Description
Beautiful late 19th early 20th century Bully Beef cast iron can opener and cutter tool with bull / cow head, curved tail handle and adjustable blade with the lock screw. Rare antique primitive farm tool and collectible vintage kitchenalia and militaria.
Before handheld can openers, getting to the food inside a tin can required a hammer and chisel — or, for many soldiers, bayonets, knives, or even rifle fire. The first claw-shape, lever-type openers were developed in Britain and America in the 1850s by cutler Robert Yates in Middlesex in 1855, and by Ezra J. Warner of Waterbury, CT, in 1858.
The U.S. Army adopted Warner’s design for the Civil War and issued the bull’s head can opener, the same as this one, with its rations of canned ‘bully beef’, or shredded corned beef mixed with gravy. British and Australian soldiers regularly consumed bully beef, too, usually with hard tack crackers and, on Christmas Day, whisky.
The bull’s head tin openers were produced up to the mid 1930s. This can opener is superbly modeled and so tactile…and pretty heavy too! There is, ‘fur’, detail on the face and the end of the tail. It is a great quality item, although there is no maker’s name on it. It measures approx 16cms in length
