Fragments of Beauty

 

QUESTION: Some time ago, I was browsing at a local flea market where I came upon a small decorated wooden box on one of the tables. The top had a serious of interlocking blocks that formed a sort of optical illusion. And on closer inspection, I realized little pieces of wood veneer covered the entire surface of the box. I’ve never seen anything like it since. Needless to say, I paid for the box immediately. Can you tell me what sort of decoration is on this box? How old might it be?

ANSWER: What you have is an example of Tunbridge ware, a form of decoratively inlaid woodwork, typically in the form of boxes, that originated in Tonbridge, England, and the spa town of Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent in 1830. The decoration consisted of a mosaic of many tiny pieces of different colored wood assembled to form a design or scene.

Located about 40 miles southeast of London, the spa town of Tunbridge Wells sits in a wooded area. In the 17th century, there was so much timber that woodwork became the town’s main industry. For over 200 years, local makers specialized in this distinctive wooden ware. Originally, woodworkers decorated their creations with simple designs, painted on to light-colored objects. 

Around 1830, James Burrows invented a technique of creating mosaics from wooden pieces. He tightly glued together a bunch of wooden sticks of different colors, each having triangular or diamond-shaped cross section. For half-square mosaic, Burrows took thin slices from the composite block and applied them to the surface of an object, usually a box.

Makers of early Tunbridge ware didn’t decorate it but by the second half of the 18th century, more decoration appeared. Some were painted in colors on a whitewood background or painted in black to imitate Asian styles.  

At first the designs were simple and often geometrical, such as a clever arrangement of piled cubes, but as the artisans became more expert, they used an effective pattern representing wool-work. Pictures in mosaic of places of interest were another addition.

Making Tunbridge ware was tedious. Each separate fragment had to be laboriously fitted into its place until the picture was completed. Even then only one mosaic resulted from days of toil. To get over this difficulty, Burrows hit on the scheme of assembling a number of thin strips of appropriately colored woods into a block,. about 12 to 18 inches deep, so that their ends made up the desired scene or pattern. Bound, and glued under pressure, the strips were finally formed into one compact whole. A circular saw was next employed to shave off wafer-thin slices from across the block, and each of these layers now became a veneer which could easily be glued to the article it was to decorate. 

The makers of Tunbridge ware employed about 40 different kinds of wood in a variety of colors. They used only natural colors. They often took designs, such as the block over block motif, for their articles from Berlin wool work. 

Besides the Burrows family, the other company making Tunbridge ware in the 1830s was Fenner and Company. When William Fenner retired in 1840, Edmund Nye and his father took over the business, after 30 years in partnership with him. The company made articles such as workboxes and tea caddies with prints of popular views. Later items had pictures created from mosaics.

Edmund Nye, Robert Russell, and Henry Hollamby showed their Tunbridge ware at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Edmund Nye received a commendation from the judges for a a table depicting a mosaic of a ship at sea which used 110,800 wooden tesserae. 

The makers of Tunbridge ware operated cottage industries There were no more than nine in Tunbridge Wells and one in Tonbridge. The number declined in the 1880s since finding skilled craftsmen was difficult, plus public tastes changed. After the death of Thomas Barton in 1903, the only surviving firm was Boyce, Brown and Kemp, which closed in 1927.

Princess Victoria favored Tunbridge ware in the early 19th century. Local makers drew lots to present Princess Victoria with a single example piece of their artistry. A work table described as ‘veneered with party-colored woods from every part of the globe’ and ‘lined with gold tufted satin’ was given to the royal visitor.

Visitors flocked to the spa town of Tunbridge Wells and bought the items as souvenirs and gifts. Articles included cribbage boards, paperweights, writing slopes, snuff boxes and glove boxes. Well-healed travelers had a variety of  objects to choose from. Tables, tea caddies, rulers, workboxes, holders , fruit or bread baskets, candlesticks, chess tables, pencil boxes, stationery cabinets, and pin trays were but a few of the many items decorated using the wood mosaic technique.

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 "The Age of Photography" in the 2023 Fall 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.

Silent Greeters to the World of Tobacco

 

QUESTION: When I was a little boy, my mother used to take me shopping with her in our little midwestern town. On the way to the emporium, we used to pass by a strange looking shop. I didn’t like to go by it because there was a large fearsome figure standing out front. The figure was a large Indian—yes, back then we called them Indians— carved in wood. He had a gruesome look on his face which scared me, so I covered my eyes as we walked passed. I always wondered why this shop had such a frightening figure out front. Today, most tobacco shops are low key and look like any other shop on the street. What is the origin of the cigar-store Indian? And why did tobacco shop owners choose an Indian to stand out front?  

ANSWER: Many people today haven’t ever seen an authentic cigar-store Indian. And with the sensitive climate about Native Americans, they probably never will. But back in the 19th century they were a common site along the main streets of small towns across the country.  

