People who love old things by nature gravitate towards certain categories of antiques. If you love antique furniture there’s a good chance that you like other antiques that are associated with the home. You might also appreciate paintings or prints and porcelain.

If you love sports you might like sports memorabilia, posters, old sports equipment and so on. If you like carpentry you might like to collect things like antique tools, old plans, architecture books – you get the picture.

I love household antiques and one of my favorite books is a catalogue about Victorian goods. The proper title is “The Victorian Catalogue of Household Goods” with an introduction by Dorothy Bosomworth. This book was originally published in 1883 as “The Illustrated Catalogue of Furniture and Household Requisites” . I can understand why they updated the title of the book. The book was republished by Outlet Books, a Random House company in 1991. These images are from that book. See if you can figure out what they are.

Look at the three pictures to your left. See if you can figure out what these are before you read the rest of this post where I give you the answers.

Ok – The first picture is a sugar loaf cutter. Did you get it right? Sugar wasn’t always free flowing as we know it today. It used to come in solid loafs that were shaped much like a tall skinny cone. The sugar cone was placed in the hole below the blade (on the right ) and the person cutting the sugar used the handle to push down and cut the loaf. The chunks of sugar were then put into a sugar bowl – that’s why early Victorian sugar bowls were so large especially compared to the creamers!

The second item is a “dissolving lantern”. This is early cinematography. The technician used this as a way to fade from one image to another – or “dissolve” to show a change of location or a change in time – kind of like “back at the ranch”. The images on the screen were displayed then the two jagged pieces were moved towards each other until the screen image was completely hidden. Then the new image was put into place and the jagged pieces separated to expose it. I’m not sure if I am explaining this well.

The third image is a snuff box. Victorians were very fond of “natural” accessories so they used parts of exotic animals for things like snuff boxes, umbrella stands, and much more. It did not occur to them that the most natural place for these horns and hooves was on a live animal.

So. How did you make out? Please leave me your comments – were you surprised by some of the answers?