My Mom, who died in 1965, and lived all her life in New York City, never told me their story. But, I was able to do an online search and found they were probably made in the late 1940's, out of a material called "Syroco Wood". They were possible manufactured in Syracuse, New York, a city about 70 miles to the north of where I live (the Binghamton, New York area). The "Syroco" in the name stands for the "Syracuse Ornamental Company". It came into being in 1890. It finally closed in 2007.
Don't these shakers look like they are intricately carved? So did I but the truth is stranger (and more fascinating) than that. The story is worth sharing on my Local Saturday feature.
Quoting from the Syracuse University website:
Founded in Syracuse, New York in 1890 by immigrant Adolph Holstein, the Syracuse Ornamental
Company (Syroco)
specialized in decorative wood carving, especially for the local residential market.
Products included fireplace
mantelpieces and other types of interior decoration popular in late Victorian homes.
To meet increasing market
demand and sales opportunities Holstein developed a material looked and felt like
wood but that which could be
shaped, allowing multiple pieces to be produced through a molding process. The
new product, which combined
wood pulp brought from the Adirondacks [a New York mountain chain] with flour as a binder and other materials
to give it strength, was
extruded and then cut to fit compression molds, which had were made from original
carvings in real wood.
The process favored shallow molds with little
undercutting, and this served well for the creation of a wide variety of "carved"
relief work to be applied to different sorts
of flat surfaces such as walls, furniture and caskets. Production of this new molded
product, known as SyrocoWood, was the
mainstay of the company's production through the 1940s.
My guest photographer (a friend whose photos I feature from time to time) emailed me last night and sent me this link. It is full of fascinating information about Syroco and other manufacturers.
So many gone now.
And strange how, all these years, I owned a somewhat local product and never knew what it was.
Yes. Isn't it good Syroco wood.
I love stories like this. How great that you were able to trace the history of these and discover their background. I'll have to look up Syroco wood now. You've made me curious.
ReplyDeleteIt is a fascinating material. See the kinds of things you learn by blogging?
DeleteFascinating. Amazing what people come up with. And if you hadn't blogged about them, you never would have looked this up.
ReplyDeleteSo true. Now, I just hope a reader knows something about how to take care of Syroco wood, as these pieces are showing their age.
DeleteHow neat! Those figures are even more extra-super-special now, if that's possible!
ReplyDelete