Peanut-related items are popular collectibles. Most familiar are the many Mr. Peanut boxes, tins, figures, signs and even 4-foot-high iron scales.
Old packaging for peanut butter was inventive and appealing, too. Tin pails with wire handles were used to pack peanut butter in the 1930s. Child movie stars such as Jackie Coogan were pictured on the pails. Other peanut butter tins from the 1930s pictured nursery-rhyme characters, circus elephants or children playing.
Swift and Co. sold 6-inch-high lithographed tin pails with cartoon graphics in the 1950s. By the 1960s, Big Top peanut butter was sold in reusable pressed glass footed goblets.
Our 42-inch-long blanket chest has a copper plaque inside the lid that’s inscribed “Connersville Cabinet Company, Connersville, Indiana.” The chest is cedar with a carved and painted design on the front. I have been unable to find any information about the company.
The Connersville Cabinet Co. manufactured cedar chests such as yours between about 1915 and 1935.
My husband’s grandmother left us a small, cast-iron wood stove. The stove itself is 23 inches long by 20 inches high by 12 inches deep. It sits on three slip-on legs. The iron is decorated all over, with a scroll edge on the top and gothic arches around the sides. The words “Jewett &Root, Eagle Furnace, Buffalo, N.Y.” are embossed on the top. Can you tell us when it was made? Should I wash it and apply stove blacking?
You have a Victorian-era box stove, used to warm a bedroom or small parlor. Box stoves were developed in America during the Revolutionary War and were manufactured in great numbers between 1830 and 1910. The stoves were small and portable, and burned wood efficiently. The name of the maker and the decoration on your stove dates it to the mid- to late-1800s. You can clean the cast iron, but chances are it was never covered in stove blacking and should not be treated with it now. Stoves like yours sell for $1,500 or more.
We recently purchased an antique wicker pram. The manufacturer’s name, Wakefield Rattan Co., is on a metal plate attached to the wicker. The pram is in fairly good condition, but the rubber tread has rotted off the wheels and the swing-away umbrella’s fabric has deteriorated. Can you shed light on the pram’s age? Should I have it restored?
Your pram was made before 1897, the year the Wakefield Rattan Co. of Boston merged with Heywood Brothers &Co. of Gardner, Mass. The new company was called Heywood Brothers &Wakefield Co. The Wakefield Rattan Co. was founded in 1855, but wicker baby carriages did not become popular in America until the 1880s. So your pram was probably manufactured between 1880 and 1897. Owners of antique baby carriages often decide to have the wheels and upholstery restored by a competent professional.
My fancy china centerpiece bowl is marked “Eichwald.” I haven’t found any information on that mark. Can you help?
Eichwald was the name of a city in Bohemia. It is now Dubi, Czech Republic. The name was used as the mark on tableware and decorative porcelain made by B. Bloch &Co. after 1871. After 1920, the company’s name became Eichwald Porcelain and Stove Factory Bloch &Co. The factory closed during World War II.
Irecently purchased a Titanic life preserver at a flea market. It is off-white and appears to be made from lightweight wood covered with a rubber coating. In capital letters on the top half is the word “Titanic”; on the bottom half, “London.” The year 1912 is also printed on the ring, which is 18 inches in diameter. A smooth rope surrounds the whole ring. Any information?
You do not have an original life preserver from the doomed ocean liner. Any original life “rings” on the ship were plain, according to historians. Fakes like yours started appearing by the 1930s. They can be found in various colors and with various words. Many are sold today clearly identified as “souvenir reproductions.” We’ve seen them priced at $10 and up.
The Kovels answer as many questions as possible through the column. Write to Kovels, The Herald, King Features Syndicate, 888 Seventh Ave., New York, NY 10019.
2004 by Cowles Syndicate Inc.
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