On the lid were some deeply embossed words that led off with this inscription: ”The ‘General’ Seamless Bread Maker.” It was the strangest-looking bread maker I had seen.

The General bread-making machine ready for auction.

I had toyed once with the idea of buying a nice electric bread maker so I could start making my own wheat bread. I scuttled the idea because I knew that it would go the way of the automatic rice cooker and the cute little ice cream maker I had bought – both now sitting on a shelf somewhere in my pantry.

This bread maker before me, though, was a lot more interesting than the modern ones I’d seen. On the top were instructions on how to make bread: “Put in all liquid first. One quart of liquid to three of flour. No seams to fill with dough.” It sounded simple enough, but there certainly had to be more to it than that.

It was surprisingly clean for its age, as if it has been used little or not at all. On what looked like a crank were two patent dates, the latest was Jan. 29, 1907. This was a No. 10 model.

The parts for the General bread-making machine at auction.

Looking at the crank I was reminded of the other antique home and kitchen items I’d come across at auction that required a crank to operate, including a White Mountain ice cream maker.

As usual, I was curious about this machine, which surely eased the chore of making fresh bread a century ago. I could find nothing about the General No. 10 on the web, but was bombarded with plenty of machines bearing the name Universal. It apparently was a pretty popular bread-making machine manufactured by a Connecticut company near the turn of the 20th century.

What I found even more interesting was the inventor who revolutionized bread making – an African American man named Joseph Lee. Born around 1849 in Boston, he worked in a bakery as a boy, and went on to become a successful restaurateur and caterer in the city. In the 1890s, he invented and patented a machine that ground bread into crumbs. In the past, day-old bread was discarded, but his machine opened up a whole new way to recycle it. He used the machine to make bread crumbs for such dishes as croquettes, fried chops and fish, and for cake batter in his enterprises.

Photo of Joseph Lee from the cover of a book about his life, along with the patent design for his bread-kneading machine.

Lee sold the invention to the Royal Worcester Crumb Co. of Boston. A 1902 American Kitchen magazine extolled the convenience of the company’s prepared bread crumbs – something grandma didn’t have – which offered “escalloped oysters at the moment’s notice … or croquettes that melt in one’s mouth, besides all the other toothsome fried things that everybody delights in.”

His invention apparently made frying a delectable undertaking.

Lee then sought to find a better way to make fresh bread simply and with less labor. That led to the invention and patenting of a bread-making machine. I could find nothing about whatever happened to it. Lee died in 1905, and school teacher Jerome T. Peoples last year chronicled his life, inventions and more in the book “Lee’s Bread Machines: The father of automated bread making.”

Bread-making machines appeared to be a hit around the 1890s and into the 20th century. That was around the time Landers-Frary & Clark of New Britain, CT, came out with its Universal machine – the “mainstay” of its business – along with its food chopper and percolator. The Universal had embossed instructions on the cover, and an inscription on the side noting that it had won a gold medal at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.

Homemade, but not made with an antique bread maker. Photo by Kongur.

In a 1905 newspaper ad, the company promised that its bread maker could mix and knead dough in 3 minutes. and it came in two sizes. One sold for $2 and the other $2.50. This new bread-making machine, a company official said in 1955, allowed dough to be ”prepared in the evening, left in the machine overnight, ready for baking in the morning.”

Universal No. 4 machines I found on eBay were selling well, most for less than $100.

Another turn-of-the-century bread making machine was the Manning-Bowman Eclipse, manufactured in Meriden, CT, by Manning Bowman and Co. It seemed to have worked the same way as the Universal.

The instructions for making bread were embossed on the top cover.

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Vintage mixed in with the contemporary in any décor adds a certain flair and flavor. This juxtaposition has a way of connecting you to the past but keeping you grounded in the here-and-now.

Vintage vegetable seed packets that have been framed.

I purchased most of those labels long before I began attending auctions, and by the time I started, I was off and on to another area of interest. But I’m still drawn to the vintage, especially the old kitchen tools – love the ones with the Bakelite handles – that people seem to toss at random and end up on the auction tables. Some are still in good condition and usable, but I see them more as decorative additions to a kitchen.

You don’t have to smother your kitchen in any one item from a particular period; that would be much too much. But incorporating them  – and not just dropping them anywhere there’s a blank space – can enliven it and offer a fresh feel. And there are so many to select, from cookie jars to molds to trivets.

