A Needle Case That Is More Than Meets the Eye!

When we attended a recent auction house which we frequent often and which deals sometimes in Shaker items, and an item called a "Very Rare Needle Case from a Mount Lebanon Shaker Community Tailor Shop" came up, we had to be players. The bidding was fierce, but the item was so no unique we had to pursue and finally won. After the auction one of the auction workers came up to us and said that it came from his mother's personal collection. His mother was a life long antique dealer in the Mount Lebanon area and had her own collection of Shaker items. Since she had passed, he brings an item or two into the auction house for sale. He went on to further say that it was one of his Mother's favorite items. As he was talking I opened it up to find several needles in an inner compartment filled with powder. The man saw me looking inside the object and explained that they assumed it was like a resin pin cushion and that the tailor must have dropped the needles into the holes in the top and they would sharpen as they dropped into the resin powder. We agreed that it looked like another piece of Shaker ingenuity and I happily took the item home to add to the Collection. It wasn't for several days when we picked the item up again to admire the craftsmanship and ingenuity. We unscrewed the lid and tried to take a needle out. It was kind of jammed into the side of the compartment, and after a small struggle and a small bend to the needle we were able to get it out. We screwed the item closed, unbent the needle and attempted to insert it into a hole at the top of the neck. Again the needle was angled so that it was difficult to get it into any of holes except for the one at the very top. We found it a little strange, put the object back on the shelf, and moved on with our day. But it kept bugging us. It was so odd that the needles got stuck going in and coming out of the case. This was not the Shaker ingenuity we were used to. Shaker items that we find and add to our Collection are always a model of efficiency as well as beauty and while this object was beautiful its efficiency at the stated purpose was poor. So we hopped on the internet and searched around with "Shaker", "Tailor", "Needle", "Turned", "Wood", anything we could think of to find out what this item might be. After some time and a lot of pictures of turned wooden objects, we believe we found it. This item is a Glove Powder Shaker, a popular item from the Victorian era when gloves were in fashion. They were often wood and turned and once we were searching for the right thing, we found many examples. We believe the gentlemen from the auction house and his Mother thought the item was a needle case and we have no reason to doubt their belief in the Mount Lebanon provenance since the original owner was a lifelong collector of Shaker objects from the area where the community originally existed. However, while this may have come from the Mount Lebanon community, it is certain not a needle case. But whether it is a Shaker, a shaker, or both, it is an interesting and beautifully crafted antique nonetheless.