The Elephant in the Room

I've heard the expression "the elephant in the room" more times this week referring to more news stories than I could shake a tusk at!  But this article really is about the elephant in the room.  We have in our collection a Schoenhut elephant.  This little toy stands about 8" high, is made of wood, and was part of a larger collection of late 19th, early 20th century toys from the Humpty Dumpty Circus.

The eyes are made of glass and the ears and tusks are made of leather.  This one is missing a tail.  It's painted gray with a red mouth, and you can see from the wear that this toy was well played with once upon a time.






Being made of wood, it's a very solid toy and weighs about 1lb. This is a toy made to last.








The legs and head are detached, being connected to the body by a sturdy cotton cord.  This makes it possible to move them so the elephant can be poseable.  The legs are spool style.

Albert Schoenhut was a toy maker from Germany who came to Philadelphia in the late 1800s.  He worked at a department store called Wanamaker’s making toy pianos.  He used metal bars in the toy pianos instead of glass ones, which really improved the sound.  Eventually, he left the store and opened his own toy manufacturing company.  Starting with making many different types of toy pianos, he eventually started making the Humpty Dumpty Circus. This became one of his most popular products and was exported around the world.  An advertisement of his circus is seen here.

Christmas is coming and what would it be without toys.  Our collection includes a Schoenhut elephant!  These toys were really popular during their time, but, in the Great Depression, not many had money to buy toys and eventually his company declared bankruptcy. Wouldn't it be great to have the entire circus collection?

Christmas Play Past

Christmas plays are always a highlight of the Christmas season for grandparents and parents with young children.  I found this little gem in our vault the other day.  It’s called Christmas Around the World - A Merry Christmas Play in One Act, written by Leeta McCully Cherry.  The cost of the book was $.10 and it was published by the Education Publishing Co. Ltd., Toronto, Ontario.  It’s a thin little booklet, only about 6” tall and 4” wide and has no date printed on it.  I couldn’t find anything specific on this author, but she seems to have published a number of these little booklets as well as some other stories for children.

This play has 12 characters, but the way it’s structured you could easily take some out if you did not have enough children to play the parts.  You could also easily add more if you have them!  As it's written, it takes about 20-25 minutes to stage.

The play starts with The Spirit of Christmas saying:

“All over the world on Christmas night

The Spirit of Christmas is stealing
Filling all hearts with true joy and delight
And setting the merry bells peeling.”

Then the other characters gradually join and say their brief piece about Christmas.  The play is very nice with all of these characters from different countries talking about the happiness of Christmas.  Besides the Spirit of Christmas, the characters include:

• Italian girl
• Russian girl
• Girl from Norway and Sweden
• Serbian girl
• Spanish girl
• Dutch girl
• German girl
• French girl
• Polish girl
• Canadian girl
• Santa Claus

At the end, the chorus all says:

“Who comes and visits us each year?
Santa Claus!  Santa Claus!
Who is to all our lands most dear?
This same good Santa Claus!

Christmas plays for youngsters are a timeless classic.  Let’s hope there are always people willing to put them on!

Pepper Me, Peugeot

I never liked pepper growing up, but when I was an adult my sister-in-law gave me a fresh pepper grinder.  It’s a modern one made of stainless steel and, not wanting to be rude, I thought I should try this pepper grinder.  I couldn’t believe how good this freshly ground pepper tasted!   It’s a staple in our household now.

The pepper grinder, also known as a pepper mill, was invented by the Peugeot brothers of France in the early 1840s. (Yes, the same Peugeot family who makes cars.)  It gave people a much easier way to grind down and crack peppercorns rather than the very labour intensive method of using a mortar and pestle!  Peugeot’s was made of metal and the grooves inside the casing were made of two different sizes:  one cracked the peppercorns and the second groove ground them.

Our little pepper grinder isn’t a Peugeot but it’s still pretty interesting.  It’s a small, square wooden box, about 4.5”.  There is a brass dome on top with a metal arm extending from its centre, topped with a wooden handle.  The trim around the box is painted red.

There is a little latch on the brass dome on the top of the box that you can open to put in your peppercorns.  Then you move the handle to grind them and the nice, fine pepper drops into a little drawer at the bottom of the grinder.  

It's faint, but the drawer still has a very pleasant smell of wood and pepper.

It almost looks like it might have been homemade.  On the bottom of the grinder towards the left-hand side, you can see a wood knot. 

Today pepper mills are made of many different kinds of material:  ceramic, acrylic, stainless steel, and wood are some of the most common.  Some pepper mills are electronic which means the peppercorns are ground much faster.  Those with more discerning tastebuds than mine say the taste of the pepper is different when it’s been ground in an electric mill vs. ground by hand.  Some say the heat from the electric form of grinding is what affects the taste. 

And Peugeot is still recognized as the best pepper grinder on the market.  Hmmmm…I may have just discovered what I might like for a Christmas gift! 

If you want to see a library of many different kinds of pepper mills, just check out this link:  http://mypeppermills.net/html/the_collection.html.