⁉️ What the Friday is that?
Every Fortnight, we will be introducing you to an important artifact that is in our collection, here at The Castle Heritage Centre.
We’d love your thoughts, can you guess what it is, how it was used? We’ll follow it up with the answer as we explore another, let’s see how many of you got it!
➡️ This week’s artifact is a pair of Victorian Sugar Nips.
Here’s a bit of history;
- For as long as tea has existed in the Western world, it has been sweetened with sugar. So much so, in fact, that by the end of the 17th century, British imports of sugar were estimates at around 70,000 tonnes.
- Covered sugar bowls and boxes were standard tea set equipment by the early 1700s, often sold along with teapots and tea caddies. The rules of etiquette dictated that tongs were also required to transfer lumps of sugar from the sugar bowl to the teacup.
- Sugar tongs were initially based on fire tongs, having slender arms and curved ends. Early sugar nips/tongs of the late 17th century were even formed after miniature fire andirons. In order to make them spring suitably for their purpose, their ends were heated and hammered many times to give them sufficient tension. These early forms of sugar tongs had small, flat oval bowls; these were soon replaced with dished bowls, more practical for the job of gripping and moving the sugar lumps Between 1720 and 1730, the tongs were formed to resemble little pairs of scissors. By 1770, however, the scissor design had faded out, and bow-shaped tongs formed from one piece of metal featuring springs were the fashion.
Did you guess correctly? Well done, we had some brilliant answers, some correct, some close and some, well, just a bit random, but it made us giggle!
Look out for the next one and see if you can guess what this one is?
Did you know we hold an inspirational collection of documents and artifacts that play an important role in Bude, Stratton and the surrounding parishes rich heritage. You can also visit us seven days a week as we are open from 10am every day (including bank holidays).