On the very top of my kitchen cabinets, I have displayed old license plates from two of the states I have lived in: Florida and North Carolina, along with a metal Georgia sign I purchased at an antiques show. I’ve always loved old mason jars, and if I had a windowsill wide enough, I’d line a group of the aqua pint jars in a row with plants or flowers or herbs.

Here are some of the kitchen tools and other items I’ve come across at auction. None of them were expensive; in fact, they cost very little money because they were in box lots.

A decorative tin mold.

A folk art rolling pin (top), a German Springerle style rolling pin (bottom)

Red-handle egg beaters and other tools with wood and plastic handles. Bakelite handles are more desirable.

An advertising flour sifter.

Wooden utensils, including butter pats or paddles (left), and scoop.

Kitchen towel calendars.

White Mountain Ice Cream Freezer, circa 1923.

Hoosier kitchen cabinet jars.

Wear-ever juicer.

A masher and strainer (left), and heavy metal tongs.

Figurative cookie jars.

Here are two tools below that I just love but have no idea what they are. They resemble whisks, but the wooden mound in the center and the pop-up lever on the side indicate that an attachment is missing. Do you recognize it?

I’d love to hear your ideas or see photos of what you’ve decorated with vintage items in your kitchen. Drop me a line and send photos here.

Related posts:

1. Stocking an imaginary kitchen
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It always reminds me of my trip to Italy some years ago when we wound our way through the dark cavernous Catacombs of Rome. The auction houses are not as bleak or foreboding, but maneuvering through the furniture can be an experience. It’s worth the obstacle course, though, just to see furniture with inlaid designs or marvelously carved woodwork. At one particular auction house, the stuff is also stacked to the ceiling on an outside ramp that seems to stretch almost the length of a basketball court.

This butcher block table at auction was as big as it was charming.

That’s where I found myself looking one day recently when I rounded the corner and was instantly face to face with the toughest looking butcher block table I had ever seen. Sitting there, it looked like it weighed a ton. I have a small quaint table at home with a wooden butcher block top, and yellow legs and shelves (which I painted). It was no match, though, for this huge baby.

The top had blackened from use and age – and would require a tremendous scrub-down (one website noted that they are more sanitary than plastic cutting boards) – but it still had its charm. Its four legs were still intact, too. It was about three feet tall, three feet deep and twice as wide.

Where the heck had it lived its life, I wondered. In a restaurant? An old butcher shop? Idling in someone’s garage?

I couldn’t imagine it in my home because my narrow galley kitchen and 1920s-built house would groan from the weight of it. It could easily become an island in a large open and airy kitchen with a few choice auction-house stools to accentuate it. Or it could be pushed up against a kitchen wall to display a collection of vintage red-handled kitchen utensils or blue and/or gray tin coffeepots and basins. Or it could be the canvas for a beautiful still-life bouquet of flowers or fruit in a lovely vase. 

The butcher block table sold for $525 at auction.

You could use it just about any way you wanted, but first, you’d have to get it home. On the day of the auction, I was curious about how popular it would be with the bidders, most of whom were dealers who come here specifically for the furniture sale. It had wowed me. Would it wow others?

I watched as five auction-house workers moved the table to the front of the ramp where the bidders had congregated. “It’s one of the nicest I’ve had in here,” the auctioneer said to get the bidding started and keep it going high and higher.

He didn’t have to wait long for it to take off – first past $100, then $200, then $300 and not stopping until it ended at $525. What a buy! I found some other lovely old butcher block tables on the web, many selling for twice that price and more. One site was selling vintage tops for more than that.

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An over-sized box of Kleenex tissues. Mennen baby powder. Little Miss Pixie bath crystals. Deoderant cream. Dills cough syrup. Ben Gay. Alka Seltzer in the glass tube. Maxwell House Coffee. Over-sized bars of Ivory soap. McCormick spices. Morton salt. Lydia Pinkham Vegetable Compound in its original sealed package. Lilacs and Roses talc powder.

There was also a pharmacist’s bottle of pink liquid labeled “Hydrochloric acid.” Scary.

This tray of household items included some to help us feel better.

