Blog by Moog
It’s been a while since we revealed the
answers to a few interesting mystery items we’ve had the pleasure of selling at the Auction Barn over 2021 and 2022, and to close out the year we’ve made a post regaling the history of some of these most peculiar objects!
In late August 2021, we also asked you about a timber box that came with a few fold-out surfaces and a roller (and an instruction manual, but that’s a giveaway). This clever device, which looks a bit like a miniature screen printing setup in a timber briefcase, is a flatbed portable duplicator, which uses a stylus that perforates a sheet of paper and allows ink to be applied to multiple clean sheets of paper through use of an ink roller. These items, known as mimeographs, were an essential part of business, allowing quick and efficient copying in the days between the sore-handed days of hand copying and the halcyon days of the digital copier (though any office worker knows a printer is a beast unto itself!).
[Lot 310, An Ellam's 'Bantam' No. 2 duplicator in original carry case, sold for $85 AUD]
Perhaps the most popular form of the mimeograph is the rolling ‘Cyclostyle’ duplicator by David Gestetner (b.1854 - d.1939), which allowed quick, successive pressings of copies using a rolling barrel system, and most models use only a hand crank to operate. During World War II, the duplicator suddenly became a useful tool for the replication of surreptitious articles, such as pro-resistance pamphlets and newspapers, or as quick copiers for important documents and missives to be sent out to every corner of the front. Many advertisements for the Mimeograph during this time highlight their importance, with women in uniform and soldiers reading duplicated text in the dark. The Australian War memorial has an excellent feature article on the maps created by Lieutenant Jack Millett, the ‘Map Maker of Colditz’, who used jelly to create secret mimeograph copies of hand made maps, with techniques taught to him and his fellow soldiers when they were back at school for making newsletters and programs.
Nowadays, the mimeograph has been superseded by the ubiquitous digital scanner and copier; but artisanal production of risographs, screen-printing, linocut art, and other art forms such as zines means there’s still a place for these devices today!
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Now for an easier one. Back in April 2022, we asked about this captivating object – formed of glass, with a long neck closed by a stopper, on three raised feet with a curved underside that opens up inside.
While it would function as a fairly useless but amusing decanter with that big hole in the base, it’s an ingenious design for what it is, and the best thing is that it’d still be very functional today!
This is a flycatcher - simply pour in a sweet and sticky mix - a modern recipe might be apple cider vinegar and dish soap - where the scent attracts the flies to crawl underneath the propped-up feet and into the chamber where they sip the mixture and then cannot escape. Because it’s clear, you can peer in and see your spoils, and keep those pesky fruit flies out of your face over a warm and wet La Niña summer.
[Lot 153, An antique Victorian blown glass fly catcher, on tripod feet and later stopper, sold for $68 AUD]
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Now, as we close out the year in antiques, we have one more mystery for you, and our hardest one yet! We asked our facebook followers about this one a week ago, and This piece is marked for makers ‘Ergos’, who operated out of Sheffield, England. Sheffield’s main claim to fame in the antiques sphere is their plating technique, using an alloy of copper and silver to create a strong object at a much lower cost than using pure silver. Succeeded later by the electroplating process that gave us EPNS articles, there continued to be a tradition of innovation for much of the way into the 19th and 20th centuries, perhaps best exemplified by Henry Bessemer (b.1813 - d.1898), whose advances in steel manufacturing helped accelerate the industrial revolution even further than before.
This item doesn’t have an explicit date, but it could be anywhere from the 1900s until the 1960s. It consists of a spring loaded central handle with a collar that allows one of three indicated depth settings, where the panel inside the rectangular box recedes to three different depths depending on what number the collar is turned to. It took even us a bit to work out quite what it was, but it was delightful to finally know - it’s an ice cream maker!
[Above: A vintage Ergos (Sheffield, England) ice cream 'wafer holder' sandwich maker, with three settings and maker's mark to edge]
Whilst we couldn’t find out much about Ergos, the maker of this object (though we found a listing for the dissolution of an ‘Ergo’ Manufacturing Company, before 1916, in the National Archives at Kew) but a previous sale of the same item with its original box describes its contents as an ‘Original Three-In-One Ice Cream Wafer Holder’, which ‘Instantly produces, by a simple turn of the collar, three different thicknesses of Ice Cream Sandwiches’. The ice cream wafer is a thinner, wafer-cased variation of the modern ice cream sandwich, and a popular variation of the form in the UK. Pull down the central spring chamber and pop in your wafers, apply a palette knife (or a careful spoonful) of ice-cream and press in, and top with more wafer, then let go to pop your sandwich out cleanly and easily. We haven’t tried it, but this video for a similar item illustrates that the desire for novelty ice creams has driven a lot of people to create throughout history!
This item will be up for auction in our first Antiques auction of the new year, and we’ll be sure to let you know when it goes up (check back here, or keep an eye out on our facebook feed; or better yet, sign up to our mailing list for up to date info!).
We hope you enjoyed working out a few mysteries with us, and that you learnt something new and exciting this year. As we close up for the end of the year, we hope you have a restful holiday season, and we can't wait to see you in 2023!
[To Right: Detail of the 'Ergos' Sheffield, England trademark]
References:
Various authors, ‘Mimeograph’ [Wikipedia Entry], <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimeograph>
The Dacorum Heritage Trust, ‘Bantam Duplicator Machine’ from the exhibition ‘Unveiling the Unusual ~ Weird and Wonderful Objects from Dacorum’, Hertfordshire; England, <https://www.dacorumheritage.org.uk/article/bantam-duplicator-machine/>
Hunter, Claire (2020), ‘Jack Millett: The Map Maker of Colditz’, on the Australian War >
Ebay UK via Worthpoint, ‘VINTAGE ERGOS THREE-IN-ONE ICE CREAM WAFER HOLDER WITH BOX’, <https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-ergos-three-one-ice-cream-876971305>