Identify this antique wooden household object

This object was found among my elderly aunt’s things when she passed away a few years back. It is carved wood, about 6 inches end-to-end. I have it in my head that I have seen an object like this before, and that it has some useful function, but I can’t call it to mind.

I believe it came from my granparents’ home. They set up housekeeping in a nice house on a dairy farm in northwest Georgia in 1912 or thereabouts, and mantained the household through the 1960s.

It is possible, of course, that the object could be still older, passed down from an earlier family member.

I think this is either a kitchen item or came from my grandfather’s desk where he conducted his business affairs. Those are the two places I feel like I might have seen it before.

Any ideas?

Completely insane WAG: A door pull? Before latching knobs were invented?

No, I’m not drunk! :slight_smile:

Is it one solid piece, or does it come apart?

I doubt if it’s a kitchen tool, since it has such a shiny finish.

If the two sides can be separated, they might be decorative finials. But as it is, I don’t see how it would be useful.

It looks to me like a doorknob, possibly for a cafe door.

Finial would be my call as well.

It does look like a couple of finials attached to each other, but my first thought was a “something” bob for use with textiles, yarn specifically. Not a spindle per se, but maybe something used in conjunction with spinning or weaving. Argh! I’ve seen one of these or something very similar once before and its just right. there. just. out. of. reach. of. recall!

I was actually thinking newal posts caps, but again, as it looks, that doesn’t make sense unless it was specifically made for a certain spot in one house.

However, before you put too much thought into it, keep in mind that someone could have just been playing with a new lathe. Made one…whatever it is, then had enough extra stock left over to make it again on the other side without having to reset everything and 100 years later confused heirs are trying to figure out what it was used for.

Did she bake? It is shiny, but it looks like the sort of thing that folks used to use to roll along the edge of pastry crusts.

What stands out to me is that the ‘acorns’ on either end are so nicely smoothed and finished, while the center section seems rough and unfinished - if not the very middle, then certainly the bits connecting the acorns to the middle. It’s maybe not even rounded off there?

Because such a different amount of care went into the different areas, I suspect that the piece was not meant to be a single unified object. I propose that the acorns were meant to be cut off and used for some other purpose: finial, knob, ornament, what have you. You’re looking at parts still on the sprue, as it were.

I’m going to go out of a limb here.

The design appears to be intended to be incorporated into another component. The fact that the centre square bit is also finished the same as the ends. It suggests to me, not so much an actual finial as a component in balustrade or similar structure. Now the fact that the thing has been kept suggests some value to the owner. So, here is the far out thought. It is part of a Rood Screen. There was a habit of cutting the original screens down to a lower size, and this may have freed up components for members of the congregation to souvenir. Was your aunt of British church going stock - and may have had this passed down?

It could be used for shaping or darning socks. But then, one would think it would be scratched up from use.

It certainly does look like a latchless doorknob set, but the pointy bits are weird for that.

I thought that for a second, too, but aren’t those usually mushrooms, and a lot rounder? Those acorn things are pointy.

I’d go with the idea of it being something to with textiles or yarn. Possibly something you would drape a skein of wool over for one person to hold (with the “finials”) while someone else drew off the wool to wind it into a ball? Rather a fancy way to do what can be done with someone’s bare hands, or just two chairs back to back without anyone holding the wool, but maybe some proud husband said “Look what I’ve made out of that old [piece of unwanted furniture]!” and a wife humoured him…

Do the acorns actually come out of their cups? I’ve seen pocket sewing kits where the acorn wa actually hollow, but never back to back like this though.

But it does have the look of an unfinished piece or demolition souvenir.

It does rather look as though the central elements fixing them together are a bit more amateurish and uneven, so they might be cobbled together from something else, but for what purpose?

There are plenty of images of spinning wheels that seem to have finials at the end of various handles. But equally, you could imagine the finials on this as coming from some over-elaborate item of 19th-century furniture, say, a Jacobethan-style chair or sideboard.

I think I may have come to that conclusion. This could have been produced by one of my uncles playing around with a lathe. Maybe they gave it to my aunt and she kept it for sentimental reasons.

On the other hand, like guestchaz, I have the nagging feeling I’ve seen something like this before.

To answer questions:

This is one single, solid piece.

My Aunt was not of “British church-going stock.” She was United Methodist, and our family has been in the South for hundreds of years.

That occurred to me, too, but why finish them before cutting them off?

OP, does the thing have a nice “heft” to it, when you pick it up and handle it? Sometimes things feel so comforting in one’s hands, that they are kept even they are of no other value. So it might be a practice or defective finial made in a home shop, that felt so good to someone they decided to pass it around, and family members liked it so much that someone even finished it. The thing has enough nicks in the finish that it might have even spent some time in a child’s toybox.

My neighbor keeps a latch handle from the rear hatch of a Dodge Caravan on her porch, which visitors love to play with. It has a heft of lift and movement that is pleasing. The only part of the Dodge that escaped the crusher.

I remember making a bunch of little random wooden things (mine were carved with a penknife) when I was a kid and giving them to my grandmother, who proudly displayed them in her curio cabinet - they were still there twenty years later when she died, and I imagine whoever disposed of her belongings might have puzzled over them a little, as they were not at all useful.

I reckon that must happen quite a lot - proud parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts hanging on to little Timmy’s first bit of carving, woodturning or metalwork.

This might not be that, but it sort of looks like it could be.