Tinware Properties

Tinware is strong, easily shaped, solderable, and non-toxic. It has a pleasing aesthetic appearance which can be further enhanced by lacquering. The corrosion resistance of tinware, especially against food products, accounts for its popularity for use as cookware and eating utensils such as plates and cups. These properties are due to the properties of tinplate, from which tinware is made.

The emerging middle class of the 18th century wanted to enjoy things traditionally reserved for the upper classes. Upper class amenities emulated in tin reflected this new status. The new world was also a rough and tumble place. The durability (and light weight) of tin allowed for shipping over rough roads and great distances. Tinsmiths, like Edmond Pattison, an immigrant Scot, living in Berlin, Connecticut, emerged to meet this demand. He was colonial America’s earliest tinsmith of record, producing what were probably the first hand made tin plated household utensils produced in the American colonies.^[1]

Tinplate became a British dominated industry until 1890, with an output exceeding 13 million boxes of plate, of which 70% were exported to the United States. This may help explain why the United States passed the McKinley Tariff bill, which placed a tariff of 2.2 cents per pound on tinplate. After this tariff (to support U.S. made tinplate), and with other causes, the U.S. tinplate industry became the largest in the world. ^[2]

Until the first decade of the 19th century, virtually all tinware was manufactured by this “hand process” both in Europe and America utilizing stakes, hammers, mandrels, and molds. Raw tinplate and holloware was imported from the mills of Pontypool near Monmouthshire, Wales. This hot-dipped sheet iron was used almost exclusively until the late 1800’s.

By the 1860’s newly developed companies were offering prefabricated and pre-cut parts which the tinsmith could purchase and assemble into whole items in his shop. While enabling the tinner to increase his production capacity dramatically, this process of prefabrication eventually led to the machine manufacturing of complete tinware items by the late 19th century. Displaced from their traditional profession by the new machines, tinsmiths turned their skills to the heating, plumbing and roofing trades of today.

Tinware – 18th & 19th Century “Plastic”

Strong, lightweight, resistant to corrosive effects of food products. Most kitchenware items that are made of aluminum and plastic in the 20th and 21st century were made of tinware in the 18th and 19th century. Its uses range from ale tasters and coffee pots, to cooking pots, cups, plates and boxes. There is an advertisement for tinware posted by Thomas Passmore on November 30, 1793 in the Federal Gazette (Philadelphia) that is unique because of the alphabetical arrangement of his tinware goods. 19 letters of the alphabet are represented in this list, showcasing the astounding variety of tinware goods. ^[3] Over one hundred years later, tinware was featured prominently in the 1897 Sears Roebuck and Co. Catalogue, including many pots, pails, pans, and snuff boxes to name a few. ^[3])

However, like the glass beads that replaced porcupine quills and shell beads, machine woven cloth that replaced leather, and machine made blankets that replaced hand-woven fibers, and even the tinware that replaced clay pots and woven baskets, in the 20th century, less expensive aluminum and plastic have replaced tinware in the kitchen and elsewhere.