Category: antiques

Books on Antique Maple Collectibles

One the most popular and enjoyable ways to learn and think about the history of maple syrup and maple sugar is through studying and collecting sugaring’s material remains. In other words, the artifacts, antiques, or collectables of maple sugaring, especially the portable and easily handled tools and equipment used by past maple producers. There is a small handful of books out there that can be helpful aids in the understanding and identification of the wide range and variety of maple sugaring antiques. In a previous post I highlighted a few more recent publications by Hale Mattoon and Jean-Roch Morin that emphasize the study and collection of spouts and spiles, as well as other maple artifacts.

Prior to the publishing of these excellent books, the best-known and most comprehensive guide to maple sugaring artifacts and antiques was the classic book Sugar-Bush Antiques by Virginia Vidler.  This book is long out of print but can be found for sale used on Amazon and at www.abebooks.com.

Virginia Vidler’s book is well illustrated with photos and descriptions of all the different sorts of collectable maple sugaring items related to maple sugaring in years past. Everything from sap collection containers, gathering pails and tanks, to evaporator pans and wood and tin molds, to packing tins, bottles, and jugs, to skimmers and paddles and syrup pitchers to paintings, photos, engravings, postcards, written reports and historic documents. Of course the very popular spouts and spiles are covered as well as.

Tools and equipment are divided into chapters focused on wooden-ware, tinware, and glassware, and with most every imaginable sort of sugaring item described and illustrated. This book is not a catalog of all known sugaring artifacts. There will always be unique and obscure examples of different types and varieties of sugaring items that catch the eye and interest of the collector. While the book is a bit dated with a 1979 publication date, it is a great addition to the shelf of anyone interesting in the material culture and collecting of maple-related antiques.

For the collector with a more narrow focused on the study of maple sugaring molds, there is a great little book by R.L. Séguin, itself now an antique, published in 1963 by the National Museum of Canada titled les moules du Québec.  Although the book is written entirely in French, it is very well illustrated with a great many examples of the kinds and types of molds one might find and collect from the past when making maple sugar was as much a part of the maple operation as making syrup.

Moules is the French word for molds, and the contents of the book includes all forms of maple sugar molds from the large multi-compartment trays to make small rectangular blocks, to tin and iron molds to make small cakes, to the artistic and block molds featuring animals and shapes, and other notable designs. Most interesting to me are the three-dimensional wooden molds that fit together like a locking puzzle to form solid blocks of sugar in the form of houses, books, bibles, fish, and birds.  While a little more difficult to find than the Vidler book, this too is a great addition to the reference materials for maple antique collectors. Plus it is just neat to study the artistry and craft that went into handwork of making these molds where nearly everyone was individual and unique.

There is also an interesting, well-illustrated section on sugar molds in Michel Lessard’s 1994 book, also written in French, titled Objets Anciens du Quebec: La vie domestique, which translates to Ancient Objects of Quebec: Domestic Life.

Lastly, it is worth noting that one can find information, including ballpark prices and values for many maple sugaring related artifacts in the mainstream antiques collectors guides, such as Linda Campbell Franklin’s 300 Years of Kitchen Collectibles.  Such guides are periodically updated for both content and price information, so it is best to find a more recent copy if using as a price guide. earlier guides are still great reference tools for recognizing and learning about various maple sugaring related artifacts.

Collectors will find that many artifacts and antique, especially specific to a brand or company are not represented in these guides. It is true that there is room for many more such guides and catalogs. Thankfully collectors like Hale Mattoon and Jean-Roch Morin have taken the initiative to assemble their collections and the collections of others into handy, useful, and informative books.  Hopefully we will see more publications like theirs in the years to come.

The Gooseneck Metal Pipeline: Wisconsin’s First Tubing System?

This article originally appeared in a 2004 edition of the Wisconsin Maple News.

