Culture & Progress

I found this periodical while researching last Friday's post on Christmas cookies. I found it interesting and perhaps a bit humorous, especially the part about giving a check for $100,000.00. Now, that would be quite an anniversary present. With regard to how it relates to Christmas cookies, I was searching cookie cutters, mentioned in the last paragraph.

Below is an excerpt regarding Anniversaries and the gifts one would give for the wood and tin weddings. Scribners monthly, Volume 1 ©1874.

Hints for Anniversary Presents.

When those grateful anniversaries, popularly known as wooden and tin weddings, occur to our friends and acquaintances, there are many anxious debates over the selection of a suitable offering to mark the day. It is quite difficult enough to choose something for the original wedding, when everything under the stars, from a silver thimble to a check for a hundred thousand dollars is entirely appropriate ; but limit the propriety of the gift to a single substance, and mental distraction forthwith sets in. It is not so difficult as it used to be before the pretty Swiss can-ings came in vogue, for among these are found book-rests, card-receivers, cardboxes, handkerchief and glove-boxes, jewel-cases, letter-racks, napkin-rings, crumb-brushes and trays, bread-plates and knives, salad-bowls, knives and forks, fruit-dishes with carved stands, flower-dishes similarly made, screen-frames, picture and mirrorframes, easels, ink-stands, pen-racks, portfolios, brackets of all shapes, sizes, styles and prices, flower-vases, and dozens of other things so graceful and comparatively cheap, that there would seem to be no trouble in being suited. Then, for larger and more imposing presents, are the numberless pretty, odd chairs—for instance, the new old-fashioned, high-backed, wooden rocking-chairs, with slatsof willow for scat and back, and similar chairs that do not rock ; the folding chairs that belong to the steamer chair family, andare so comfortable for piazza lounging in summer ; the coquettish folding-chairs, painted the brightest of scarlet, and dubbed croquet chairs, though they are just as charming in-doors as out; and, to end the list, those graceful Vienna foldingchairs, made of rosewood and fine cane-work, which have four legs, but no front ones, and arc especially appropriate for parlor use. All these are rated at less than fifteen dollars, some as low as three or four; so that they are within reach of everybody. The penchant for having no full set of furniture, but many pieces of varied styles and kinds, is so great, that it is rare, except in old-fashioned houses, to find the former desideratum of a well arranged parlor—a sofa, four straight and two arm-chairs, all showing so close a relationship as to make it seem an inhumanity to separate them. Now-a-days, people furnish their houses by picking up here a table, there a chair, and somewhere else a lounge. A studied ease is the aim, and a pleasant chaos the result. Nests of tables are among the most acceptable of gifts to housekeepers. Whether of rosewood, or walnut, or Japanese lacquered work, there are always corners and odd spots into which they fit with charming facility.

It is not so easy to suggest presents for tin as for wooden weddings ; still, besides the practical pans, pails, cake-boxes, spice-boxes, kitchen-spoons, wirecovers, cookie-cutters and candlesticks, there are many things sufficiently allied to tin to render them legitimate for such occasions. Among these are wire flower-stands of many shapes and sizes, hanging baskets of wire lined with moss, and filled -with growing vines, crystal vases with twisted wire stands, fruit and rlower dishes similarly held, washstands, especially adapted to small country houses, drinking-cups, cutlery, piazza brackets of iron, and lawn and piazza seats, letter-scales, watch-stands, \Yardian cases with metal bases, table-trays, and many other things useful or ornamental, or combining both qualities.