One of my prized collections is the grouping of various wooden bric-a-brac I've hunted for over the years that sits on my mantel in the living room, or as I call it, "the fireplace room".
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| The mantel grouping of 'rusticware' |
I'm not totally sure what you call this stuff...I've seen it called "truveen" or sometimes "rusticware", possibly because there was a company back in the 1950's who marketed a line of wooden items like these, Ellwood Rusticware.
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| The Ellwood company made a lot of these pieces |
You can find it on eBay and Etsy listed that way. They mostly made wooden nutcracker bowls, made to hold the nuts, the cracked shells, and the metal nutcrackers and picks. These nutcracker bowls are the most common forms I've seen. Both my grandmothers had them when I was growing up, they were very common back in the Mid-Century.
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| The classic nut bowl with slots for the nutcracker and picks |
There were other kinds of items made out of the turned wood...vases, bowls, candlesticks, boxes, even sewing kits. I have a bit of all these types. Oftentimes they're stamped on one side with the name of a tourist site or a vacation camp or as a souvenir from a town or city. You'd find them at roadside places like Stuckey's, remember that place?
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| A tall vase for fireplace matches & a sewing box with spindles for spools of thread |
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| A coin bank and two bowls |
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| A covered bowl and a small vase |
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| A candlestick and a wishing well(!) |
I love the rough, yes rustic, quality of the unfinished surface, leaving the bark in tact. It works well in my cozy fireplace room with my big leather couch and wingback chair. My friend Ron even calls it "the rustic room". It's all a wink and a nod to the simpler time of my youth.
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| "The Rustic Room" |
