Author: Cindy Lambert

This article continues on the same venue as the previous article written on “Chiv, Croze, or Howel,” in describing the hand tools used by coopers. The date range represented by these chamfers, knives, and shave tools in the Wine History Project’s collection are from the early 1800s through 1910.

This article focuses on the cooper, a maker or repairer of casks, and the cooperage tools used to make cuts at the ends of the barrels, a specific size of cask.

Spigots control the flow of liquid from a large container and have been in use since ancient Greeks and Romans installed them in their bathhouses. The Wine History Project’s collection includes twelve different objects actively utilized between 1860 and 1910.

Wine bottles get corked, with corks made of cork. This wasn’t always the case; but when it became important for better wine storage and delivery, the dilemma to be solved was how could one insert and fix a cork into a wine bottle easier?