Most people know that powder horns are made from cow horns, but many other items were also made of horn in the 17th & 18th centuries. Here are some of those items: Powder horns, horn measures, horn books, horn combs, the windows in lanthorns, shoe horns, buttons, knife handles & cases.
The horn book was usually made of wood and the text was written on parchment or paper. A sheet of horn scraped thin so as to be transparent was placed over the text to protect it.
A 17th century Chapman, a seller of books.
A horn measure.
A horn framed & cased reading glass.
Horn framed specticles.
A lanthorne with horn windows.
My clasp knife with horn slab handle.
A shoe horn I made many years ago when I was a hornsmith.
My Powder Horn.
Wow...I had no idea horn was used for Soooo much, particularly the lantern 'glass'. With the mentioning of Indians, particularly on the plateaus and western plains, it was also of course used for backing bows. I have always been 'afraid' to attempt it when making a bow, as I use very few tools when I do make one.
ReplyDeleteShoe horn must have been called that because originally horn must have been used! Now it makes sense.
ReplyDeleteWhen you think about it we take a lot for granted without questioning where a name came from. Like someone going off half cocked, or something was just a flash in the pan. The whole thing being "lock, stock & barrel". When I was a kid we used two woodland Indian words a lot, when something gave us the heepi jeepies, which means ghosts, & we would say if something broke or got stopped "well that put the Kibosh on that". Kibosh means "death cap". And I daresay there are a lot more.
ReplyDeleteKeith.