Cigar-store Indians, with their serious chiseled faces, conveyed a sense of grandeur as they greeted customers to tobacco shops. Designed to capture the attention of passersby, most of whom in the 19th century lacked a shared common language, the sidewalk wooden Indian became a symbol of the tobacco retail business. Because American Indians introduced tobacco to the Europeans as early as the 17th century, European tobacconists began using figures of American Indians to advertise their shops. 

Most of these silent greeters stood just outside the door, often mounted on wheels so that they could be rolled in and out. The origin of the wooden Indian dates back to England in 1617, when tobacco shop owners placed small wooden figures called "Virginie Men," depicted as black men wearing headdresses and kilts made of tobacco leaves, on countertops to represent tobacco companies.

Eventually, the European cigar-store figure began to take on a more authentic yet highly stylized appearance, and by the time these figures arrived in America in the late 18th century, they had become authentic Indians, fairly accurate and beautifully carved.

Carvers of these shop figures came from among the makers of ship figureheads. During the late 19th century, the demise of the clipper ship era forced figurehead carvers out of business. These craftsmen gradually turned to producing wooden Indians. Production flourished from about 1840 to the end of the century. In the 1890s, city ordinances required that figures be confined to the interiors of shops, and gradually the statues went out of use. Instead of attracting customers on the outside, they served as mere decoration inside.

While a few makers produced cigar-store Indians of cast iron, most used wood. Carvers used axes, chisels, and mallets on white pine or even quartered ships’ masts, then painted the completed figures in a variety of colors and designs.

While some of these wooden Indians appeared inviting, happily greeting customers, others appeared defensive, as if guarding the store from shoplifters, thieves, and "no smoking" ordinances.

American carvers sculpted Indian chiefs, braves, princesses and Indian maidens, sometimes with boarded papooses. Most of these displayed some form of tobacco in their hands or on their clothing. They generally depicted stereotypical chiefs and squaws, clothed in fringed buckskins, draped with blankets, decorated with feathered headdresses, and sometimes shown holding tomahawks or bows, arrows and spears. Their facial features rarely resembled members of any particular American Indian tribe.

Female wooden Indians, also known as “Pocahontas,” appeared four times more than their male counterparts in classical or Egyptian-inspired poses. Carvers occasionally donned them with headdresses of tobacco leaves instead of feathers and dressed their male figures in the traditional war bonnets of the Plains Indians.

Carvers produced about 300 cigar-store Indians annually—yet there are relatively few original ones left today. Those that do exist reside in museums and in private collections. Historians believe carvers created over 100,000 cigar-store Indians. Since the carvers all competed with each other for the tobacconists' business, each tried to out do the other in individuality, versatility and depth. A few artists even used Native Americans as models.

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.

Shaping the Modern American Lifestyle

 

QUESTION: For the last several years I’ve begun to purchase various pieces of Mid-Century Modern furniture and accessories. While doing so, the name Russel Wright has come up frequently. I understand he was one of the more influential industrial designers of the 20th century. I’d like to learn more about him and his designs, so that I can be on the lookout for them as I browse thrift shops and used furniture stores. What can you tell me about Wright and his designs?

ANSWER: Russel Wright was indeed a master of modern design. He created dinnerware, glasses, spun aluminum, wooden tableware, stainless steel flatware, textiles, and furniture, giving a sense of style to the modern American home. Wright was one of the premier industrial designers of the modern era.

He first began to work in silver and chrome, creating small decorative circus animals for gift shops. His later work in chrome came after he signed a contract to design for Chase Brass & Copper, which he did from 1935 to 1946. Wright's designs for Chase are hot marked with his name.

Wright’s early gift items were expensive, and being in the midst of the Great Depression, he found it necessary to develop items that were more affordable. So he instead turned to spun aluminum, actually manufacturing items in the basement of he and his wife’s home.  He created around a 100 items, including stove-to-table items, a concept which doesn’t work well in aluminum but which was later expressed in other materials. Wright combined aluminum with wood, rattan, or cork, enabling the resulting pieces to be combined in a variety of ways.

From aluminum Wright moved on in 1935 to create the Oceanic line of woodenware for Elise Wood Working Company. For these designs, he used naturalistic the forms of leaves, snail spirals, starfish, and water ripples. Even though they were all machine made, these products had a handmade look and feel.

Wright's first furniture designs, for Heywood-Wakefield in 1934, made use of curved veneers and looked more Art Deco than his later furniture. Unfortunately, these pieces didn’t sell well and weren’t durable enough to use constantly. But they showed Wright's early interest in open stock pieces that could be used in a variety of ways.

The breakthrough in furniture design for Wright came with his introduction of American Modern, a line manufactured in American rock maple by Conant Ball, which sold the pieces in both dark and "blonde" finishes. Wright’s wife, Mary, coined the name "American Modern," which was later used for other products for the home. Macy's was so enthusiastic about the furniture line that they constructed a nine-room house in their New York store to display the furniture in room settings.

Wright also worked with the Old Hickory Furniture Company in Martinsville, Indiana on unique rustic furniture featuring his modern stylings. The Old Hickory line first appeared in 1942 and some of the designs stayed popular through the 1950s.

