Picked this up at the flea-market before our current lockdown happened. At least it gave me something to play around with, something to write about, and something to restore, during this winter of our discontent. Great discontent!
This is an antique, silver bombilla.
What is a Bombilla?
A bombilla (“Bom-bee-yah”) is a straw, designed for drinking yerba mate, a type of tea popular in South America. To prepare mate, a quantity of tea-leaves are crushed and then poured into the teacup – or mate gourd – and then hot (but not boiling) water is poured on top. The bombilla is inserted, and once the tea has brewed, it may be drunk out of the gourd using the bombilla.
To prevent rusting, bombillas were always made of non-ferrous metals – brass, copper, pewter…or if you could afford it – solid silver, like this one. These days, most bombillas are made of stainless steel.
Due to the high quantity of tea-leaves and leaf-powder present in yerba mate, it’s usually impractical to drink the tea as one might with other types of tea – since you’d end up swallowing half the tea-leaves along with the drink! It’s for this reason that the bombilla was invented. The bombilla allows you to suck up the tea, while bypassing the tea leaves. And in case you can’t, then there’s always the filter or strainer, at the bottom of the bombilla, to catch any tea-leaves or grit that might be sucked up by the straw. This stops the leaves from clogging the straw, or from being swallowed…or choked on…by the drinker, while enjoying their tea.
Antique bombillas made of silver are often intricately formed and decorated. The straws are chased, engraved, they might twist and turn in a spiral fashion (think of those plastic crazy-straws that kids use), or they might even have applied, silver decorations to them, similar to mine.
How is a Bombilla Used?
You suck on it.
OK, actually it’s a bit more complex than that. Not by much, but a bit.
Bombillas come with a filter at the bottom. That’s the little perforated strainer that you see at the end. It’s purpose, as mentioned earlier, is to prevent you from sucking up and either swallowing, or choking on – the tea-leaves or tea-dust inside your mate. The mate tea-leaves are pressed to one side of your cup or gourd, and then the hot water is poured in. This means that only a small amount of tea-leaves are steeped at any one time, so that you can get the strongest flavour! This is also why you have the bombilla, anyway – to drink the tea at the bottom of the gourd, since you sure as hell can’t hold it up and drink it – unless you want the tea-leaves going all over you!!
One useful feature about bombillas is that you can pull them apart. Usually, the filter-bulbs unscrew, or unplug from the straw. This allows you to clean out the straw, clean out the filter, remove any clogging from tea-leaf residue, and keep the whole thing in working order. In my case, the filter just unscrews, like so:
Once your bombilla’s been cleaned – you simply screw the two parts back together. Easy!
Because bombillas are metal, the tea they’re used to drink is rarely served (or at least, drunk) at boiling-hot temperature, to prevent burning your mouth or lips on the straw. The length of the bombilla (this one is 8 inches long!) also aids in helping the tea to cool down during the journey from the teacup to your mouth.
Cleaning your Silver Bombilla
As it’s going to be something that you’ll put in your mouth, it probably goes without saying that if you do buy an antique silver bombilla, you should definitely clean it before using it. This can easily be done with soap, hot water, and a thin, stiff-bristled bottle-brush or tube-brush, to scour out and clean the inside of the straw, and the filter.
If you need to polish the silver, you can do that with either a liquid or paste silver polish (I use Hagerty’s polishing paste), a silver-polish cloth, or, if you’re worried about the residue from the polish getting into the straw – you can use the baking-soda method!
This has become a very popular method for cleaning silver over the last few years, and you can find loads of videos about it on YouTube.
Put simply – you line a wide, flat-bottomed container with aluminium foil (shiny side up). You put the silver item into the foil-lined container (in this case, the bombilla), and then you fill the container with BOILING HOT WATER. It has to be boiling hot, or else nothing happens.
Next, you pour in copious amounts of baking soda, making sure to cover as much of the silver item as possible. The baking soda and the hot water react, and you get a fizzy, sizzling sound, and lots and lots of bubbles. The baking soda reaction eats away at the tarnish on the silver, scouring the metal with the fizzing water, and loosens and removes blemishes from the surface of the metal. Then – fish the silver out, and dry it off. The baking soda will either have removed the tarnish entirely, or if not, then will have loosened it enough to remove it by regular polishing.
This method is useful if the silver item you’re cleaning is intricate, fragile, extremely dirty, and/or hard to clean, or if you’re cleaning loads of things at once.
Can you Still Find Silver Bombillas?
Absolutely!! There’s loads of them – mostly antiques – on eBay, but they can be quite pricey. Anywhere from $100 – $500, depending on the age, condition and size. Some are quite small, others, like mine, can be quite lengthy. If the bombilla is silver, it’s usually stamped on the filter at the bottom of the straw with 800, or 900 silver. When buying, make sure that the filter is undamaged, without dents, and can be easily removed and replaced on the straw (this is vital, because otherwise, you can’t clean it if it gets clogged or needs rinsing out!).
But – you might be asking – what about the yerba mate gourds? The cups used to drink the tea out of? Are they made in silver, too?
Oh, you bet! They’re not as common as silver bombillas, but silver gourds can be found, although, like the bombillas, they can be fairly expensive. Sometimes, you can find them together, sold as bombilla-and-gourd sets.
I love silverware. There, I said it. I love the colour, the history behind pieces of wrought silver, and the limitlessness of the vast array of items which can be made out of silver. One thing I’ve always wanted is a pair of silver chopsticks!
After hunting and digging around on eBay for literally months, and using every combination of words that I could possibly conjure, I finally settled on a pair of silver chopsticks which were affordable, in great condition, which were marked, and which would be easy to use, and maintain.
The chopsticks I bought are Japanese in style, and they showed up in a nice, wooden presentation box, where they can be stored when they’re not on active duty as waistline-enhancement devices. All in all, a pretty nifty package.
The History of Silver Chopsticks
Silver chopsticks have existed for centuries, throughout Asia – mainly in the three major chopstick-using countries – China, Korea, and Japan. Just like silver cutlery in Western countries, the purpose of silver chopsticks was much the same – they were a status-symbol, a store of wealth, and a source of familial pride.
