The box full of mallets wasn’t about to let me pass them undisturbed. They were piled high haphazardly, all sizes and all heavily used. I couldn’t imagine whom they had belonged to and how so many had been used.
There were more than 35 or more of them, and they looked old, worn, and dusty from use and storage. One had a large head painted red, and another reminded me of folk art. There was nothing amazing about them, except that there were so many of them.
Then I spied another group of mallets on a table just behind me. They were in a thick wooden bowl with a bid number on the rim. Someone had left an absentee bid, indicating to me that there was something special about either the bowl or its contents.
As I examined the bowl, I realized that the mallets – which were just as worn as the ones on the other table – were not the prize; it was the bowl. The bowl was solid wood, polished and heavy, with four short feet. Since I could see only the top from where I stood, I stooped to take a closer look at its side. Circling the bowl near the top was what looked like twisted barbed wire made of pliable wood. Around the bottom edge was a ring of beaded wood.
It was amazing, and I understood why the buyer had left a bid on it. Had it not been for the bid number, I may have overlooked it because the handful of mallets just about obscured it.
Searching the web, I found a similar bowl described as a dough bowl from the 1890s. I’d like to think that the one at auction still had the imprint of a woman’s hands as she rolled and kneaded dough for biscuits and bread, and then left it alone to allow the dough to rise. Some dough bowls are said to have been made from one piece of wood, and they seemed to come in various shapes.
A woodworker who makes dough bowls said on his website that some types were also used as chopping and salad bowls. On his site were photos of him carving an oblong dough bowl called a trencher.
Food Network star Paula Deen collects wooden bowls, noting on her website that their value was aesthetic. I understood, because I have at least one round curved dough bowl on a shelf in my basement and several wooden boxes with their original labels on my porch. I love old wooden boxes, but I haven’t figure out any use for them, though. They do look good collecting dust on my porch.
As for the mallets, I’ve bought both wooden and metal mallets at auction, but they were the types that had been used in someone’s kitchen. Those at auction looked to be utilitarian in another sort of way. In Googling, I found that some carpenters used wooden mallets rather than hammers for nailing. These certainly looked like they were made more for driving nails than pounding meat.
The mallets and bowl were among a plethora of vintage wooden items and furniture. It was as if the auction house had cleaned out a farmer’s old barn or estate. These items, though, looked as if they’d been well cared for, even if they showed some age. In fact, they all looked to be in rather good condition.
As I stood there among the mallets, an auction regular walked up to me, surprised, too, by the large number of them. He’d bought and sold mallets before, he said, usually pairing them with chisels for sale. When he noticed the bowl, he seemed very interested in bidding on it.
I wasn’t around when any of the items sold, but the dough bowl I found on the web was selling for $95. Antique mallets were selling on one site for $10 to $40 each.