I was struck by the sheer number of items and their apparent age. I’m used to seeing a box here and there of vintage tins and other household items, but I couldn’t remember seeing so many in one auction. I had been to estate auctions of people who vended for a living, but these did not have the feel of products for sale. An auctioneer told me that they came from the same house and, no, the owner was not an antiques dealer, shop owner or flea-market seller. These products were purchased from a store to be used by the owner who apparently forgot about them.

Products come and go, and I’m sure these were replaced with newer and better stuff. So why weren’t these old ones tossed when their effectiveness evaporated years ago. Seeing the five or so trays got me to wondering why someone would just keep them and where.

The products do tell us a lot of about who we were, our ailments and the medicines we took for them, the ways we tried to keep clean, the foods we ate and the drinks we consumed. They are a treasure trove of information about how we lived. I always find the look back fascinating.

An over-sized box of Kleenex tissues was among the items on one tray.

I was probably the only one at the auction who was being nostalgic. Most of these folks sell for a living, and they saw the dollars they could get from selling separately each of the 20 or so items per tray. I found the Mennen baby powder tin selling for $59 on one site and sold on eBay for $10. The Lilacs talc powder tin sold for up to $15 on eBay.

I was especially curious about the Lydia Pinkham bottle because of the background of its namesake. Pinkham was a marketer of medicinal women’s products in the 19th century, and her empty bottles were being offered on eBay (but they weren’t selling). A sealed unopened bottle of her vegetable compound would fare better, I’m sure. I also found on the web a woman who collects Pinkham bottles.

These vintage products were pretty popular at auction. Bidding on the trays was a competitive back-and-forth, with one buyer getting most of them for about $30 each.

A tray of vintage household items sold at auction.

With all of this, I got to wondering about the stuff I buy. I could not imagine my family finding products in my pantry that I bought 20 or so years ago. But would they? I decided to check for forgotten products. This is what I found:

A bottle of red Italian wine that was left behind by the previous owner of my house – 10 years ago.

Old jars of cooking spices that have likely lost their fervor. Some folks say you should discard them after six months, others say you can keep whole spices for three years and ground for a year. You can check the freshness at the McCormick website.

A product called egg-replacer that I got from Whole Foods because I don’t do whole eggs for dishes requiring them. That was before I discovered Egg Beaters.

A bottle of honey that I bought before I discovered agave to sweeten food.

A small cute jar of honey that I got at a travel show as an advertisement for the Trapp Family Lodge in Vermont.

A box of Swanson chicken broth that I’ll never use because it has 24% sodium. It’s good ‘til 2012.

A box of oatmeal I bought one day when I was thinking healthy. I could still use it to make oatmeal cookies.

A bag of artisan decaffeinated hazel nut coffee that I’ll never brew.

The worst: an almost-empty box of 4C bread crumbs with an expiration date of May 27, 2006.

Some of the household items from my pantry.

What do you have that could turn up in an archaeological dig of your kitchen cabinets or pantry?

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The day finally came last week, and I went hunting for the shakers as soon as I arrived at the auction house. There were several trays of them – many of them in pairs, clean and neat - in a glass case and on a shelf against the wall. There were animals, souvenirs, Black Americana, mini kitchen and household wares and more, made of porcelain, plastic and ceramic.

An array of salt and pepper shakers sold at auction.

There were about 24 trays in all with at least 10 pairs per tray. These were not the highly prized shakers with such names as Limoges, Royal Nippon, Royal Bayreuth and RS Prussia. These appeared to be the low-ends – flea-market buys or the kitschy types you pick up at souvenir shops on vacation that were made overseas.

In fact, Japan was one of the major mass producers of salt and pepper shakers by the 1940s, stamping them with the label “Occupied Japan.”

Over the years, shakers varied in both the materials they were made of and the designs on their exterior. From the clean and sanitary look of white milk glass to the bold colors of Fiestaware. Some bore the images of familiar characters or the advertising logos of companies. 

These Black Americana salt and pepper shakers were snapped up pretty quickly at auction.

Among the sweetest I saw on the web were two sets of shakers that were works of art: curvy and colorful shakers called Schmoo (or Shmoo, depending on what you read) by Eva Zeisel and the Holt Howard pixieware, which featured the head of an elf on the top.