The tale is often told that silver chopsticks were favoured by the great emperors of China and Japan in ancient times, because eating with silver chopsticks would tell the emperor if his food had been poisoned. Supposedly, the poison would turn the silver black! – and this would be a sure sign that the food was tainted, and deadly!
Right?
No.
Actually, loads of things turn silver black – eggs, meat, spicy foods…basically anything which might have high levels of sulfur in it. It doesn’t mean that the food is poisonous – it just means that the silver has been tarnished by a chemical reaction – not that anybody in Ancient China would’ve understood what that was. It’s the sulfur dioxide, and the acids, in various foods (for example, lemon juice, salt, etc) which causes silver to turn black and discolour. Poison has nothing to do with it.
I want my own Set of Silver Chopsticks! Where do I get them?
Antique silver chopsticks can be found, if you’re patient enough, but you can also buy modern sliver chopsticks! Yes, silver chopsticks are still made today (try eBay, if you want to find a set), but beware of fakes!
As a general rule – never buy silverware (chopsticks, or otherwise) which is not hallmarked! Especially from online sources, like eBay. One of the main reasons for collecting silverware, now, as it was in centuries past – was to act as a store of wealth. That wealth doesn’t exist if the silver isn’t real! And in most cases, your word that the silver is real, isn’t going to convince most people – so why should you take the word of somebody else, that the silver they’re trying to sell you, is real, if they can’t independently prove it, by showing the hallmarks? Always remember this when buying silverware, especially from some Asian countries, where hallmarking is less stringent than it is in say, North America, and in Europe.
After all – that is the whole point of hallmarks – proving that silver is real. Believe it or not, but hallmarks on gold and silver are the oldest surviving form of customer-protection IN THE WORLD – and date back literally 1,000+ years, all the way to the Byzantine Empire of the 5th century!
“SILVER 925”, or 92.5% silver by purity. AKA – Sterling Silver.
I bought these chopsticks because they were clearly marked “SILVER 925” on the shafts. Without that – I wouldn’t have bothered. There are loads of sellers out there with “silver” chopsticks assuring you that they are silver, but until you get them tested, you only have their word for it. And sorry, but a person’s word isn’t enough to convince me to blow money on something silver, if it isn’t marked – and it shouldn’t be enough for you, either. And a lot of these chopsticks online and elsewhere, aren’t marked. Whatever you decide to buy – make sure they’re marked. If they don’t show you a photograph of the marks, or if you can’t find them – then move on and keep searching.
Japanese Personal Chopsticks!
One thing I loved about the chopsticks I bought is that they came from Japan. This interested me for a few reasons…
One, because Japan loves making things out of silver (seriously, have you seen Japanese silver sake sets?), but also, two, because Japan has a strong culture of personal dining utensils.
Unlike China, it’s really common in Japan for people to have their own personal, individual chopstick-sets, instead of just digging out a pair of mismatched whatevers, from the darkest depths the cutlery drawer in the kitchen, whenever it’s time to eat. You can even go to that Japanese super-store, DAISO, and you’ll see individual chopsticks-sets for sale – usually aimed at children – so that they can get used to the idea that “this is MY set, and only I am going to use them!” (by the way – those child’s sets are also really useful if you ever decide that you need a small set for traveling, or keeping them at the office for lunch, or whatever!) – they even come in their own little pouches and cases, enforcing the idea that these are your chopsticks, and none shall have use of them, apart from you!
The culture of personal chopsticks sets is so strong in Japan that there’s even stores there (bricks-and-mortar, or online) which sell a stunningly wide array of chopsticks in all kinds of styles and designs, from retractables, glass, porcelain, bamboo, bone, steel, exotic woods, screw-apart compact ones – and hell yeah – even ones in solid silver!
So – if you are looking for a nice pair of silver chopsticks – probably best to start in Japan, and widen your search from there.
For those who don’t already know, I do have a Group on Facebook now, for the discussion and sharing of history!
It covers the years from 1800 – 1960, and all aspects of history, art, and popular culture during this time period. Feel free to join and interact, and invite like-minded people who might find it interesting. All I ask is that discussions remain relevant to the scope of the group, that folks do their best to remain polite and civil, and that people don’t complain about the contents of the group being “offensive!”.
Here’s the brutal truth, folks: History doesn’t care if, when, how, or even how much, it offends you. So announcements of how offensive you find it, regardless of what it is, will see you removed from the group. Declarations like that only cause issues and problems for the other members, and I would dearly like to avoid this.
There are loads of famous drugs in the world: Heroin, morphine, cocaine, amphetamines, absinthe, and marijuana, to name but a few, all taken for their relaxing, stimulating, or hallucinogenic effects on the human mind and body.
But of all the drugs ever discovered, used and abused over the centuries of mankind’s fascination with addictive substances, none has ever had quite the same allure, draw, mystique and romanticism as opium.
Used for literally thousands of years as a painkiller, opium has had a hold on the collective imagination of mankind unlike any other drug before or since. It conjures up images of hedonism, debauchery, corruption, conspicuous consumption, imperialism, hallucinations and crippling addiction. But what is opium and what is its history?
In this posting, we’ll find out together! So, find a bed, roll a pill, thread your pipe and let’s go opium-ing!
What IS Opium?
Opium is a “drug of addiction”, as they’d say today, which is taken from the latex sap of the opium poppy, or “Papaver somniferum“, to call it by its seductive, scientific Latin name. It’s the same plant from which the drugs morphine, heroin, and codeine are also extracted. It also produces poppy seeds!
Yes, those little black speckles that you find on those buns that you love to buy at the local bakery come from the same flowering plant that has produced one of mankind’s most notorious drugs for hundreds, and hundreds of years!
Delicious!
That said – you’d have to eat a hell of a lot of poppy-seed rolls to crank up any kind of positive drugs-test, so don’t worry! You can go back to enjoying your bagel, now.
