12/18/2023 0 Comments Damp tinderbox![]() Sold at Pook and Pook October 24-25, 2008Īnother point is that all the old sheet-iron, whether tinned or not, before about 1728, was hammered with heavy water-run hammers. If, therefore, anyone has one of these ancestral tinder-boxes, which he can prove to have been in his family earlier than 1740, it must have come from Germany, or must have been made here from German-not English, tin plates.įour tinder boxes, 18th Century. Before that time the tinning of sheet-iron was a great German secret and long remained so until a metallurgist named Andrew Yarriten, about 1690, went to Saxony and brought over the art to England. For this reason this box brings us to the antiquity and origin of this kind of metal together with that of the tinsmith or tinker and all articles made of tinned plate which must be determined by two facts: First, that though the ancients knew how to tin copper, as the Arabs have tinned this little vessel of beaten copper, the art of tinning iron is a comparatively modern discovery and was not known or practised in England upon thin iron plates at least, until about 1740. The next feature of interest is the fact that the box is made of tin, so-called, or properly speaking, tinned sheet-iron, or thin sheets of malleable iron dipped in molten tin. No doubt, the older tinder-boxes had no candlestick attachment, so that this, which is perhaps the last of the widely used tinder-boxes, is probably the most convenient.Įuropean wrought iron and brass tinder box dated 1734 with striker. But the peculiar feature of the box, which is typical of a whole class of tinder-boxes in use in colonial America and England before the American Revolution, is a candle socket upon the lid, making of the apparatus a tinder-box and candlestick combined, which gave you a permanent, transportable light, that could be used for a variety of purposes before you lit the fire, otherwise, minus the candle, the tinder-box must have been close to the freshly laid fire and the flame communicated to the kindling with the lighted spunk, which is a match, but not a percussion match, before the latter went out. ![]() Under this lid our ancestors kept the tinder, and lying upon it inside the box, the flint, steel and spunks. The inner loose lid not only smothers or quenches the smouldering tinder when the operation is over, but enables you to burn and smother a fresh rag from an already existing fire. The box is round, 4 inches in diameter and 2 inches high, with a circular tin handle for the forefinger. What is steam what is gunpowder or printing what are electricity, railroads, airships, trolley cars, in comparison with this process which is at the bottom of everything? How, when and where did man first master fire, or how could he have lived here in the North Temperate Zone or in any part of the world where winter comes once a year, without fire? How can we help speculating upon such a subject as this? Can we suppose that he could have lived, therefore, in his infancy anywhere but in the tropics, or that under these circumstances he could have been a white man at the start, or anything but a sun-tanned black man, when living on uncooked food, in the tropical regions of the globe, he began his career without fire?īut to return to the tinder-box and a consideration of its form, material and contents from an archeological point of view. Perhaps this is not much to look at, but from a historic point of view it is a thing of such importance that it might be described as the master of human progress from prehistoric time down to 1835, or as visible proof of perhaps the greatest discovery that man ever made. Holding the circlet of steel vertically in your left hand you strike diagonally downward upon its outer edge with the flint so that a spark of percussion flies downward into the tinder, which is a scorched linen rag lying in the box beneath the latter holds the spark as a smouldering ember, until you touch the spunk or sulphur-tipped splint upon it, whereupon with a little blowing the sulphur takes fire and you have a lighted match with which you light the candle set in the socket in the box lid. You must make the spark, retain the spark, then produce the flame and retain the flame. To make fire thus, four operations are necessary. Here is a little tin box with a finger handle, and with a candle socket soldered upon its lid and a loose lid inside containing a piece of flint, a piece of steel, a scorched rag and several splints of wood tipped with sulphur, which is the apparatus for making fire used in our colonial ancestors in Bucks county and from time immemorial by all the so-called civilized people of the work.
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