Plastic tubing and vacuum pumping continue to grow in popularity in Wisconsin sugarbushes with a few more miles added every year.  But long before the invention of plastic tubing in the late 1950s, early twentieth century Yankee farmers wanting to reduce the labor of gathering sap invented a metal gravity-fed pipeline system that carried sap directly from the tree to the sugarhouse.  This metal pipeline system consisted of three sizes of tubing, each constructed from long narrow sheets of English tin folded and crimped at the top and slightly tapered at the end to be inserted tightly into another piece of tubing.  The system also included spiles made from conical sheets of tin with a metal tube soldered to the bottom like a drop line.  The spile was either inserted directly into openings on the top of pipeline or into connecting pieces that fit into the pipeline.  This connection from the spile to the tubing was made by a shorter, tapered piece of tubing with a curve at the narrow end, similar in appearance to the neck of a goose.  In fact, it was this piece that gave this system its common name of “gooseneck system”.  The weight of the rigid metal pipeline was supported by heavy gauge wire strung through the woods, with a hook at one end of each piece of tubing to hang the tubing on the support wires.

The gooseneck system in use in a Vermont sugarbush circa 1930. Source: Vermont Maple Sugar and Syrup, Bulletin 38.

The gooseneck system was patented in 1916 near the village of Mayfield, New York along the southern margins of Adirondack State Park by William H. Brower, Jr.  Brower, who was described by his grandson as a mechanic and tinkerer, developed the system with his neighbor and syrup maker, Edward L. Lent.  Today, the workshop where it was invented still stands on land owned by the Lent family and is noted by a roadside historic marker.  According to Lent family history, Brower and Lent later sold the patent to one of the larger Vermont maple syrup equipment makers.  Amazingly, through four generations of syrup making, the Lent family has never stopped using the gooseneck system.  At one time, the Lent family’s mountainside sugarbush was using as many as 2500 taps on the system and boiling on a 3 foot by 16 foot wood fired evaporator. In recent year the family has reduced their tapping to around 300 to 400 taps and downsized to a 2 foot by 10 foot evaporator.  According to the Lent family, the metal pipeline will occasionally freeze during cold spells, but thaws out quickly on south and east facing hillside of the their sugarbush.  At the end of the season, the network of support wire is left strung through the sugarbush but the tubing is taken down.  The pipeline sections are washed and boiled in the evaporator in the last sap of the year then set upright to dry, coating them with a thin layer of sugary sap that prevents rust from developing in the off season.

The late Edward Lent, grandson of Edward L. Lent, tapping trees for gooseneck system in Lent family sugarbush in March 2002.

The gooseneck system was sporadically used during the 1920s and 1930s in the more hilly and mountainous sugarbushes of northeastern United States.  Until recently, this technology was not known to have made it as far west as Wisconsin.  However, in 2003, cultural resource management staff of the USDA Forest Service in Wisconsin discovered the long abandoned remains of a maple sugaring operation in the hills of southwestern Ashland County.  The remains of this former sugarhouse and storage building included over one thousand, four-foot long sections of the tubing system, as well as the gooseneck connecting pieces, coils of suspension wire and other debris.  Today the site appears as a series of building foundations in an overgrown clearing at the base of a maple covered ridge, a perfect location of the gravity fed pipeline system.

A fallen over stack of thousands of sections of metal pipeline at the remains of an abandoned sugarbush on the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, southern Ashland County, Wisconsin.

Based on the age of the other artifacts at the site, including three sizes of metal syrup tins, the use of this sugarbush roughly dates to between 1915 and 1930.  The U.S. Forest Service acquired the land in 1934, shortly after it had been logged and most of the large mature maple trees removed.  As the only known example of the use of the gooseneck system in Wisconsin, the Forest Service has recognized its historical importance and is protecting the site as part of planned forest management activities. In addition, research into the history of the site and use of the pipeline continues.

Matthew Thomas. “The Gooseneck Metal Pipeline: Wisconsin’s First Tubing System?” Wisconsin Maple News, 2004, volume 20, number 1, page 12.

 

Vintage Dominion & Grimm Catalogs Online

For the maple history fan interested in old equipment catalogs and the evolution of maple syrup technology, the Canadian equipment manufacturer Dominion & Grimm has made available a nifty collection of their catalogs from years past.

The catalogs in these full color scans cover most decades of the twentieth century and are presented as downloadable PDF files.  Also available on the Dominion & Grimm website is a short history of their company which began as a Canadian wing of the G.H. Grimm Company of Ohio under the direction of a cousin of Gustav Henry Grimm.