The poppies from which opium and its cousin-drugs are derived is native, originally, to the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and parts of central and southern Asia – think Arabia, India, Persia, North Africa and Asia-Minor! Ooh, exotic! In these lands, opium had been known about as far back as the 1st Century C.E., by which time, its properties were already well-known, well-studied, and used extensively for treating a wide range of ailments, by processing the extracted poppy-sap in various forms, such as in poultices and rubs, pills or lozenges, or as a tincture (mixed with alcohol) so that it could be consumed orally – in a liquid form – more commonly known today as laudanum.
The opium sap was extracted from the un-flowered poppy-bulbs by slicing them open to release the sap. This was then collected, and dried. One acre of opium poppy bulbs could yield up to 4 or even 5kg of raw opium sap in a single harvest! Not bad, considering how small the bulbs are!
Once collected, the sap or latex, which is usually a pale yellow colour, is dehydrated to remove as much of the sap’s excess moisture as possible. This process causes the sap to darken and for the opium to become more refined or concentrated. The opium is further extracted until it has reached a dark, brown, sticky, claggy consistency – a sort of thick paste. This is raw, concentrated opium. In this state, the opium can be pressed or formed into cakes or bricks for packaging, storage, and transport.
Blocks of raw opium, seized in a drugs bust. After refinement and concentration, the opium sap ends up looking like this
After extraction, dehydration, refinement and concentration to produce pure opium which can be packaged and shipped, opium could then be sold on the open market.
For much of history, this is where the processing of opium stopped. Of course, it can be further refined, to extract the drug heroin, which is obviously, more potent, but the knowledge of how to do this was not gained until the 1870s, and even then, wasn’t commercially available until the 1890s. Because of this, for thousands of years, people took opium in its raw form, for all manner of uses.
What is Opium used For?
For centuries, opium was used largely as a medicine to treat all kinds of aches and pains, ranging from headaches or fevers, to the symptoms of various medical conditions, such as the pain caused by gout, muscle-cramps, or other conditions. It was even used to try and dull the pain of amputation surgeries! The most common way of taking opium for a long time was in a diluted form, a solution mixed with alcohol, known as Tincture of Laudanum (a ‘tincture’ being any solution including alcohol).
However, by far the most common use of opium in the 1700s, 1800s and 1900s was as a recreational drug to induce relaxation, sleep, or even hallucinations, and to relieve bodily aches and pains. This was usually done through the most common method of using opium – by smoking it! Smoking opium for pain-relief had been practiced before, but in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, what had once been a sideline rapidly became one of the most common methods for ingesting opium, either for its pain-killing and relaxing properties, or due to its addictive nature as a recreational drug.
Opium-Smoking Accessories
The smoking of opium became so popular that soon, much like smoking tobacco, all kinds of accessories and paraphernalia were created to try and make the whole pursuit seem more genteel and refined. What were these accessories, and how were they used?
The Opium Pipe
First and most importantly, was the opium pipe. Opium pipes were long and cylindrical, with a mouthpiece at one end, a long shaft, and a protruding (and detachable) pipe-bowl, usually (but not always) seated about 3/4 along the length of the shaft, near the end of the pipe. The bowls were detachable so that you could smoke multiple bowls at once, if desired. Pipes were made of all kinds of materials, from brass to bone to ivory, porcelain and bamboo. The position of the bowl (held in place with a metal collar or ‘saddle’ to stop it falling off when installed on the pipe-shaft) meant that it could be used to smoke the opium without damaging the rest of the pipe (I’ll explain this more, later).
The Opium Needle
Along with the pipe came the opium needle. Like the pipe having multiple bowls, you often had multiple needles, more for the sake of convenience, rather than anything else. Needles were used to scrape or roll up a tiny ball or “pill” of opium from the purchased cake or brick of solid opium. The pill being rolled, it was skewered on the sharp end of the needle, heated, and then ‘threaded’ into the tiny hole at the top of the pipe-bowl. This process was too fiddly to be done by hand, and some type of sharp quill or pin was needed. To make it easier, opium needles were usually pretty long – up to six inches – so that the opium could be handled carefully and packed into the pipe-bowl easily, without the needle also getting stuck inside (whoops!).
The Opium Lamp
You’ve rolled your pill, threaded your pipe-bowl, and put the bowl back onto the shaft of the opium pipe. Now you’re ready to smoke!…right?
Eh.
No.
See, you can’t actually smoke opium. You can’t light it, and you can’t burn it.
To “smoke” opium, you have to vapourise it!
Vapourising opium is done by heating it up. Once it’s hot, you then “smoke” the vapour or fumes that come off of the heated, melting opium pill that’s been stuffed into the bowl of your opium pipe. You suck the vapour down the pipe, and inhale it to “smoke” the opium.
In order to vapourise the opium mass inside your pipe and smoke it, you need something to heat and melt the opium.
This is where the opium lamp comes in.
Opium lamps are short, squat little lamps, usually made of brass, copper, or a Chinese metal alloy known as “paktong” (nickel, copper and zinc, basically nickel-silver). They have glass chimneys, short, round wicks, and narrow chimney-openings at the tops of the lamps. Some lamps had screw-on covers that went over the top when the lamps weren’t being used. This kept dust away, but also protected the glass chimney from breakage.
The point of these lamps was not to provide light, but rather, heat. It is impossible to smoke opium without one (or at least, without a reliable source of heat!). The lamp was lit, the chimney was placed on top, and then the smoker could hold or rest the bowl of the pipe over the opening at the top of the glass lamp-chimney. The heat from the lamp would warm the bowl, and the opium, thanks to its low melting point, would start to vapourise, allowing the smoker to inhale the fumes down the pipe and get their kick. The conical shape of the lamp’s glass chimney directed and concentrated the heat from the flame directly onto the pipe-bowl, speeding up the vaporisation process.
Remember how the pipe-bowl sticks up out of the shaft of the pipe? This is why. If it was built into the pipe (as with, say a conventional tobacco pipe), the heat from the lamp would damage the shaft. Because the bowl is held away from the shaft, it can be heated using the opium lamp relatively independent of the pipe-shaft. As a result, pipe-shafts, which were not exposed to heat, could be made out of almost anything. Pipe-bowls however, were usually made of heat-tolerant materials such as clay or bone, to prevent damage.
