The Museum of the Grand Prairie is located in Mahomet, Illinois. We are part of the Champaign County Forest Preserve District, and our mission is to collect, preserve, and interpret the natural and cultural history of Champaign County and East Central Illinois.
Through diverse experiences, we seek to inspire our audiences with a sense of connection to, and stewardship of, their natural and cultural world.
. . . what this week's mystery artifact might be! The object is made of two pieces of wood tied together with a sturdy piece of rope threaded through two holes on each piece of wood:
The object can be opened to reveal an oval hollowed-out space on one side and an egg-shaped protrusion on the other:
It appears to be handmade. I will even give you a tiny hint - it has nothing whatsoever to do with Halloween! (Try as I might, I was not able to find any Halloween-related objects in our collection).
Take your best guess and post it in the comments section below or on our Facebook page. Good luck!
We had a few really great guesses on Facebook this week. Both Lorelei and Jessie suggested that this was some kind of (dangerous) hair crimper. Lorelei also suggested that this might be a pasta machine (which is what this reminds me of most). The correct answer came from Jenifer, who said it was for pleating fabric.
This week’s artifact is called a fluting iron, and it is indeed meant to create tiny pleats in strips of fabric. This model is from 1875, and just looking at fashion plates from the era, you can tell why these machines were popular. Tiny pleats were everywhere in women’s fashion: along the hems of dresses, on collars, bonnets, and just about anywhere else they could manage to squeeze on some pleated trim.
There were many different models of fluting iron available, even some that actually looked like irons and worked by sandwiching the fabric between the zig-zagging face of the iron and a matching plate.
The model featured in our mystery artifact post worked by turning the handle to run a strip of fabric between the spinning wheels (actually rather like a pasta machine, if you've ever used one of those). If you want to read more about these neat little machines, I highly recommend this post from the Montgomery County Historical Society's blog.
What can I say? I really like finding these cool old machines in the collection. What do you think it could be? Let us know either here or on our Facebook.
We had two correct guesses on this one! Both an Anonymous commenter on our blog, and Brent on our Facebook page knew that this was indeed a rope maker.
According to our database, this particular rope maker was from 1901. Just a little bit of Googling helped me figure out that this is a Bucklin rope maker, patented November 12, 1901.
According to the text from the patent, "the object of the [rope making machine] is to provide simple and effective means whereby
rope can be quickly made by hand from lengths or strands of cord, twine, and
the like, and is particularly intended for use by farmers who have lengths or
strands of cord and twine left over from binding-machines or other similar
devices, which are usually wasted", probably making this a very handy invention. Just judging by the number of these that seem to have lasted to the present day, it must have been both a sturdy and popular choice.
The rope maker works by using three hooks, attached to the geared portions, to twist the chosen materials into rope. Here is a rather charming demonstration we found from an Edwardian farm, demonstrating the same principles on a larger, slightly different machine.
This week's mystery artifact inspired many clever guesses, including a cincher for laces, sardine can opener, fish scaler, decorative pie crust sealer, honey dipper, and nose-picker (although I hope you were joking, Susan)! The guess 'cincher for laces' is not far off, although this handy little artifact came along to replace the need for laces on clothing or shoes: it is a buttonhook, for buttoning up articles of clothing or shoe buttons.
A buttonhook is a helpful piece of technology, as can be seen in this video:
Although buttonhooks today are marketed as adaptive technology for patients who struggle with fine-motor skills, one hundred years ago buttonhooks were a necessary part of most peoples' daily routines. They reached their popularity between the 1890's and 1920's, when most items of clothing, including jackets, vests, gloves, and skirts, were fastened with rows and rows of buttons. A pair of boots alone could include over 50 buttons - which would take a substantial amount of time while dressing! However, it was noted by Jerome Sholem, a shoe salesman from Champaign, that buttons were far better than laces. He said, "I was happy to see the change. I spent hours lacing and unlacing those tall shoes and I was sick of it." (The Sholem family were cobblers who immigrated to our region, switching to shoe sales with the advent of mass-produced shoes; the Sholem building still stands on East Main Street, emblazoned with the logo "Home of Good Shoes").
Buttonhooks were a time-saving invention that found at home on most women's dressing tables and, according to some sources, on many women's chatelaines, as well. They come in all shapes and sizes, many marketed as part of a matched dressing-table set:
Buttonhooks also became a popular trench-art item during the First World War, with soldiers creating and sending home buttonhooks made from shell casings. These examples are on display at the Bedford Museum, UK:
Add to the time spent buttoning clothing the fact that most fashionable middle- and upper-class women would make several changes of clothing throughout the day: from morning dresses to tea gowns to day dresses to evening wear. We may joke about "dressing for dinner" today, but it was very much a daily reality for women around the turn of the century!
Brown wool jacket, labeled "B. Altman & Co., New York,"
from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Buttonhooks were a necessity of life through the turn of the century, until the mass-marketing of zippers on children's clothing in the 1930's introduced a new trend in the clothing industry. I, for one, am pleased that they did - I find it hard enough to get myself and my daughters out the door in the morning without worrying about a thousand-and-one buttons to hook!