Initially manufacturing and selling Champion Evaporators patented by G.H. Grimm, the Canadian Grimm Company was an independent affiliate of the Ohio Grimm company until it was purchased by the Dominion Evaporator Company in the 1950s, becoming the Dominion & Grimm company of today. It’s wonderful that Dominion & Grimm saw the value in preserving and sharing a record of their products and sales publications.

An excellent historical companion to the Dominion & Grimm story is the 1987 history of the G.H. Grimm Company by past owner and president Robert Moore and published in Volume 17, number 4 of  the Rutland Historical Society Quartery. This company history traces the successful evolution and ownership of the G.H. Grimm Company from its Ohio beginnings in 1880, through its move to Rutland, Vermont in 1890, on to its sale in 1983. Moore’s article is a much appreciated corporate history of one of the most influential and important companies in the invention and manufacturing of maple syrup evaporators, spouts, and other equipment.

New Books on Antique Spouts and Other Maple Related Objects

In the last few years a handful of interesting books have come out showcasing maple sugaring collectables and antiques, most notably spouts, taps and spiles from the 1800s through about the 1960s. These books include abundant photos and descriptions of the many spouts commercially produced over the years as well as images of their original designs patents. The first of these books to appear was Hale Mattoon’s Maple Spouts Spiles & Taps published in 2013 and available directly through Hale Mattoon by mail at 274 East Randolph Road, Chelsea, Vermont 05038.

This book is focused specifically on spouts and is organized by the state or province of the inventor, patentee, or manufacturer. For collectors of maple spouts, this volume is an indispensible reference.  True to the eye of a seasoned collector, the book goes into the finer details and differences between and among what otherwise appear to be virtually identical spouts. Early plastic spouts both for pails and tubing that appeared in the late 1950s and into the 1960s are also included with limited information, with the bulk of the book focused on formed sheet metal and cast metal spouts.

The next book in this grouping is an interesting book from Jean-RochMorin titled Spouts, Patents and Sugar-Making Objects from Yesteryear, published in 2015 by La Plume d’Oie in Quebec. I purchased my copy of the book through the catalog listing with Lapierre Equipment in Swanton, Vermont.

Jean-Roch’s book has many similarities to Hale’s 2013 book with a focus on antique collectable spouts, a heavy presentation of patent images, and an organization by state and province. Where Jean-Roch is the most different is in the fact that the text of the book is wonderfully presented in both French and English. The book also includes a strong representation of Canadian patent images as well as American patent images. Other nice additions are the inclusion of relevant vintage graphics and advertisements for sugaring equipment. The book also looks at more than just antique spouts and also displays images, patents, and advertisements for early pails and buckets, bucket covers, sugar molds, sugaring tools, paddles, and pans and evaporators. The beginning of the book starts with a short history of maple sugar and ends with detailed description of maple sugaring in 1876.

Lastly, Hale Mattoon has followed up his first book with an expanded and updated version titled Maple Spouts Spiles Taps & Tools, published in 2017 also available directly from Hale by email or snail mail.

Taking advantage of access to a number of friends and colleagues in the community of collectors of maple sugaring objects Hale’s “new and improved” maple spouts book goes beyond the scope of the first book by adding photographs and patent images for a wide range of additional maple sugaring objects, such as pails, tapping tools, gathering pails, and sap regulators. Like the Morin book, the 2017 book from Mattoon also includes an abundance of well dated vintage advertising and catalog images and select text providing relevant and useful historical background and context. There are also examples of spouts not found in Hale’s 2013 volume. One particularly unique artifact featured in the book are the many images of the cast iron front pieces to a wide variety of boiling arches most of which display their manufacturer’s name in bold lettering and design.

All three books are very well illustrated with excellent black and white photographs and should be of interest and value to any collectors of maple sugaring antiques or ephemera as well as to those interested in the history and technology of the maple industry.

On a side note, an additional, not so recent book that would interest similar audiences is the 1979 book Sugar-bush Antiques by Virginia Vidler, available through used book sellers like AbeBooks.com and Amazon. I will feature the Vidler book in an upcoming post about earlier books related to maple industry collectables and artifacts.