for a servant—most were utilitarian but decorative and graced tables of Victorians in all social classes.

One bottle had a hinged lid with a slot for a spoon. This was for mustard. Other bottles could hold soy sauce, spices or “castor” sugar which was a pounded sugar—not powdered sugar and not granulated sugar—which cooks made by pounding loaf sugar with a mortar and pestle.

Though castor manufacturers produced bottles made of plain or etched glass, people could also purchase ones made of more expensive cut glass designs, available in blue, amber and cranberry after the American Civil War. Manufacturers also offered buyers a choice of handles and cruet styles. And some also had an open or closed revolving frame.

There were several different types of castor sets. The simplest included perhaps only salt and pepper shakers and a container for sugar. Breakfast castors generally included three or four bottles while dinner castors, the most elaborate, consisted of a silver or silverplate frame which held five or six cruets.

In 1860, castors became more elaborate and had bottles of pressed glass. Pressed glass bottle patterns ranged from Bellflower to Daisy & Button, Beaded Dewdrop, Beaded Grape, Medallion Bull's Eye, Fine Cut, Fine Rib, Gothic, Hamilton, Ivy, Honeycomb, Palmette, Powder & Shot, Thumbprint, Roman Rosette and Eugenia.

The rotary castor, in which the bottles fitted into holes on a circular platform which stood on a tall cone-type base, was patented in 1862. Makers often decorated its center handle with elaborate openwork design in one of several styles to go along with furniture of the time. Eastlake castors were some of the most popular. In the 1870's, they added heavy grape and beaded borders. One of the rarer types was the closed castor set in which the bottles sat behind closed doors.

In addition to pressed glass of blue, canary or crystal, makers used Pomona art glass, opalene twist, imported, decorated ruby glass and cut crystal glass. The glass containers had a fancy plated cover and decorated tongs were fastened to the stand.

The castor set became old fashioned in the early 1900s. By World War I, castor sets had fallen into disuse.

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As the Apple Turns

QUESTION: A few months ago, my family set about cleaning out an old barn that belonged to my grandfather. Boy, did we find some interesting stuff. We can’t identify one of the items and wondered if you can help us. It’s a machine type device with a crank and what seems like crab-like claws hanging from some sort of gear system. Can you tell us what this is and a bit about it if possible?

ANSWER: I believe you’ve found what would have been a treasure to the farm family that previously owned the barn. Today, we don’t see machines like this anymore, but back in the second half of the 19th century, they were commonplace. What you’ve found is a commercially made apple paring machine, dating around 1880.

To paraphrase the opening line of one of America’s longest-running soap operas, “As the apple turns, so do the days of our lives.” And so it was for many people, especially farmers and their families, who relied on the ordinary apple to quench their thirst in the form of cider and to fill snacking and baking needs throughout the year. But before they could do anything with their apples, they had to remove the skin. And that’s where the lowly parer comes in.

When the apple parer first appeared in England during the 1840s, it caused much amusement. But it had been a staple of American life since the late 17th century. Apples played a vital role in the diet of the American Colonists. Fearful of drinking the local water, lest they become ill, the Colonists took to making apple cider. Plus they dried apples for use during the cold winters.

William Blaxton, a clergyman from Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts, planted the first apple orchard in 1635. Later he propagated a sweet yellow apple which he dubbed Blaxton’s Yellow Sweeting.

Colonists picked apples in the fall, then pared, cored, and cut them into slices which they strung on strong linen thread and hung to dry. They also made applesauce, apple butter, and apple vinegar, all of which required the apples to be pared and sliced.

To offset the drudgery of paring apples, they held “apple bees.” Members of various farming communities gathered together, rotating from farm to farm, to socialize and pare apples. According to the November 1859 Harper's Weekly, a popular pastime during such bees was for a young woman to throw the string of apple paring over her shoulder where it would form the initial of the name of her future husband when it hit the ground.

But there was still the drudgery of paring apples until Yankee inventiveness created a wide variety of paring machines. The first parer, devised by 13-year-old Eli Whitney of later cotton gin fame, appeared in 1778. But it was Joseph Sterling of South Woodstock, Vermont, who came up with a mechanical parer in 1781. In 1801, Thomas Blanchard, another 13-year-old, from Worcester County, Massachusetts, came up with his version of an apple parer. Finally, Moses Coates of Downing’s Field, Pennsylvania---now Coatesville---obtained the first U.S. patent for an apple parer on February 14, 1803.

Whether basic or complex in design, one thought was clear—pare the apple as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

The first parers were wooden and featured a shaft with a turning crank on one end and a wood or metal fork on the other to hold the apple. The operator turned the crank with one hand and guided, with the other hand, a wooden handle with a mounted blade or knife, paring the apple.

Farmers made early parers by hand. They copied the devices of other farmers and borrowed ideas from farm magazines to fashion their own devices. The various types of early parers are amazing, including, to name a few, the straddle board, table top, table mount, table mount gallows, floor pedestal, leg strap, knee hold, and bench.

As these primitive machines evolved, their makers speeded up the turning of the fork holding the apple with the addition of cords, belts and gears, and anchored the paring cutter in an upright post, although still guided by hand, as in Coates’ parer.

It was inventor Ephraim C. Pratt who was credited with the first practical parer with the blade being guided over the apple mechanically with spring tension, leaving the operator a free hand to pull off the pared apple and put on " a new one. Pratt’s parer  allowed the knife to vibrate and accommodate itself to any irregularity in the surface of the apple.

Essentially, apple parers can be organized into five categories—Lathe, Turntable, Arc or geared segment, and Return, quick or otherwise, as well as the Commercial models added later on.