MADE IN AMANA -- Tinware

The Amana Colonies in Iowa, where my sister and I grew up, is a religious community founded in the mid 1800s by people fleeing religious persecution in Germany.   The community was self-sufficient with no need to venture into the outside world.  As a result, the German language was spoken almost exclusively well into the early 1900s.  It was as if a piece of Germany had been transplanted right in the middle of the United States.   Residents not only brought the language with them, but the crafts and traditions they were raised with in Germany as well.  All that continued in the Amanas and flourished.  The tinsmith was a very important craftsman.   A handful of men in the community created the items used in everyday life.  The sprinkling can with blue paint is an early Amana tin piece treasured today.

Huge tin colanders were a staple in every communal kitchen in the Amanas used for cleaning the produce brought in from the massive communal gardens every summer.

 

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This lovely painted tin lunch basket carried meals to the workers.

 

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Kitchens were stocked with colanders, buckets, pitchers, molds, utensils, cookie cutters, and on and on.  The Amana "running rabbit" cookie cutters were found in every kitchen . . .

 

. . . as were heart molds and heart cookie cutters.

 

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My thanks to Carol Schuerer Zuber for allowing me to share the above photo and the photo of the Amana painted tin lunch basket from her collection!