Throughout America’s enormously worthwhile whaling trade within the 18th and nineteenth centuries, seamen had loads of downtime, which they might spend making scrimshaw crafts as souvenirs and presents for family members.
A few of these objects had been utilitarian objects like pie crimpers. Also called jagging wheels, scrimshaw pie crimpers had been made in numerous kinds, together with fanciful unicorns, snakes, sea monsters, and extra risque shapes like girls’s legs.
Pie crimpers are valued in the present day as ornamental kitchen implements and items of people artwork by collectors who’re prepared to pay hundreds of {dollars} for the perfect examples.
EARLY PIE CRIMPERS
{Most professional} and residential bakers in the present day use their fingers to crimp the perimeters of their pies or a fork or spoon to create ornamental patterns; others, nevertheless, depend on trendy pie crimpers to do the work.
Pie crimpers have been utilized in kitchens since at the least the sixteenth century. Essentially the most fundamental examples have a straight deal with and a thin-bladed fluted or jagged wheel (therefore why they’re additionally referred to as jagging wheels). They had been made for reducing pastry, crimping the perimeters of pie crust to assist seal within the filling for higher and extra even cooking, and creating an ornamental, fluted edge into the crust. Early variations had been normally fabricated from brass and likewise had a big spoon on one finish.
Although these early pie crimpers are extremely collectible, probably the most prized and helpful in the present day are the ornate bone and ivory examples made by whalers within the 18th and nineteenth centuries.
WELCOMED GIFTS FROM THE SEA
Throughout whale-hunting expeditions, sailors might be separated from their family members for years. Common voyages for giant ships may final three to 4 years and round six months for smaller vessels, so they’d loads of time to make crafts whereas away at sea.
Leftover components of whales, like jawbones and enamel, and generally even walrus tusks, had been used to carve a wide range of ornamental and utilitarian objects. Pie crimpers had been among the many most typical scrimshaw objects sailors made for the ladies of their lives.
Pie crimpers might at first look like uncommon objects for whalemen to carve, however in context, it makes good sense why they had been so fashionable. The American food regimen on the time included loads of pie—each savory meat and candy fruit varieties. New England, the place the whaling trade was based, notably loved pie, which was a staple on dinner tables for the reason that first settlers arrived there within the seventeenth century.
With so many pies being baked, multi-tool crimpers had been a welcomed reward for the kitchen and helped individuals simply differentiate between meat or berry pies they baked primarily based on the crimping patterns.
Whereas usually considered pie-baking instruments, crimpers might be used for making any pastries. Although they’re utilitarian objects, sailors handled pie crimpers as items of artwork, including their very own whimsical touches to their creations and giving them inventive shapes.
Crimper handles had been made in elaborate kinds by expert sailors, together with birds, canine, different animals, flowers, hearts, leaves, sea serpents (a preferred motif), stars, and legendary sea creatures just like the hippocampus. With the higher physique of a horse and the decrease physique of a fish, the hippocampus seemingly derived from the miniature seahorses discovered within the tropical waters of North and South America. These kinds are uncommon, and costs mirror that: this hippocampus crimper offered for $11,400.
Some pie crimpers had been additionally made in what was thought-about to be a “naughty” type on the time: a lady’s leg sporting a boot. These are additionally uncommon and fascinating kinds.
Sailors normally carved a fork on their pie crimpers that had been used to poke holes within the higher pie crust for venting and permitting steam to flee whereas baking. Extra elaborate examples generally additionally included a number of crimping wheels that might imprint completely different patterns on pie crusts, knives for reducing off extra pastry, and tart tampers on the tip that doubled as ornamental stamps, as this three-wheeled instance has.
COLLECTING PIE CRIMPERS
Although pie crimpers fell out of normal use within the mid-Twentieth century, collectors prize them in the present day as little items of people artwork and still-functional kitchen instruments.
The earliest crimpers had been generally fabricated from brass, iron, horn, and wooden. Some had been additionally constituted of cash. In accordance with the WorthPoint Worth Information, early examples like these have offered between $5 and $720 previously few years.
However the overwhelming majority of pie crimpers discovered in the present day are fabricated from whalebone, whale ivory, or walrus ivory. The extra ornately carved examples, with elaborately formed or pierced handles and different distinctive particulars and options, will usually command the very best costs, and uncommon examples can promote for tens of hundreds of {dollars}. Some pie crimpers are so decorative that they’re nonfunctional, however collectors don’t thoughts.
Until you’re tremendous fortunate, maritime pie crimpers are a type of antiques that you just’ll hardly ever, if ever, randomly discover whereas out thrifting. Collectors trying to purchase genuine bone and ivory pie crimpers usually want to purchase them from respected antiques sellers or public sale homes like Eldred’s Public sale Gallery of East Dennis, Massachusetts, considered one of WorthPoint’s Trade Companions.
Maritime artwork and scrimshaw are amongst Eldred’s specialties, and pie crimpers are virtually all the time supplied within the maritime auctions it holds annually, so hold an eye fixed out.
Adina Ok. Francis has been a author and editor within the antiques and collectibles subject for greater than 20 years. She has a little bit of an obsession with the Victorians and thinks that canine are considered one of life’s biggest presents.
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