Maybe Famous

Whenever I come across artifacts like this, I wonder how many pieces of architecture in history have been designed using this little kit.  Maybe it helped design buildings we now regard as historical masterpieces. Oh if only it could talk!

This little drafting kit is missing most of its components but still has two of its sharp pointers and a ruler.  It was likely made in England in the late 18th / early 19th century.




The case is made of shagreen, which is a type of rawhide.  It's very tough, very hard, and not pliant at all.  It's about 7" long with individual compartments inside to store the different components.




The two pointers are still sharp!  They are made of brass and steel.  From the side view, you can see where the screw can be tightened or loosened.







The ruler is about 6" long and looks like it is made of ivory; this would have been common for these types of instruments during this time period. You can see different architect's scales on both sides.


One edge is straight, but the other edge is a bit fancy with curved edges.

Imagine the beautiful architecture that was designed using instruments like these!

Winder Me Up

What.  The.  Heck.  Is.  That.

For those of you who knit, you're likely laughing right now.  For the rest of us, this piece of metal equipment is a yarn winder.  It's purpose is to enable you to easily wrap your yarn into balls, which I'm told makes it easier to use.  Once the yarn was wrapped around the legs of this machine, it was attached to a bobbin, you turned a hand crank, and your yarn was turned into nice, neat, no-tangle balls.  The picture on the right shows what it looks like once the yarn is wrapped around the legs.




This one is approximately 23.5cm in diameter and 13.5cm high. You can adjust the size of how big you want your skein (ball) to be by loosening the wing nut (shown below) and sliding the arms closer together.

Some are large enough to be floor models but this particular one is portable with a "C" clamp base to attach it to a table.  It's solid metal and there is no washer under the wingnut.  Although there is no date or brand name on this machine, the patent for wingnuts first showed up in 1933 so it's origins are early to mid 20th century. Yarn winders come in all different sizes and materials.  Some are made of wood, some like this one are metal, and of course many modern day ones are plastic. 

It's always interesting to find artifacts that, although almost 100 years old, are still very similar to today's technology.  (1968.174)

Finem Respice

In David G. Keirstead's wonderful book Hampton Consolidated School:  A Story Worth Telling, he writes about how it was common for several graduating classes of this era to have their own class colours and motto in addition to the school's (p. 117).

So, imagine how incredible it was to have the Hampton High School Principal contact me to say they had found in their boiler room a number of crests from Hampton Consolidated School.  When he first mentioned this to me, I was thinking of those little cloth crests you buy when you're on vacation that get sewn on jackets.  When I saw the school crests he was talking about, I was blown away. These are huge, solid wood crests and many of them have signatures on the back!  The one I'm writing about today is from 1926.  

You can see the "HCS" painted in gold and outlined in black at the top, with the 1926 class moto "Finem Respice" in the middle, and "1926" in gold paint outlined in black at the bottom.  According to Merriam-Webster, this Latin expression is translated to "consider the end:  live so that your life will be approved after your death;, also: consider the consequences of your actions."

It's about 32" in height and 27" across.  It's made up of 4 pieces of board all different widths, about 3/4" thick with bevelled edges.  

On the back you can see the boards are held together with two pieces of wood screwed into the main boards.  There is also a lot of water damage visible that did not reach the front. 

In Hampton Consolidated School (p. 117), there is a listing of the graduates.  They are below and you can see that all 11 graduates signed the back of their crest:

-Elizabeth Roberts Ross
-Otta Bernice McAvity
-James Arthur Melick
-John Leonard Fowler
-John Henry Crabbe
-Phyllis Mary Kenney
-Mary Ethel Lena Dempster
-Mildred Irene Raymond
-Joseph Harvey Bell
-Ronald Suthard Spragg
-Paul Ewart McMulkin









Below the signatures of the graduating class, you also see where they wrote the class colours - gold and black, and the class motto - Finem Respice.

In this shot you can see that the crest was made by one of the graduates, John H. Crabbe, H.C.S., '26.















What a fabulous tradition:  each graduating class creating its own crest with its own motto and having everyone sign it!

No Love Lost on Laundry

Before I came to work today I threw a load of laundry into the washing machine.  It took me all of 2 minutes to put the clothes in, throw on some detergent, and press the start button.  When I walked into the museum, once of the first things I noticed was an old wooden, hand crank washing machine that probably dates from the mid to late 1800s. 

It’s made of wood and metal with two wooden wringers held in place by wooden dowels.  

You can see on one side where the washer can be attached to a pole or something sturdy to hold the washer still while cranking the clothes through the wringers.

There are metal springs on each side with a handle on one side to turn the wringers.  Often this was a 2 person job with one woman turning the crank and the other feeding the clothes through the wringers.  

You can also see in this picture where there is a metal screw in the wood that connects the two legs, and on the bottom is a wood peg.

The wooden peg connects the two legs on each side, just below the metal spring. 

There is no date on this washer, but on the bottom in black print letters is the following:

A1 Washer

J.A. Whelpley

Greenwich, NB

Patent Applied For

This is likely the same James Alfred Whelpley who was born in 1839 in Westfield, New Brunswick, Canada and invented the “Long Reach” ice skates. 

The rollers aren’t smooth – they are grooved to help remove more water from the clothes.  Many of the hand wringing washers have smooth rollers so this one is definitely different from most others.  I was unable to find any record that the inventor's patent was granted.

I can’t even begin to imagine the work that washing clothes with this machine would have involved!  Hauling water, heating water on a stove, wringing the clothes through this hand crank…it would not have been a 2 minute job.  I know we often yearn for what we think are the gentler times of yesteryear, however, especially on days like today where it’s around -15° I’m reminded once again of how lucky we are to live in the 21^st century. (1970.105)  

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.