Since the bowl of the opium pipe had to be held over the top of the lamp for the opium inside the bowl to be smoked, the lamps were sometimes raised up on small stands or tables, this stopped the smoker’s arms from getting tired from always having to hold the pipe at an uncomfortable angle or height for long periods of time. It was because of the need to constantly heat the opium while smoking it, that opium smokers invariably laid down flat – either on a bed, or on the floor – to smoke. You simply couldn’t sit upright or stand and smoke and opium pipe, because you couldn’t hold the lamp and the pipe at the same time!
Accessories Tray
Along with the pipes, bowls, needles, lamp, lamp-stand, the containers holding the opium and the various other accessories used with opium (opium scales, pipe-cleaners, etc), another accessory was commonly used, to keep everything neat and tidy: The opium tray!
Really, anything could be used as an opium tray, but in especially elaborate smoking setups, the tray, pipe, lamp etc, would all match and be a complete set together. One reason for having the tray was to keep everything together – remember, pipes could have multiple bowls, and there were also the needles to consider…to stop things from going missing, everything was kept on a tray, and spare pipe-bowls were even kept on special stands to stop them from rolling away if the tray was lifted or moved.
How did you Smoke Opium?
Apart from taking opium in liquid form, as tincture of laudanum, opium was also (and increasingly) taken in vapourised form, by smoking it. We’ve seen what tools and accessories were used in smoking opium, but how was the whole process actually carried out? What did you have to do to actually have a solid round of opium smoking?
Smoking opium as a recreational drug became popular in the 1700s and 1800s, both in Asia, and in Europe, and to smoke it, you usually went to a uh…ahem…special establishment set aside for such exotic pastimes – an opium den!
It was in this den of inequity that the forbidden pleasure of smoking opium would be carried out. But how was it, exactly?
The first step was to prepare the pipe – colloquially known as a “dream stick” because it made you sleepy and gave you visions! You removed the bowl, and with an opium needle, you scraped off a small amount of solid opium from a cake or block of the stuff stored in a container. The scrapings were heated and rolled into a tiny ball, known as a “pill” of opium, again, using the needle.
Women smoking opium.
This pill was heated, and then very carefully threaded or poked down the tiny hole in the bowl of the opium pipe. This hole, designed to take only so much opium, and no more, was the main reason why you needed the opium needle – it would be physically impossible to stick the opium in there using just your fingers.
Once the bowl was prepared, the smoker would lay back on the couch or bed, and hold the mouthpiece of the pipe to the mouth, while the shaft of the pipe stretched out, with the bowl resting on, or over, the narrow glass chimney of a burning opium lamp.
The opium lamp was all-important during the smoking of opium, since the opium had to be heated and vapourised before the fumes from the opium could be inhaled down the pipe and taken into the body. It’s for this reason that opium had to be smoked lying down – nobody wants to stand up, or even sit upright, trying to balance a pipe over a flame, and smoke at the same time! Not very comfortable!
With the opium heated, the smoker could continue to huff and puff on their pipe until the vapours in the opium pill fed into their pipe bowl finally dissipated, by which time they were either asleep, or were reaching for another pre-filled pipe-bowl with which to continue the experience. Smoking opium relieved pain, and also caused drowsiness and hallucinations. It’s the origin of the term “pipe dream”.
Opium Around the World
Unsurprisingly, opium became highly popular, and was smoked as a recreational drug all across Eurasia, from London to Shanghai, Singapore to Saigon, Peking to Paris. In the 1700s and 1800s, and well into the 1900s, it was one of the most pervasive and destructive drugs ever, with dozens, if not hundreds, of opium dens likely to be found in any major city on earth.
Depictions of opium were included in films, TV, novels, short stories…everywhere. From “The Quiet American” by Grahame Greene, to “The Man with the Twisted Lip”, one of the several Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But what happened to opium? Where did it go? How come you don’t have your friendly neighbourhood opium den anymore?
Opium started dying out in the later 1900s. In cities across the world, and especially in China, governments started cracking down on opium-smoking. Dens were raided, and opium paraphernalia was confiscated and destroyed. Pipes, lamps and stashes of opium were smashed, burned, trashed or otherwise destroyed, to make it impossible for people to smoke opium anymore.
Events like WWII, and the Korean, Vietnam, and Chinese Civil Wars, further broke down the opportunities to smoke opium. Opportunities to import or smuggle opium grew less and less. This, combined with opium-eradication campaigns, and the fact that heroin was stronger and required much less prep-time before getting your hit – meant that opium just fell out of fashion. That’s not to say that people don’t still smoke opium today, but not nearly as much as it used to be, 100-odd years ago.
And in case you’re wondering why I haven’t included anything in this posting about the opium wars between Britain and China, that’s because I made another posting about it, some time ago. If you’re interested, you can read it here!
If you’ve ever grown up in a country, or a city, with a large ethnic Chinese population, or been invited out for lunch by Chinese friends, then you might well have experienced the Chinese custom known as “yum cha”.
But what is Yum Cha, where does it come from, what does it mean, and what are the customs and traditions that surround this most Chinese of Chinese meals? Today, we find out together.
What is Yum Cha?
Literally, “Yum Cha” means “Drink Tea”, in the Chinese dialect of Cantonese, spoken largely in southern China and Hong Kong. In a broader context, “yum cha” refers to a late-morning or early-afternoon meal, eaten with friends and family, which comprises of loads of dumplings, small dishes, light meals and pots of Chinese loose-leaf tea. In this respect, “yum cha” is similar to the British traditions of Elevenses, Brunch, Morning Tea, Luncheon, or Afternoon Tea, in that it is a meal taken with tea, shared with friends, and made up of loads of little snacks and dishes.
A word commonly associated with “yum cha” is “dim sum”. What is it?
Various dim sum dishes in their round, bamboo steamer-baskets. Almost all dim sum are either steamed, or fried, because it’s faster to cook.
