Make Your Kitchen a Country Style Kitchen - Part 2

In part 1 you were given several different options for a country kitchen as far as the furniture, cabinets, paint colors, and wallpaper. Now lets talk about the collectables that can finish off that country kitchen.

As enjoyable to collect as they are to own, vintage kitchenware make fine decorative additions to almost any country kitchen, and acquiring them can provide endless pleasure for anyone who likes exploring flea markets and antique shops. The choices can vary from yellowware and stoneware to gadgets like raisin seeders and revolving biscuit cutters, and the reasons for collecting vintage kitchenwares are as numerous as the objects themselves.

Some pieces, like brass preserving kettles or old-fashioned eggbeaters, might simply be reminders of home-cooked meals. Others, like conveyor-belt toasters, are collected as curiosities, interesting for their inventive designs.

Kitchen collectibles delight, too, with their colors and patterns: decorated wares such as spatterware and spongeware are as charming today as they were when they were first introduced over a century ago.

With patience and an educated eye, you can put together a fine collection of old pieces that will be permanent reminder of the past.

Decorated Metalware
A colorful and inexpensive alternative to fancier wares, decorated metalwares helped brighten kitchens. The detail and varied patterns of such pieces still make them appealing today. The earliest type of painted metalware was tinware.

A wide range of household objects were shaped from tin plate (sheet iron or steel coated with tin) and then "japanned." An imitation of oriental lacquerwork, this process helped prevent rust, involved kiln-firing pieces that had been treated with paint pigments - usually red, yellow, white or black or a dark, tar-base varnish called asphaltum. Decorators, or "flower-ers," then added designs in oil colors and colored bronzes.

Graniteware
Graniteware was mass-produced in America from the 1850s to the 1930s. Generally made of sheet iron or steel, this lightweight kitchenware was enabled for easy cleaning. It's swirled and speck led patterns in blue, green, gray, red, purple, yellow, brown, or turquoise resembles granite, which may have suggested the name of the ware.

Tin and copper
Cooking utensils made of copper and tinplate was used widely in America between the 17th and 19th centuries. Most copper cookware was imported from Europe until well into the 1800s; in fact, few existing American copper utensils are known to have been made before 1850. Unlike silversmiths, coppersmiths seldom marked their work, so dating is difficult.

Hearth Utensils
Hearth utensils were sturdy tools used for open-hearth cooking, which was common in America until the middle of the 19th century. Iron skewers were used to attach meat and fowl to a roasting spit. A fork and spatula helped spear or turn foods; their long handles allowing the cook to stand back from the heat of the fire.

Yellowware
One of the most popular utility potteries of the late 1800s and the early 1900s was yellowware. Produced primarily in New Jersey and Ohio from local clay that fired to a dull yellow, the durable ceramic was used for all manner of kitchen utensils. It was particularly suitable for bakeware because it would withstand high temperatures.

Spongeware
Spongeware is an object of mystery. Many questions about this mottled pottery can never be answered because their makers marked few pieces. Spongeware originated in England in the late 18th century and was adopted by American potters sometime after 1830.

"Spongeware" refers to any piece of pottery whose decoration was dabbed on with a sponge or another soft material.

Antique Woodenware
The simple beauty, texture, and hand craftsmanship of antique woodenware make it a natural complement to the country kitchen. Wooden objects for preparing, serving, and storing food were turned out by village coopers and by settlers making their own home furnishings were called "treen" meaning made of tree.

Pieces were generally shaped with hand tools or turned on lathe. Some were protected and brightened with homemade paints, usually brown, blue, red, gray, or yellow.

These are just a small list of the thousands of items that you can collect for your country kitchen. The item listed above are among the most collected by antique dealers and some are hard to find but if you look in all the nooks and crannies you might just be surprised what you can find to give your country kitchen that finished touch.