For the Love of Food Choppers

the-accumulator

the-accumulator

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Joined
Jan 24, 2008
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Try as I might, my searches for "food choppers" on this forum have come up empty.JPEG_20200317_220532_6462588575468120765.jpg
Am I the only one with a passion for eighteenth and nineteenth century kitchen implements? If I'm not alone, please show me what you've got, or show me where else to look. Thanks T-A
 
Last edited:
Spideyjg said:
Sure they aren't leather working knives?
Click to expand...
Leather-working "head" or "circle" or "round" knives could certainly chop a lot of vegetables, and I'm sure many of them did, but I've found they differ from food choppers in several ways. Circle knives have their handles oriented 90 degrees different compared to almost every food chopper I have ever seen. Food choppers typically have much thicker blades than circle knives, and, in my experience, are rarely maker-marked (at least for the older ones like I have pictured above.) And. as far as I can tell, circle knives always begin life as a near-perfect half circle.
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These are a few of my circle knives, most of which are marked. The oldest one that I can date is top center and was made by Joseph English and the Huber brothers in Philadelphia in the early 1830s.
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Funny thing...I purchased it in the "kitchen" department in a small antique shop several years ago. In the last photo I show the JE&H knife along with four others with smaller diameter blades compared to those in the first photo. I don't know if that's because they came in various sizes or if, as they were resharpened, they were purposely reshaped to maintain the perfect semicircular shape.
Thanks for reading my thread and for responding. T-A
 
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