These objects are not actually a part of the collection. They are what we refer to as “Found on Shelf”, meaning that they were donated to DMCHS, but have never gone through the formal accessioning process. This means they do not have a unique identification number assigned to them at this time.
Using molds to shape our food goes back to at least 2,000 BCE, when the Egyptians utilized stone and wooden molds to shape their breads and cakes. Fast forward to the Tudor era, when the Court chefs for Henry VIII were using wooden molds to shape both sweet and savory foods for their tables. Henry’s daughter, Elizabeth, was known to have gingerbreads shaped and iced to look like her favorite courtiers.
In the early 1800’s, a German carver decided to experiment with tin, to see if he could get a sharper, more consistent cut than he was getting with wood, and a tradition was born. Itinerant tinsmiths soon began to offer the newfangled
devices to their customers, with the most common shapes being simple ones like people, stars, birds, American Eagles, and something called distelfink (a Pennsylvania Dutch motif that includes birds and stars).
It wasn’t until 1869 that cookie cutters were mass produced by the Dover Company. And soon, others followed suit. They were usually made of tin or copper, and contained many of the common motifs that we see today. Cookie cutters and cut out cookies became so popular that flour mills were soon offering them as premiums to promote things like lard or baking powder. Unfortunately for us, we don’t know the origin of our cookie cutters. The tin cutters are thought to have been hand-made by a tin smith sometime before 1900, while the copper cutter is a little newer, and was most likely mass produced around the mid-20th Century.
Today cookie cutters are available in metal, plastics, and silicone, and come in all shapes and sizes. But nothing beats using the metal cookie cutters that have been handed down through the generations, using the family cookie recipes and telling stories of the glories from Christmases past to help share that sense of nostalgia that this time of the year brings.
Photo Credit: Don Weiss