Zeisel is an industrial designer from Hungary whom I had not heard of before but is quite famous in the industry. She is considered one of the premier ceramic designers of the last century, and her pieces are in the Museum of Modern Art. Her works, which include dinner ware, shakers, vases and more, are just beautiful, and all have her characteristic trademark curves. “I do curves because I’m curvy — meaning I am a little bit fat,” she said in an NPR interview in 2005.

Van Tellingen Hugging Bears shakers sold at auction.

Like any other collectibles, salt and pepper shakers have their own museum and clubs. The Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum in Gatlinburg, TN, boasts of having 20,000 sets of shakers from around the world and the largest pepper mill collection. The museum was opened in 2001 by a woman who has been collecting them for 25 years.

The shakers at auction sold for what turned out to be great prices (which I learned after doing my research). The auctioneer sold them by the tray and the first bid won was for $37.50 a tray, then $30 a tray and then $25 a tray.

The biggest win may have gone to the auction-house regular who got about 15 trays for $12 each. Not a bad haul.

Salt shakers sold at auction included Miss America, Schenley whiskey and tiny vacuum cleaners.

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I had been out running errands in the midst of the windstorm one Saturday when I came home to find that my clocks had stopped dead at around 3:20 p.m. It was now about 4 o’clock. The wind had knocked out the electricity in my house and my neighborhood. Before I had left that morning, my lights had flickered on and off, so I knew the wind was testing itself.

 
I figured I’d wait a little while to see if the blackout would end soon. As the time passed with still no electricity, I decided that I should get ready for a night without lights, just in case. So I went looking for the candles and flashlights I had placed in every room on every floor of my house for emergencies like this.

I found the candles and flashlight together in one room, and only candles in the others. Had I been interrupted and never completed the task, I wondered. Fortunately, the batteries in the flashlight worked, but I kept others nearby in case they gave out.

My next duty was to find candle holders for the candles. That’s when I realized that I don’t buy candle holders often and probably did not have a single one in the house.

With my flashlight, I went to my basement hoping that I was mistaken. As I shone the light around, I came across two candle holders made of thick glass – one clear and the other a deep cobalt blue. These thick glass candle holders, which I had bought at auction more than a year ago, were beautiful there in the faint light.

I had completely forgotten about them, and now they would be my night-saver. But I needed more than two if I wanted to walk around my house without stumbling into anything and breaking my neck in a fall.

So, I also brought some other auction items upstairs: a small green bowl in the shape of a flower, a small white vase with flowers on the side and a small dish with flowers in the center. With a little aluminum foil, I could improvise some candle holders.

Which I did. I covered each container with foil (especially the glass ones that I really didn’t want to mar with dripping wax). Then I wrapped the bottoms of the candles with foil and stuck them securely in the containers. I then placed a broad sheet of foil under each of them to protect my furniture.

I had five candle holders, four of which I set up in my bedroom. The warm glow of the candles made the room feel very peaceful, and they gave off enough light for me to feel safe and comfortable.

By nightfall, my entire street was dark. A family in the house diagonally to my left had set up candles in a window. The other houses near me looked totally dark; either the families were not at home or were in back rooms in their houses.

The street was ripe for night-crawlers looking for a place to score a robbery. It wouldn’t be my place: I put my fifth candle in a front room as a warning that this house was occupied and someone was at home. I kept a check on that candle, too, to make sure it didn’t accidentally cause a fire and burn the house down.

Around 8 p.m., we had lights again. The blackout was over.

Later, I realized that I had a vintage candle-warmer and candle holders in my basement, and could have used them. One was a Silex coffee warmer (at right in photo) for use at the table to keep your coffee or tea warm with the aid of a candle inside a glass container. The other was a Delft Holland candle holder (in center), and the other, which had a wire mesh top, looked also to be a candle holder. With a little ingenuity and some aluminum foil, they could’ve all been converted to hold my 12″ candles.

You never know when – or how – those auction finds will come in handy.

Related posts:

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Then I came upon this old white refrigerator. Not the two-door models we see so often today at our local Home Depot or Lowes. This one practically dated itself with its single door. As I approached it, I noticed a handwritten note on white paper taped to the door just above the handle:

“Aunt Myrtle, Don’t Take Anything Out of Freezer We Have Enough in Freezer Upstairs. Thanx Love Shell”

Shell had drawn a cute smiley face on the sheet.