Dim sum refers to the small dishes served to diners in yum cha restaurants, usually in bamboo steamer-baskets. Most people think that “dim sum” refers to dumplings, but actually it can refer to any of these small dishes served in this manner, which accompanies the tea. Together, tea and dim sum = yum cha.
Where did Yum Cha come from?
The tradition of dim sum, light snacks (the words ‘dim sum’ translate to ‘barely fill your stomach’) eaten during late morning or early afternoon, date back centuries, and are believed to go as far back as the Song Dynasty in the 1000s or 1100s A.D. At this time, tea and dim sum remained separate entities, and there was not yet a meal which combined them both. This remained the case for centuries. The combination of tea and dim sum, to create the meal known today as “yum cha”, is believed to have started in Canton Province (Guandong Province today) in the 19th century.
Originally, the focus of the establishments which served tea and dim sum was still on the service of tea, and were still identified largely as tea-houses. However, as the 1800s progressed, it made more sense to combine service of tea and dim sum together, in a purpose-built restaurant – this became known as yum cha.
One of the first mentions of yum cha in literature was by the Xianfeng Emperor of China, who ruled during the mid-1800s, when he wrote of “one cent houses”, referring to how a cheap meal comprised of tea and dim sum could be purchased at special restaurants.
And yum cha culture flourished from there!
Yum Cha flourished, especially in southern China through the late 1800s into the 1910s, 20s and 30s. The growing Civil War, the Sino-Japanese War, and the Second World War forced many refugees to flee mainland China, settling in Taiwan, and Hong Kong, where they could live beyond the grip of the communists. These refugees also fled to British colonies in Southeast Asia, particularly Malaya and Singapore (where they were known as “Sinkeh” or “New Guests”).
Where-ever it was that they ended up – they brought their yum cha culture and expertise with them, and established yum cha restaurants in these new locations. Apart from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, war-refugees also fled to Australia, New Zealand and to the West Coast of the USA, where a large Chinese expat community (largely based around San Francisco) already existed, introducing western audiences to yum cha dining. When the wars ended in the 1940s and 50s, yum cha dining took off once more. It has remained popular ever since.
Yum Cha Customs
For yum cha virgins who have never attended (or attended very few) yum cha meals, there are certain traditions or customs which are followed to ensure a pleasant, comfortable and enjoyable dining experience. Here are the main ones to take note of. Not everybody follows them, and not all of them make sense, but they’re interesting to think about, nonetheless…
Keeping the Lid Up
“Fill ‘er up!”
While you can of course, order other drinks while enjoying yum cha, the traditional drink is, of course – tea. The meal wouldn’t be called “drink tea” without it, now would it?
When the pot is low on tea, pick up the teapot lid and flip it over, or close it halfway. This is the traditional way of getting a waiter’s attention that the pot is empty and needs refilling.
Tapping the Table
Another really common yum cha practice is finger or knuckle-tapping. This is done when somebody else at the table refills your teacup during the meal, but you can’t (or don’t want) to stop and thank them verbally. This is either because you’re eating, reaching for something to eat, or are busy talking, and don’t want to interrupt the conversation. Traditionally, it’s done by tapping the index and middle-finger together on the table, or the first knuckles of the same two fingers.
This practice is said to have originated in the 1700s during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, who ruled China for sixty-odd years between the 1730s-1790s. While traveling incognito around his kingdom, he insisted on pouring tea for his dining companions, like anybody else. As the emperor was deified by the Chinese people, this was seen as a gigantic honour for the recipient. The traditional way to acknowledge this was to kowtow in the emperor’s presence – something which would’ve of course, immediately blown his cover! Instead, the emperor asked his friends and companions to knuckle-tap instead. The bent fingers symbolised kneeling, and tapping the knuckles represented bowing to the floor.
Is this legend true? Not very likely, if at all. But it is a fun urban legend to spread around. The truth is that we may never know where the tradition of finger/knuckle-tapping came from, but what is true is that people still do it today.
A Group Affair
Yum Cha is always done with friends and/or family. I guess you could yum cha alone, but…that’d be pretty sad, wouldn’t it? Plus, you’ve got all that damn food to eat! Nah, yum cha is always done with others, and always in the late morning, or over lunchtime, into the afternoon. Nobody goes out to yum cha for dinner. It’s just not the done thing.
To Peel or Not to Peel, that is the Question…
…whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer from the bacteria and fungi, or by peeling, end them…
A popular staple of yum cha are steamed buns! Charsiew Bao (pork buns), or similar buns (usually served as part of dessert) come hot from the wok, all steamed, shiny, glossy and smooth on top! Some people will tell you that if you eat these buns, you should always peel away the shiny upper skin on top of the bun, to expose the soft, fuzzy under-pastry beneath, prior to eating.
Right?
Eeeehm…no.
The reasoning behind this practice dates back to the days when you could buy buns like these from street-vendors. The belief was that since you didn’t know who had handled the food, or how it was cooked or steamed, you should always peel the shiny layer of dough off the top of the bun, before eating the bun itself. This stopped you from getting all kinds of bacteria and nasty stuff in your food when you ate it. But is there any truth to this?
Hehehe…no.
The fact is, if there is anything on top, it’d be killed off during the steaming process, so eat that bun confidently, with pride, indulgence, and enjoyment!
BUT!
Do, please, make sure, that you peel off the PAPER LINER that is UNDERNEATH the bun, before you eat it. Or else, you’re going to look like an idiot trying to explain to people why you’re chewing on a sheet of paper with your meal. Or you could just tell them that it’s extra protein or whatever. I dunno. Yummy, yummy protein… Regardless, no, you don’t need to peel anything, except for the paper liner – which, by the way, is there to stop the bun from gluing itself to the bamboo steamer-basket during cooking.
Concluding Remarks
Anyway, that’s the end of this little look at one of Chinese cuisine’s most popular and famous creations: Yum cha! Now, go forth – eat, drink, and be merry. Or at least try to be, in our current global climate.
You may remember, several months back, now, that I wrote a review about the Pelikan Stone Garden M800 fountain pen, a special edition released fairly recently, which I fell in love with, at first sight – which honestly, is not something I thought that I’d ever say about a Pelikan. I loved the pen for its bright colours, easy usability, light weight and its ability to stand out in a crowd. If you haven’t read that posting, I’ll leave a link here.
