The History Of Charles Wickwire Food Cover

Charles Wickwire made this Wire cloth food cover. The Wickwire Food cover was made from around the 1880’s up until 1898, and was offered in a catalog from 1890 to 1898. This item would have been made in Cortland, NY. This type of food cover was made to protect food and to keep away bugs, and other pests. Its primary purpose was to keep food sanitary while out on a picnic or any other outdoor gathering. It is made of scrap iron heated by means of open heart furnaces and woven. In the 1870’s Charles Wickwire began his primitive weaving of wire into screen. In the 1880’s Wickwire and his company started creating wire cloth suited for door and window screens composed of steel wire, which was either painted or galvanized. This item would have been made very cheaply depending on the price of iron. The wire cloth food cover was manufactured using a coal oven. The food cover was used to keep food sanitary over the top. This item was reusable, so for the time period it was a cheap purchase. Restaurants and homes would have used this food cover, along with wealthier families who had the extra means to buy it.

Around 1910, the Wickwire brothers opened distribution warehouses throughout the country. The company was liquidated by the Wickwire family in 1969. The Wickwire wire cloth food cover exemplifies the Gilded Age as an age of excess, but also an age of booming industrialization. Charles Wickwire head of the Wickwire plant made his wealth off his process of weaving melted scrap iron into wire cloth. Wickwire from the time of his plant being established in 1873 to 1885 the plant underwent so much growth and made Wickwire Brothers worth $200,000. The Wickwire Brothers offered door and window screens, coal sieves, corn poppers, dish covers all in various styles. Wickwire’s poultry nettings ranked as the best on the market. The Wickwire plant was the first to manufacture