Sewing was an everyday activity for the 19th-century housewife. Often, a special table that held sewing supplies and needlework was kept near the living room.
The sewing table became a special furniture form. It looked like a small table with a lift top, but there was sometimes a cloth bag or wooden structure below the top to hold sewing work.
The top of the table held a tray or box filled with sewing accessories, including many that would not be recognized today. You would find the usual scissors, needles, pincushion, tape measure, thimble and thimble holder, thread winder, pin holder and knitting and lace-making tools. Less usual were thread waxers, sewing clamps and containers for marking powder.
Sometimes knitting was stored in the lower bag, along with accessories such as knitting needles, a needle holder, yarn winders and a yarn holder that could be worn on the wrist. The table kept everything in one handy place and could still be used to hold a candle, teacup or book. The sewing table was popular from about 1800 to 1900, after which time less sewing was done at home.
My father bought an old, very heavy, coal-and-gas double-oven cooking stove at an estate sale about 60 years ago. He installed it in our house and converted it to natural gas. It still works perfectly. The white porcelain stove with black trim has the name “Round Oak” on the front. A plate inside one of the two bottom storage doors reads “Round Oak Co., Dowagiac, Mich.,” but a metal plate on the back reads “Beckwith Co.” Can you fill in some history?
The Round Oak Stove Co. was founded by Phil D. Beckwith in 1871. It played an important role in the history of Dowagiac, spurring the city’s growth in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The company became one of the largest heating-stove manufacturers in the world. By the 1900s, Round Oak was also making furnaces and cooking stoves. Stoves with porcelain bodies and trim were introduced in the United States after World War I, when Round Oak was still a strong company. Your stove was probably manufactured during the 1920s. Round Oak closed after World War II. Contact the museum at Southwestern Michigan College in Dowagiac for more information on your stove.
| ON THE BLOCK
Current prices are recorded from antiques shows, flea markets, sales and auctions throughout the United States. Prices vary in different locations because of local economic conditions. Salt and pepper shakers, Washington Monument and U.S. Capitol, gold trim, Ceramic Arts Studio, 4 inches, $20. Political button, “Minnesota Women for Humphrey,” black, pink and white, celluloid, 1954, 21/4 inches, $185. Roseville hanging planter, Gardenia pattern, ocher, embossed white flowers, green petals, 6 inches, $210. Holland Butter banner, graphic of two Dutch children standing on pound of butter, gold ground, 30 x 37 inches, $250. Celluloid dresser set, pearl-ized yellow, butterscotch, black trim, 1930s, 11 pieces, $310. Royal Doulton plate, “Mary Arden’s Cottage,” Shakespeare Series, 1922, 101/4 inches, $370. Amoeba-style cocktail table, free-form inset glass top, bleached ash and birch veneer, 1950s, 52 x 30 x 15 inches, $515. Boston &Sandwich glass candlestick, apple green, petal-form socket on columnar square-step base, 1850-65, 9 inches, $560. Steiff Red Riding Hood doll, pressed felt swivel head, black shoe-button eyes, red cape, 101/2 inches, $910. Appliqued quilt, Sunbonnet Sue, red and white, picket finch border, 1800s, 84 x 88 inches, $1,200. |
What is my old dark-green bottle worth? The front is embossed with a picture of a floor safe and the words “Franks Safe Kidney &Liver Cure, Rochester, N.Y., Wheaton, N.J.” The embossed words on the back say, “Since 1892 works wonders. This is not a polite way of drinking. Nothing in this remedy will grow on anyone. No danger of contracting the drink or any other kind of habit.”
Any antique bottle that has the word “cure” on it is called a “cure bottle” by collectors. But your bottle is not antique. During the 1970s, ’80s and even into the ’90s, Wheaton Co. of Millville, N.J., manufactured antique-style flasks, decanters and cure and bitters bottles. Any bottle marked “Wheaton” is a recent reproduction or “fantasy” bottle (a fantasy looks old, but doesn’t copy a genuine old bottle). Wheaton reproductions generally sell for $3 to $5.
I have a photograph of my mother taken at the 1933-‘34 Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago. She was a model and is shown in the photo trying on a pottery hat that could double as a planter. It’s a woman’s hat with a clay feather on the side. The hat-planter was made by Haeger Pottery. What can you tell me about the company?
Haeger Potteries of Dundee, Ill., dates back to 1871 and is still in business. The company started making commercial artwares in 1914, and by the 1920s was well-established. At the Chicago World’s Fair, Haeger set up an exhibit that included a complete pottery plant where hand-throwers created special pieces for visitors and produced a line of World’s Fair souvenirs. Haeger has made a few hat-shaped planters, but the hat your mother tried on at the fair was probably a humorous one-of-a-kind piece. Did she get to keep it?
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