Moving on.
In that review, I wrote about how if I ever bought a Pelikan pen, then it’d probably end up being the Pelikan Souveran-line “Stresemann” release, which came out a few years back. It struck me largely because it was so different from all the other Pelikan pens which I’d seen. It wasn’t jet black, it wasn’t blue, red, green or white, and its style was historically inspired. And me, being a history-loving person (gee! Who would’a guessed??), naturally found it very interesting. I liked the darker, less-conspicuous colours used in its design, and the sort of…gravitas…that it gave the pen. This was a serious pen, a pen which had a background to it, and that’s what I liked.
That I liked so much, in fact, that I finally went out and bought one!
…Or at least, I bought one online…going out to buy a pen these days is almost impossible because of all the coronavirus restrictions…but…you get the idea. So that’s what this posting is going to be about. The Pelikan M805 “Stresemann” fountain pen.
The Pelikan Stresemann – Appearance
Like the rest of the Souveran line, the Stresemann has a solid-colour cap, section, and blind-cap. In this case – black. It’s decorated with silver-tone trim on the two blind-cap rings, the two cap-rings, the pelican-beak clip, the section, and the cap-jewel. The striped barrel is done in heavy, dark grey pinstripes. By default, the pen comes with an 18kt white gold nib, to match the silver trim on the pen, and to harmonise with the grey stripes on the barrel.
The pen, like all Pelikan Souverans, is a piston-filler with a removable nib-section. That means that it is possible to unscrew the whole nib-section and replace it with another one, should you need, or want to. I didn’t want to ruin the nice black-and-silver look that the pen had going on with itself, so I left it in its default configuration.
The Stresemann. What’s in a Name?
The Pelikan Stresemann (“Stray-zehr-mahn“, in case anybody can’t pronounce it), is named after the German foreign minister, former chancellor, and Nobel Peace-Prize winner, Gustav Stresemann! I think we can all agree that a guy who held that many titles and accolades, did a hell of a lot of writing, and certainly deserves the distinction of having a fountain pen named in his honour!
Stresemann died in 1929, but before his death, he was a highly influential figure in German Weimar-Republic-era politics. He mended relations between Germany and France, and was one of the few politicians to hold onto their positions in an era when Germany was highly politically and economically unstable. Between the German Revolution of 1919, the Hyperinflation Crisis of the early 1920s and the coming of the Depression in 1929, he remained Foreign Minister for six whole years. This is saying quite a lot, when you consider that during the same period, there were FIVE different German chancellors!
Apart from his political career, Stresemann was famous for one other thing: His fashion-sense!
As a politician and diplomat, Stresemann naturally had to attend all kinds of conferences and meetings with neighbouring European powers – it kinda happens when your title is “Foreign Minister”. In those days, very formal attire for politicians was still considered de-rigeur. And I mean VERY formal attire! Morning suits or stroller suits, with their top hats, grey waistcoats and heavy, black tailcoats, were still the preferred form of dress for a lot of politicians and diplomats (for example, look at the photos of the conference at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles).
Stresemann disliked having to wear the heavy, long tailcoat, which you can see in the photograph above. So he didn’t! Instead, he wore a slightly more relaxed form of formal daywear, known as a stroller suit. Stroller suits were black, but they still had the heavy tailcoat – so Stresemann just gave up wearing it! He removed the tailcoat, and instead, wore an ordinary, black suit-jacket, of a kind familiar to almost anybody today. This, combined with the black waistcoat, and the striped, grey trousers which finished off the look, became known as a stroller-variant still known today as a “Stresemann” suit!
Gustav Stresemann (seated, right), wearing his trademark ‘Stresemann’ suit, with a suit-jacket, as opposed to the more normal tailcoat (for example, as the man holding the cigarette next to him, is wearing).
Remember how the Pelikan Stresemann fountain pen has grey pinstripes on the barrel?
This is where they come from. They’re an homage, and a reference, to Stresemann’s distinctive style of dress.
The Pelikan Stresemann – the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Honestly? I couldn’t find much that was bad, or ugly about this pen, if anything. The only thing that did kind of annoy me was that the ink-window on the Pelikan Souveran line is very subtle – almost – ALMOST – to the point of being invisible. They’re not like the ink windows on say, the Montblanc 149, which is chunky and visible and easy to see – especially when the pen is half-empty. No. The Pelikan ink window is very discreet. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d probably never spot it.
To some people, this might be a good thing, because they won’t want or don’t like ink-windows in their pens, because they break up the look of the pen’s lines and colours, which I totally understand, but on the other hand, if you’re the kind of writer who loves using their pen’s ink-windows to check how much fuel they have left to drive their imagination-journey while they write the next great epic novel, you will likely be sorely disappointed. Unless you hold the pen up to VERY strong light, the ink window is all but invisible.
The Pelikan Stresemann with the Stone Garden
Apart from that one critique, I really couldn’t find anything that I didn’t like about it. The 800 size is big, without being uncomfortable. It’s roughly analogous to the Montblanc 146 size, whereas the much larger 1000 series of Pelikan Souveran pens, are significantly longer and chunkier, and are probably even bigger than the Montblanc 149, which is saying quite a lot! So the 800 is a comfortable size to hold and write with for a long time. Also, it’s the same size used for my Pelikan Stone Garden, so they match in size, which is nice.
I liked the pen’s colouring a lot. The silver, black and grey work well together. the colours don’t clash and they’re not garish, bright or ostentatious. They don’t scream at you to look at it, or demand attention, but at the same time, they’re different enough from most of Pelikan’s other offerings to stand out in a crowd. In a sea of blue, red, black, and green, the dove-grey pinstripes of the Stresemann will definitely stand out.
Closing Remarks
Is the Stresemann M805 worth it?
In my mind, for the money which I paid (I bought the pen secondhand) – the answer is “Yes”. It’s lightweight, comfortable, distinctive and comes with a story. It’s a worthwhile pen to consider if you’re looking for something a bit more serious and refined than the usual offerings in the Pelikan ‘Souveran’ line. It doesn’t cost more, or less than any other Pelikan, and will definitely stand out in your collection.