I realized that this was an upright freezer rather than a refrigerator, and it was not an anachronism. I’m sure there are plenty of people who still keep a freezer in the basement or some other place near the kitchen for their overflow meats and frozen foods.

What had been in this freezer that Aunt Myrtle would’ve taken upstairs? I opened the door and it, obviously, was empty – and very clean. Someone had taken the time to wipe it down before handing it off to the auction house to sell.

The freezer, though, was not as interesting to me as the story of Shell and Aunt Myrtle. Who were they? What was their story? Was Aunt Myrtle always bringing food up from the freezer when there was always plenty upstairs? Did her actions precipitate the need to put a note on the freezer to remind her?

I’d love to know.

My refrigerator (the two-door model) is cluttered with magnets from the trips and vacations I have taken over the years. From the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to Monet’s Paris to Shakespeare’s London to the Stax Museum in Memphis to Gettysbury’s battlefields – with some Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence art exhibits.

What do they say about who I am? What does your refrigerator mementoes say about you?

At the auction, I was just as intrigued that the note had been left on the freezer at all. I have never quite understood why people would leave such personal items on things they want sold at auction. I would’ve torn it off and thrown it in the trash – I hope my relatives would at least give my magnets to someone worthy.

It seems the auction house folks don’t just summarily throw your stuff away. I was at an auction recently when one of the assistants placed a box of trash – literally trash – on the table for bids. I asked incredulously why they didn’t just toss it. He indicated that they couldn’t; it was given to them as part of an estate. Nobody bid on it, and they likely threw the trash into the garbage anyway.

I’m always filled with questions about the items I find at auction because they are stand-ins for their owners. Sometimes, they can take on a life of their own, and the mystery surrounding them compels me to dig up their stories. 

At one auction, I found a hankie and a card with a note from a soldier to his sister. Another time I found a soldier’s letter to his family buried under a camera lens in a leather pouch. I’m sure it had been there so long that they had forgotten about it.

I’m not sure how much the freezer sold for. Probably no more than $25, and I’m sure not over $100. I wonder what the buyer did with that note from Shell. My guess? Tossed it in the trash.

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Two settees with side chairs and armchair. A Caloric iron stove. A Wanamaker iron radiator. An iron fireplace grate.

Everywhere I went, iron and wood seemed to be in my face (the auction house was also holding a special sale on toys, many of them metal).

The settee set was the first thing I saw when I entered the large open room at the auction house. The five pieces had been arranged facing each other and placed on top of a red-and-black-patterned rug. Throw pillows had been tossed on the settees and two vintage tables and a lamp had been added to round out the arrangement.

The settees and chairs had a Colonial or Windsor feel to them, with their simple design and open backs. Hand-painted on the top front were white flowers with leaves.  

They made you wanna sit down and have a conversation, but I’m not sure how long you’d be comfortable without cushions. These settees were much like the earliest ones, though. A form of what we consider settees has been around since the 17^th century, but they were known as settles then, according to the 1948 book “Antique Furniture for Modern Rooms” by Edward Wenham. With upholstery came the name settee in the 18^th century, along with the Chippendale brand and the Georgian style. The name settee and sofa became interchangeable around that time, too.

At auction, the five pieces sold for $200.

As for the Caloric stove, this wasn’t the first one I’d seen at this auction house, and like the the others, it looked to be an early one. I could find very little about the company, which was based in Grand Rapids, MI. I did find a cookbook – probably handed out free as advertising – from 1908 called “Caloric Book of Recipes” that you can download.

The commentary at the front provided some insight into the culture and thinking at the time. A 3 ½-page section called “The Caloric from a Social Standpoint” outlined why having a Caloric Fireless Cooker was so important to housewives. First, though, it patronized them by suggesting that they “carefully” study the directions for using it and that it’ll take time for the “thoughtful housewife” to master the new stove.

It went on to say that using the Caloric would bring peace and quiet to a household where the husband was tired and hungry after a hard day at work and the housewife was harried from upkeep of the house, making meals and raising the children. The Caloric would not only save time and fuel costs, the cookbook said, but would also give her more hours to spend with her children.

How nice.

I thought the stove itself – with some cleaning of its porcelain oven front, grates and the rest – would be neat if you could find an innovative way to use it. And an easy way to get it home; it must have weighed a ton.