In 1939, Wright introduced a colorful line of American Modern china, the most widely sold American ceramic dinnerware in the country’s history, made by Steubenville Pottery, of Steubenville, Ohio. But American Modem china was low-tired, thus subject to chipping and crazing. After World War II, Wright introduced Iroquois Casual China, made with a high-fired glaze, suitable for dishwasher use, that came with a three-year guarantee. 

He followed his successful china line with glasses, flatware and textiles. This was the beginning of Wright’s American lifestyle, as he offered consumers a way to create a comfortable home with a unified look as they put it together, piece by piece. American Modern china, in production from 1939 until 1959, was the country’s all-time biggest selling line of dishes.

In addition to ceramic dinnerware, Wright also designed several popular lines of Melmac melamine resin plastic dinnerware for the home and did early research on plastic Melmac dinnerware for restaurant use. Beginning in 1953, Northern Plastic Company of Boston began production of his first Melmac line of plastic dinnerware for the home, called "Residential."  

As with his ceramic dinnerware, Wright began designing his Melmac only in solid colors, but by the end of the 1950s created several patterns ornamented with decoration, usually depicting plant forms.

Wright's approach to design came from the belief that the dining table was the center of the home. Working outward from there, he designed tableware to larger furniture, architecture to landscaping, all fostering an easy, informal lifestyle. It was through his popular and widely distributed housewares and furnishings that he influenced the way many Americans lived and organized their homes in the mid-20th century.

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.

A Musical Chair for Musical Chairs

 

QUESTION: This summer while vacationing on Cape Cod, I spent some time antiquing. In one of the shops I discovered an unusual chair. It looked like a fancy side chair but the seat had hinges. When I lifted it up, I found a music box. The dealer told me that it was a Swiss Musical Chair, used in the game of musical chairs. What can you tell me about this chair? Where did it originate and who made it? 

ANSWER: While these chairs were popular with the wealthier set in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries, they don’t often appear in antique shops. Something like this is most often found in auctions or antique shows.

No one knows for sure who invented the game of musical chairs and when. But historians note that people have been playing it for centuries. Previously called “Trip to Jerusalem.” But when people began calling it Musical Chairs is also unknown. 

Trip to Jerusalem —known in German as “Reise Nach Jerusalem”—was a game played predominately in Germany. So why did people call the game “Trip to Jerusalem?” Some historians theorize that the Crusades inspired the name in the Middle Ages. They believe that the elimination of players who cannot find an empty seat at the end of each round compares to the losses suffered by the Crusaders as they battled the Muslims for control of Jerusalem. This would have made the game more relevant to players at the time. But as the centuries rolled on, that relevancy disappeared, so players started calling the game exactly what it was—a game of musical chairs.

Another less plausible theory, is that the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to the Land of Israel, called the Aliyah, inspired the game. During these trips, there was supposedly very limited spaces for Jews on the ships to the Land of Israel. This is supposedly depicted in the game by the number of chairs used. However, neither of these theories has ever been confirmed.

Musical chairs has always been a fun party game. The fact that it began with a "musical chair" seems lost in obscurity. The Swiss and Germans, known for their music boxes, found a novel way to insert one in the seat of an elaborately decorated chair. A hostess placed the chair among others in a circle. The game’s players walked around the circle while the music from the chair’s music box played. Whoever sat on the chair and stopped the music by engaging the switch that turned off the music box, had to leave the game. The last person to remain won.

Swiss and German craftsmen produced these chairs from the 1880s to the 1920s. They  used several kinds of wood, usually walnut plus some exotic varieties for inlays. They usually didn’t sign their chairs. Often, these chairs came in a set with an armchair and side chairs. 

The seat and seatback of these chairs featured intricately inlaid cartouches each depicting various images, including carved leaves and edelweiss, alpine chamois and deer. They placed the music box mechanism, made by another party, under the seat.

Woodcarving brought riches to the villages of Switzerland and the Black Forest region of Germany. It became all the fashion and no English traveler left these areas without having purchased some sort of woodcarving to take back home. As the tourist industry flourished and thrived, so did the carvers, selling their wares to the wealthy tourists.

Though the idea of a Grand Tour began in the 17th century, it wasn’t until the mid 19th century that it reached its peak. The wealthy believed the primary value of the Grand Tour lay in the exposure both to classical antiquity and the Renaissance, and to the aristocratic and fashionably polite society of the European continent.

The Grand Tour not only provided travelers with a cultural education but allowed those who could afford it the opportunity to buy things otherwise unavailable at home, such as the woodcarvings of Black Forest craftsmen. Grand Tourists would return with crates of art, books, pictures, sculpture, and items of culture, which would be displayed in libraries, cabinets, gardens, and drawing rooms.

This fashion had been set in motion by Queen Victoria's visit to the area in April 1868, and by her subsequent inspiration to build a Swiss chalet at Osborne House and fill it with Black Forest and Swiss carvings.

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.

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.