Most people who know anything about pocketwatches and how they’re used or worn, will be familiar with the wide variety of attachments you can clip onto the bow (the ring at the top of a pocketwatch) for decorative, or security purposes.
Double-Alberts, Single-Alberts, ring-clip chains, belt-hook chains, grosgrain fobs, and drop-fobs are the most common types of pocketwatch adornments, but one type of pocketwatch accessory is almost forgotten in the 21st century – the pocketwatch chatelaine fob.
I’ve wanted a chatelaine fob for years, I just didn’t know it. Or rather…I did know it…I just didn’t know what they were called! I found out what their proper title was when I was browsing an antiques website a few years ago, and ever since, I’d been chasing after one, trawling eBay, trying to find one that I liked enough (and could afford!) to buy. Man, these things are expensive! I finally got lucky and found one which I could afford without breaking the bank, and made a dive for it.
What Is a Chatelaine?
When most people think of chatelaines, they think of those things that women used to wear back in the Victorian and Edwardian eras – large, elaborate clasps or brooches which hung from a woman’s belt or waistband, with chains hanging off the bottom, which were used to carry all kinds of little accessories: Scissors, keys, sewing equipment, pocketwatches, change-purses, pillboxes…the list of things you could clip to a chatelaine was almost endless. Chatelaines for women died out in the 1920s, when changing fashions and an increase in the use of handbags meant that was no longer fashionable (or necessary) to carry all your necessities on a set of chains hanging off your belt!
A man’s chatelaine is little different from a lady’s chatelaine, except that male ones aren’t quite as complicated! They’re comprised of a hook-clasp, which fastens to the user’s garments, a watch-chain, to hold the watch, and a metallic drop-fob, usually with a plaque or cartouche at the bottom for engraving the owner’s name or initials into.
The chatelaine fob which I ended up buying
The construction or style of the fob is completely open to interpretation. Some have braided wire, some have chains of different sizes and lengths, some have panels held together with rings or rivets…it’s really up to you, what you’re after, what you can find, and what your personal style is.
How do you Wear a Chatelaine Fob?
Since chatelaine fobs are so obscure these days, it’s probably not surprising that most people don’t know how to wear them.
The watch is clipped to the chain, and stored in the watch-pocket of your jeans, slacks or shorts. And yes, that “fifth pocket” on your jeans IS a WATCH-POCKET. It’s not for your keys, or coins, or condoms, or your cyanide pill if your mission goes pear-shaped…it is for your pocketwatch!
The clasp-hook is slid over your belt, or the waistband of your jeans, or shorts, and then clipped into place. The drop-fob just…drops down the side! It’s function is largely decorative. And there you have it! All done.
That’s neat! I wanna buy one!
Sure you do!…um…good luck finding one, but, sure!
Search eBay, using terms like “pocketwatch fob” or “chatelaine fob”, or “antique watch-fob” or word-combinations in that general direction, and you might find what you’re looking for. But be sure to pay really close attention to what you’re buying. In particular, make sure of the following:
Make sure that the drop-fob has the seal-fob at the bottom. Sometimes, they’re missing.
Make sure that the watch-chain is included. And make sure that if it is, the lobster-claw clasp at the end (that goes around the watch) is also included! Make sure that the hook-clasp (that goes around the watch) is also there.
How much do they cost, you ask? Well, it really depends. They run the whole gamut of prices, from under $100, to over $300! How much you wanna spend on the style you like is entirely up to you. But keep in mind that the vast, vast majority of chatelaine fobs are gold-filled. They’re not solid gold, hell they’re not even silver vermeil. They’ll be gilt brass in most instances. Think about that before you potentially drop hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a watch chatelaine.
For any of my regular readers who are also on Facebook, and who have a passion for antiques, and history, I have created a new group for like-minded history-buffs and antiques-collectors to hang out!
The scope of the group covers all aspects of history between the years 1800 – 1960. So that means art, culture, music, movies, architecture, famous and obscure historical events, persons, wars, social history…the list goes on…all over the world. The group rules are in the description, and are pretty straightforward and obvious. Don’t do anything silly, enjoy the group, and share the group and its contents with any other like-minded Facebook friends!
Last year, I wrote an article on this blog about the time I discovered pair of sterling silver cufflinks with the Scotch College school crest on them. Discovered online, it was the biggest shock of my life that such a pair of cufflinks might even exist! I absolutely had to have them, and come hell-or-high-water, I added them to my collection.
This posting is all about the unlikely, and frankly – unexpected – sequel to the discovery of nine months previous.
Suffice to say that I was contacted by a retired antiques dealer up in Brisbane, who said that he’d stumbled across my blog while researching a discovery that he’d made in a pile of scrap gold and jewelry. His researches had led him to my blog, and after reading the first article I’d written about the sterling silver Scotch College cufflinks that I’d found, he was very eager to get in touch with me.
The cufflinks in gold (top) and sterling silver (bottom)
We made contact via text-message, and that was when he dropped the bombshell information on me that while digging around in some of his antique jewelry, he’d found a pair of the same cufflinks in 9ct solid gold!
I’ll admit it took me a couple of minutes to register this information. Silver cufflinks belonging to a high school are rare enough, but solid gold ones!? And antiques!? What the hell’s the chances of that?? He told me that he’d found my silver pair while researching the school motto, and asked me if I would like to buy the matching gold ones as well!
Uh, no. Thanks. It’s fine, no really…
OF COURSE I SAID YES!!
The back of the gold cufflinks, showing the maker’s mark and the hallmark for 9ct gold
After exchanging a couple of photographs and confirming what they were, and that they were real, we tossed a few numbers back and forth, finally settling on a price, with free express postage thrown in! They arrived within 24 hours, and were everything that I’d hoped them to be!
As you can see, these cufflinks are the exact same size, and design as the sterling silver pair in my previous posting. For this reason, I figured that they were made during the same era – the late 1920s through the 1930s, and manufactured by the Melbourne-based firm of G. Damman’s, which held a large jeweler’s and tobacconists’s premises on the corners of Swanston & Collins Streets in the Melbourne CBD.
