American Heritage History of Colonial Antiques

[ThomasPowers]

American Heritage History of Colonial Antiques    

We just picked this up at the used bookstore for a Dollar, focused on American Colonial and the mid to north eastern seaboard for the most part.  Mainly the fancier stuff but there is a couple of pages of smithed stuff that includes a very nice meat fork: it has 3 tines  and the middle tine is made by elongating the tip of a heart which is forge welded  between the other two tines.  Very clean fine work!  There is also a flipper with a piercework star in the working end.   There is also a reproduction of a woodcut of a 17th century silversmith's workshop showing several block anvil large enough for ironwork!

[Millhand]

Im going to have to give that fork a go! Thx Thomas!

Is that a toaster on top center? 

[ThomasPowers]

Yes it's a toaster, one aspect of making them is that the top bar is loosely riveted to the stand allowing you to swivel the toast around and heat the other side.

Way back when the magazine Early American Life used to have blacksmithing projects in it and one of them was such a toaster. (my copy doesn't seem to be down here, or I'd give the cite. I hope it's at my other house!)

"Antique Iron, Survey of American and English Forms 15th-19th Centuries" Herbert, Peter and Nancy Schiffer has 4 similar examples  of that toaster

And several are in "Early American Wrought Iron" 3 Volumes in one,  Albert H Sonn

A fairly common item back in the down hearth cooking days.

[yves]

12 hours ago, ThomasPowers said:

A fairly common item back in the down hearth cooking days.

So common in fact that it was also found in France, for instance. When looking into one kitchen of the colonial era you see in all the kitchens of that era, much in the same way that when you look in a kitchen of to-day with the button produced highs, mediums and lows, you are looking in all the kitchens using the same system.