Chasing Provides Decoration

Chasing is a technique employed by a silver- or goldsmith. It is used to give the surface the desired finish.

The metal piece is placed on a soft base. Using a tool called a chasing hammer, the metal worker pounds or punches in the lines or patterns he wants, working from the outside of the piece.

Chasing changes the lines of the metal without removing any of it. In this way, it differs from engraving, in which the silver or gold is actually cut away.

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Handy Hooks Fancied Up

Yesterday’s hooks for coats and hats were anything but simple. In fact, designers often tended to go to extremes in the other direction, as they made these basic items needed in Victorian homes. They’re popular again today, especially for those restoring old Victorian homes.

Most of the hooks were made of cast iron, and frequently given a bronze finish. White porcelain knobs were often added to the ends, which provided even more of a hook, and one that was less apt to puncture a heavy coat.

The hooks were attached to the wall with a plate that screwed to the wall. Some hooks and plates were one piece, where the plate was part of the overall design. Simpler ones were more likely to have a separate plate.

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First Walnuts Journeyed From Indiana,
Washington, D.C., Around The Horn

Walnuts are an important crop in Oregon. The first ones planted in the state were brought from Indiana’s Wabash Valley about 150 years ago.

Samuel K. Barlow is best known for building Oregon's first wagon road, the Barlow Road, across the mountains near Mt. Hood. However, he is responsible for bringing walnuts, as well as immigrants, into the state.

Barlow came from Indiana in 1845 and settled on a beautiful small prairie just south of Oregon City known as Barlow’s Prairie. After a few years in his new home, he began to yearn for the big spreading walnut trees that had been abundant in his home state.

Determined to see if walnuts would grow here, he asked Oregon’s first delegate to Congress, Samuel R. Thurston, to bring back a bag of walnuts with him when he returned to Oregon from Washington, D.C.

Then Barlow arranged to have a bushel of walnuts delivered to Thurston in Washington by his family in Indiana. Thurston served his term and started back to Oregon, but he died at sea on the return voyage, between Panama and Acapulco.

Barlow did not hear of his walnuts or their fate until several months later, and he presumed them lost. Then he received word from an agent in Portland that a bag of something with his name on it was being held in storage at the express office. And there was a $50 charge for freight.

Barlow replied that he would not pay such an outrageous price for a bag of walnuts and told the agent to keep them for the debt.

However, about a week later, he decided he really did want those walnuts. He went to Portland, paid the freight bill, and took the nuts home.

That fall, he planted them, and almost all of them grew. Within two years, he had sold over a hundred walnut trees at a dollar each. There were enough left to line a long drive from his house to the road.

Not only did that pay his freight bill, but he doubled his money, got all the trees he wanted for his own place, and started the walnut business in Oregon.

Many of the original Barlow walnut trees survived for many years, and thousands of Oregon’s other walnut trees can trace their ancestry back to Barlow’s imports.

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