21st
Annual Antique Tool Show and Sale
Sunday, August 4, 2013 9AM -1PM
Members of the Early American Industries Association
(EAIA) and the Mid-West Tools Collectors Association (M-WTCA) will be
holding their annual Antique Tool Show and Sale at the Garfield Farm Museum
on Sunday, August 4th from 9 am - 1pm. This is the only joint show by these
two organizations in the midwest open to the public. More than 30 different
collectors will have their tools on display and for sale.
Garfield Farm Museum established this annual show to
help educate the public with the realities of America’s founding. Hand tools
were what built and shaped America. In the 1840s as factories arose,
handcrafted items became massed produced but not in the way mass production
is envisioned today. The hand tools that individual craftsmen used simply
transitioned to the early factories. Waterpower might have made it possible
for a number of lathes to be powered at once but hand tools were used to
make any turnings. Blacksmiths were becoming old school in the mid-19th
century, as the profession of mechanic became the high tech of its day.
Mechanics for the steam age to manufacture as well as maintain locomotives
and lake and ocean going steamers needed even more specialized hand tools to
produce the precision needed.
Tool and die makers became the top hand tool workers
of the 19th and early 20th century. Their inventiveness and skills would
create the power tools that society depends upon today. Appropriately, some
of the most avid collectors one can meet at the Antique Tool Show are
retired highly skilled tool and die makers. Many are the last generation to
use hand tools and the first to use computerized machines to make the
complex machines of mass production today.
Yet fine craftsmanship has not disappeared as
thousands of hobbyists that enjoy working with wood, avidly seek out antique
tools. Such tools that might be made of higher quality materials than what
can be found on the market today or are no longer made but are still needed
to reproduce certain designs or affects in furniture. The Antique Tool Show
is thus an opportunity to talk with such experienced individuals who might
have worked with the type of tool one purchases.
The public is invited to bring a tool they cannot
identify as many of the collectors will know the answer. This is the only
joint meet In Illinois of the EAIA and M-WTCA that the public is invited to
attend. Opportunities at the show to become a member of the organizations
will give access to their regional and national meetings.
Tours of the 1846 teamster inn and tavern begin at
11am and continue after the show until 4pm. Light refreshments will be
available. Admission for adults is $6 and $2 for children 12 years and
under. Garfield Farm Museum is a historically intact former prairie
farmstead and teamster inn being restored by volunteers as a 1840s working
farm. The museum is located 5 miles west of Geneva, IL off ILL Rt. 38 on
Garfield Road. For more information call (630)584-8485. E-mail us at
garfieldfarm.org or visit or website at www.garfieldfarm.org
For more information about Garfield Farm send an e-mail message to: info@garfieldfarm.org
or call 630/584-8485.
