Meet the Characters: The Odd, the Unique, and the Mysterious

At Past & Present Home Gallery, we are not strangers to the odd item, the unique treasure, or the completely mysterious thing-a-ma-bob that comes into our store. But it’s not too often that the above are hosted by us all at once. We would like to introduce you to three such pieces:

Antique Chopsticks and Knife Set

This recent discovery sent us hunting through jungles and learning all about the history of different geographical areas such as the Indo-China region (south-east Asia). At first, this beautifully adorned chopstick and knife set looks like it came from Japan and was most likely made during the World War II era. But good research never stops at the first assumption. Upon further study, we learned that these sets are found all throughout Asia and were used by travelers, soldiers, and even given as gifts to visitors. The exact story behind the set hosted by our store is currently not know. However, we did find an almost exact match to a set made in Indonesia.

Antique Ice Cream Slicer

We are all familiar with the shape and function of the ice cream scoop. The half-sphere basin with the lever to push the ice cream out into our bowl or cone is almost as American as apple pie. But did you know that in the early 1900’s, ice cream came in slices and not just scoops? Around 1899, the ice cream sandwich was introduced. By 1910, a specialized ice cream scoop was invented that created square slices of ice cream to be put on the sandwiches. In the 1920’s the ice cream slice was just as popular as the scoop and was plated without its sandwich wafers and eaten with a spoon. The ice cream slicer currently hosted at Past & Present was manufactured in the 1920’s by the Automatic Cone Company.

Vintage Ceramic Coffee Filter

Source: http://www.nia.org/notins/nons2.htm. Retreived June 9, 2017

This mysterious little contraption is not an electric insulator, nor the world’s heaviest baby rattle, but a ceramic coffee filter. Ceramic coffee filters were used as part of the vacuum brewing method originally invented in France in the early 1700’s. As the popularity of coffee grew, the process of filtering the coffee grounds also grew. The vacuum brewing process made a come-back in America in the early nineteenth century which is when our piece was patented. In 1945, Kent Productions Company, patented their version of the vacuum brewing machine along with a ceramic filter.

Find these treasures and so much more at Past & Present Home Gallery, the antique store with character!

The Pelicans Have Landed at Past & Present Home Gallery!

Come in to Past & Present Home Gallery to meet our latest collection of cast aluminum statues! These beautiful statues can be displayed inside or outside and come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Our newest members include Minnesota pelicans, a baby giraffe, 5 foot tall pink flamingos, a giant pig, and our 8 foot long dinosaur named Arlo.

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Stop by Past & Present Home Gallery, the antique store with character!

Stories from the Past and Present: The Cookie Jar

At Past & Present Home Gallery, we often come across collections of items that have been brought together over years and years of diligent hunting and collecting and we love bringing those items into our store for the next generation of collectors. We’ve hosted beautiful selections of cruets and Flow Blue porcelain. We've also found themed collections from people who are passionate about roosters, or pigs, or even mid-Century radios. There is one collection that we always seem to add to though, and that is our ever-growing selection of cookie jars. One of the interesting things about cookie jars is that they all have individual stories and it got us thinking, how did the simple idea of a cookie jar come to be? What series of events came together to spark the idea of storing sweets inside decorated, porcelain jars? The story is fascinating:

The Sweetest of Stories: the Cookie Jar

Believe it or not, the idea of the cookie jar extends back all the way to 18th Century England where the shop keepers called them “Biscuit Barrels”. These first cookie jars were mostly shop fixtures that held baked goods in English and American stores. It wasn’t until the Great Depression that the cookie jar started coming into the home.

As the Great Depression changed American home life, families started to bake their own sweets more and more instead of buying them daily from a shop. These baked goodies needed to be kept fresh at home and thus the cookie jar started to make its mark as a staple in the American kitchen. These early domestic cookie jars were very similar to those found in the store and were glass jars with screw-on lids. Brush Pottery Company of Zanesville, Ohio is often credited with creating the first porcelain cookie jar and their idea created an opportunity that fueled pottery companies for more than thirty years.

From 1940 until the 1970’s the porcelain cookie jar was at its prime both as a utilitarian item and unique collectible. Companies found that jar shapes that depicted figures sold better than those of objects or plain shapes. Because of this, production runs had to change regularly as companies retired one shape so they could launch another. This also made most production runs of a certain shape quite small which led to an increase in collectability. Among the leaders of cookie jar production and sales were McCoy Potteries and American Bisque with Hull as an honorable mention with the “Little Red Riding Hood” being one of today’s most famous cookie jar shapes.

Today, cookie jars are still a nostalgic reminder of a way of life from long ago and are still collected by some individuals. And most cookie jars come with their own, unique stories. Come in to Past & Present to browse our selection of vintage cookie jars and possibly add to your own collection. While you’re here, check out all of the new items in the Diva Den, too.

Can’t wait to see you at Past & Present Home Gallery, the antique store with character!