 
The Wanamaker heater with its metal cutouts was another design treat. It looked to be in good condition – again it could use a good cleaning – and may still have had some years on it. At one time, Wanamaker, the venerable department store that was long a fixture in Philadelphia, manufactured its own products. Maybe this was one of them. The store had been around long enough (since 1876) that I’m sure it sold what its customers wanted at any given time. This radiator looked like an antique.

The iron fireplace grate was the most unadorned and least striking. But I loved it for its squat shape, its open-cathedral edgings and its legs that reminded me of a bulldog’s.

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No one was interested in the set, which looked to be a service for eight in very good condition. I have to admit that I ignored it, too. How often do you need new dinnerware?

Two buyers asked about the serving dishes. They were interested in buying individual pieces, but not the whole thing. The auctioneer sold three pieces for $5 each (the minimum bid at this auction house is normally $5).

The auctioneer wouldn’t give up. She came back at us again. This is good dinnerware. Pfaltzgraff. Sells in the store for much more than this. If you break a plate, it doesn’t matter. It didn’t cost you much.

This was the Yorktowne stoneware pattern with the blue flower design in the center. It’s one of the easily recognizable classic patterns, although I’m not sure how old this set was. Yorktowne is also one of the company’s collectible patterns (here’s one collector’s site). On the company’s website, one dinner plate was selling for $10. A service for eight was on sale for $160. At replacements.com, a dinner plate was selling for $12 each.

The auctioneer finally gave up and moved on to the next item on the table. As I watched her try to coax us into buying, I recalled that this wasn’t the first time I’d watched this play out. It had become very common for kitchen essentials like dishes, cookware and glassware to go for little or nothing at two of my favorite auction houses. These items usually end up here after a house clean-out when a family needs to get rid of excess items. Most of the china is in pristine condition, some still in those plastic storage coverings, likely brought out only for special occasions.

As I’d watched auctioneers plead with buyers, I began thinking about the many women trying to re-establish themselves who could use these kitchen items. The woman who has escaped an abusive mate, who with the help of a social service agency has found a new home that she has to re-stock. Here at auction is a good place for her to start.

So, I decided to comb the auction tables to see how I could set up her kitchen for little money. And here’s what I found:

Dinnerware

 
On this day, I found nearly 10 sets of dishes – some full sets, some not. Either of these sets would be lovely on a kitchen table (I wrote a post back in May about dining room sets that, too, were sold at reasonable prices.)

The black Mikasa luncheon set in the photo above sold for $5. Set #5 sold for $5. The set of eight with the gold trim in the first photo in this post sold for $5.

Pots and pans

This cookware was on a table outside the auction house. I wasn’t around when it sold but I’m sure it went for less than $5, likely as part of a grouping of several boxes.

Silverware

The silverware in the cases attracted hefty bidding, and was too high for my budget. The silver-plated sold for $35 and the gold-plated for $20. The silverware in the box with the dark handles sold for $40. I overheard a woman admiring the pieces (which were pretty sturdy), and she apparently was not the only one who wanted them. Usually silverware tossed in a box sells for around $5, like the ones at the bottom in the photo.

Pitcher and mugs

Don’t you just love the opaque white pitcher and glasses with the purple grapes? I thought these were just gorgeous, with their 1950s feel. What a great way to enjoy iced tea or lemonade. They sold for $5. And the four mugs with the lime-green interior? Starbucks, still new. My auction buddy Janet bought these as part of a $5 lot. I thought the vintage cookie jar would be a nice touch in the kitchen.

Glassware

These vintage circus glasses would be popular with kids because they are so colorful and fun. They sold for $20, too high for my budget. I could’ve gotten the gold-leaf glasses, though, for $5 or less because they did not sell. The wine and desert glasses, and the canister set sold as a lot for $10.

Microwave and toaster oven

The microwave at right is Sharp, forgot to check the toaster/convection oven (left), but it still had its paperwork. Both of these items, including the box in the center with a toaster oven and iron, were among the box lots outside the auction house. Again, I wasn’t there when they sold, but they were likely dumped into a lot with other boxes for less than $10.

Conclusion

If I had been buying, I could’ve stocked the kitchen for less than $50 with items that are in good shape, would need cleaning to start afresh, and could last another 10 years or so. Auctions are a good way to stretch your dwindling dollars.

