Rare iron pie crimper probably southeastern Pennsylvania, 1790-1820

Chris A. Machmer, Annville, Pennsylvania, 1977

American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum, p. 171, fig. 135

Appears to be in very good condition.
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The baked fruit pie was invented by English and Scotch-Irish settlers, but pastry-crusted baked pies were quickly adopted into the popular food traditions of the Pennsylvania Germans. Baking was routine for most women within traditional Pennsylvania farm households, in which families typically ate four meals a day with fruit, meat, and "sweet" pies a part of the regular fare. The variety of pies produced in many kitchens was noted with amazement by Lewis Evans, an Englishman who traveled through Pennsylvania in 1753. Evans noted that ornately crusted pies were often presented as gifts of hospitality to guests, the infirm, or the elderly, and they were sold at regional fairs and harvest festivals and entered into local baking competitions.¹ In eastern Pennsylvania, sweet raisin pies were reserved as mourning gifts, and certain bakers within the Germanic communities became known for their talents in producing "funeral pies."

Talented household bakers often assembled many different pies during a day and developed patterns of scoring, pinching, or otherwise decorating the crusts to distinguish a dish's hidden contents. Pie crimpers, also known as jagging wheels, were popular decorating tools used by both household and professional pie bakers. Produced from metal, wood, bone, or a combination of different materials, the tool-with a notched, rotating round disc held within a handle-pinched, sealed, and trimmed the edge of the pie's crust, leaving the ruffled edge that grew to characterize the best pies.

At least three virtually identical iron pie crimpers of this form are known, and because of their similarities in manufacture and pattern, they are thought to be by the same maker.² Small, finely wrought and finished iron household objects such as this example were often the work of ironsmiths who specialized in "whitework." The thin, light dimensions of this crimper required a strong, dense iron alloy that would stand up to everyday use. In this refined example, the crimping wheel is placed in the middle of the curved pierced shaft. Both the forked and the stylized bird ends of the tool could be used to cut patterns with which to decorate top crusts. -J.L.L.

¹ Frances Lichten, Folk Art of Rural Pennsylvania (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1946), p. 12.
² One of these (collection MMA) was found near Bethlehem, Pa., among the Moravian communities there, and relates most closely to this example.