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The memories just poured from her face – a smile, a gleam in her eyes. She responded like many of the folks who stopped and picked up one of the two red-handle egg beaters (one was Bakelite, the other wood). They were remembering their mothers or grandmothers – or themselves as helpers – beating eggs and other ingredients using a tool just like this.

It’s amazing how vintage items can evoke all kinds of memories, good or bad. Lots of people had the same reaction at a flea market a few months ago when they spotted vintage S&H Green Stamps books. They picked up the books, and instantly started talking about licking the stamps for their moms and filling up book after book. Licking so many stamps that their tongues turned green.

There was no licking going on in the egg-beater stories – unless it was the cake batter and folks weren’t telling – but there was a lot of reminiscing:

“Good for your back,” a man said. I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.

“I remember my mom making cakes with this,” another man said. “She’d make me an egg and milk. She’d put the egg in the milk.” Was this an egg-shake, I wondered.

“I remember my grandma with a beater,” a young man said. “She let me try it.”

“I probably have an egg beater at home,” a woman said. “I have my mother’s rolling pin. I never use it. She’s been gone for 40 years.”

Like her, not many people use rotary or hand-operated egg beaters anymore. They were supplanted years ago by electric mixers, which made preparation for delicious cakes, pies, bread and biscuits much easier. When egg beaters were first invented in the mid-1800s, I’m sure they were a blessing. The first patent for a rotary beater with two whisks, according to my Google research, came around 1870 by a man named Turner Williams of Providence, R.I. He improved on the earlier ones that had only one whisk.

A black man named Willis Johnson received a patent for a commercial mixer. His patent documents of 1884 stated:

“The object of my invention is to provide a machine wherewith eggs, batter, and other similar ingredients used by bakers and confectioners can be beaten or mixed in the most intimate and expeditious manner.”

Here’s a drawing of what it looked like. One site noted that his invention had two chambers, one for mixing batter and the other for beating eggs. I could not find out if it was ever actually produced. (The photo below shows the two egg beaters from the flea market, along with a strainer on the left.)

The first patent for a powered egg beater – which could use mechanical, water or electrical power - was granted on November 17, 1885, to Rufus M. Eastman. By the early 1900s, the first electric mixer was invented by Herbert Johnston and sold by KitchenAid. The familiar glass bottom mixers began appearing in the 1930s.

Here are photos of some early egg beaters.

My auction buddy Janet and her friend Harriet were among the folks reminiscing about egg beaters at the flea market. The two have been friends since college, where they connected around their similar family backgrounds. Felt like they were brought up in the same home, Janet said. It was likely the southernness in their two families – many of us black folks have a down-South connection – that made the commonalities in their lives feel so familiar.

Harriet has an egg beater and a sifter – which she uses for baking cakes. “I don’t care if the package says not to sift, I just do it,” she said.

Janet remembered helping her mother prepare for baking from the time she was a child until she went off to college. “I went away to escape the drudgery,” as she called it.

She wasn’t referring to beating eggs, though. She was taking aim at the flour sifter. A Bromwell’s flour sifter was among the tools on the flea-market table. And like the egg beater, it goes back a long way: California gold-rushers in the mid-1800s took sifters, graters, pans, buckets and popcorn poppers with them, according to the company’s website.  

At the flea market, the flour sifter got as much of a workout as the egg beater. It was touched. It was ogled. Its knob was turned. 

Janet sifted flour for cakes, pies and biscuits. “When you grew up in a house where your mother baked, that’s what you did,” she said. It was a girl’s chore, she added, not one for the ”little princes” boys.

As Janet talked, Harriet offered to bring her back some White Lily Flour when she visited family in North Carolina. Some folks, especially Southerners, believe it’s the best flour for making biscuits and for baking.

Harriett is probably one of the few people who still uses a sifter. Some folks purchase these old kitchen tools for a touch of vintage decoration. One man tried to coax a female friend into buying the sifter by mentioning that he has one sitting on his kitchen counter. The metal Bromwell’s would look good, but imagine finding one of the vintage round wooden sifters with the wire mesh center. Now, that would be awesome.

Do you still use a sifter or egg beater, or remember them from your past? Write and tell me your story.

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