The storefront of Damman’s, Tobacconists & Jewelers, 211-213 Collins Street, Melbourne
I do not know for what reason, nor under what circumstances cufflinks of such quality were manufactured for, and sold by, the school, and we may never know, but the fact that they exist at all is tantalising and fascinating! I absolutely love having both sets in my collection, and I think I can safely say that I would never, ever sell them!
Damman’s Tobacconists & Jewelers, Melbourne. Ca. 1963
Where the hell would I ever find another set!?
One of the most unusual elements about this whole story is where the cufflinks came from – not Melbourne, not even Victoria. No! They came all the way from Queensland, up near Brisbane!
How on earth a pair of antique gold high school cufflinks from Melbourne ended up in a suburb just outside Brisbane on the other end of the country is anyone’s guess, but now they’re back home in Melbourne where they belong, and safe in the company of their silver brethren!
The DAMMAN’S STG SIL mark for Australian sterling silverThe DAMMAN’S 9CT mark for 9-karat gold
Other Scotch College Memorabilia
Along with gold and silver cufflinks, the school also commissioned everything from chinaware and cups, glasses, tie-bars, tie-pins, badges, cigarette lighters (also commissioned from Damman’s Jewelers) and stationery. You can still buy a lot of this stuff (OK, maybe not the lighters) from the school, brand-new, or if you’re after something vintage, then online.
I’m very pleased to be given the chance to add these, possibly quite rare, cufflinks to my collection, where they can rest alongside their sterling silver brethren!
So, here’s something that I picked up at my local flea-market on the weekend. It was dusty, grimy, battered, and very, very faded. Despite that, a cursory examination told me that it was actually in excellent condition, despite being, what I judged, to be upwards of 100+ years old! It took me all of five minutes to decide that I really wanted this, and haggled a discounted price with the stallholder, and trotted away a very, very happy young man.
Once I got the folio home, I started examining it in more detail.
The more I looked at it, the more it appeared to me that this beautiful leather-good was significantly older than I initially believed. The styling of the pockets, as well as their general orientation and size, as well as the tri-opening panels, were all reminiscent of men’s wallets from the Edwardian era of the early 1900s – only – larger. Much larger!
Added to these observations was the fact that the folio was devoid of any modern features. No zippers, no snap-buttons, no elastic strap to hold it shut, no plastic of any kind, and – surprisingly – no indication at all – of where it was made! There wasn’t a thing on it, or in it, to tell me anything about it! No maker’s marks, no company logos, trademarks, company names, retailers’ addresses…nothing!
Once I got it home, I started the restoration process. This mostly consisted of double-checking, and reinforcing any loose or missing stitching – and going through the original needle-holes, where possible, to hold the folio together (fortunately, there wasn’t much of this which had to be done!). The next step was to clean the leather, and then came the labourous task of polishing it.
For this, I used ordinary dark tan boot-polish…and my right hand. Honestly, I just find it so much easier to apply shoe polish with your fingers, than fiddling around with a cloth or polishing rag of some kind. I just scooped it up, smeared it onto the leather, and started rubbing it in with my fingers. Once it was on, I just used a regular buffing brush to distribute and work the polish into the grain, spreading it out, and in, as I went. This was the real calorie-burner! I started on the outside and worked my way in, removing the belt entirely because it’d just get in the way (I polished that separately, later on).
The next thing to do was to do the interior. This was much more fiddly because of all the pockets and sleeves, but I got there in the end. Here, you can see what the folio looked like originally, vs. what it looked like when I was done…
Originally, the entire folio was this sort of…paper-bag brown. You can still see hints of the original colour showing through, where it had faded over the years (this also accounts for the uneven colour-distribution on the left and right). The interior received the same hand-applied polish and brushing, and then the entire thing was rubbed all over with a generous amount of dubbin.
Here you can see the final product, with the folio closed-up and belted…
…and the other side…
One element which I really loved was the decorative tooling around the belt-loop:
And finally, the interior…
If you look on the right, you might be able to see a light discolouration – a horizontal line running across the middle of the panel – that’s the result of the strap or belt being fastened across it for years and years, and the leather fading as a result.
Here it is fully opened…
On the left are three pockets (two small ones on top, one big one underneath). Next to them is the loop or sleeve to hold a writing instrument. The loop is VERY small. It will hold a pencil, or a dip pen, but that’s about it! Part of the restoration will have to involve enlarging (or replacing) this loop so that the folio can actually store at least one, decent sized fountain pen for the future!
The central panel holds one large pocket for storing documents, and three smaller ones for storing stamps and cards. Finally, on the right is one more large pocket, again for storing papers and documents. If you look very close, you can see the remains of an elastic strap sewn into the leather bordering, which would’ve been used to hold a notebook in place. Replacing that will be another part of the restoration.
Restoring the Folio
Apart from cleaning, polishing and rubbing in beeswax, the folio needed a few minor repairs and alterations. I hand-sewed some of the corners and edges where the stitching had come undone, to hold the folio together and to stop the pockets from tearing. Where possible I used the original stitch-holes to keep things neat, and also to preserve the integrity of the leather.
The next step was replacing the pen-loop. The original loop was extremely small and a pencil barely fit inside. To remove it, I cut away the original stitching using a pocketknife, removed the old leather forming the loop, used it as a pattern to cut a new piece of very thin leather, folded it over, stuck it inside, and using my sewing machine, I sewed the new loop back into place where the old one had been – again, using the original stitching-holes to try and keep things neat. The change is barely perceptible, but now, the new loop can actually hold a pen! I deliberately sewed the new loop out from the seam by about half a centimeter or thereabouts, so that it could fit a decent-sized modern fountain pen (and most vintage ones, too).
The final step in the restoration was sewing in a new, black elastic book strap (see above). To do this, I cut the stitches around the old book strap, removed the worn out remains of the old elastic, fed the new elastic through the same hole and sewed it back in. Then I stretched the elastic across, repeated the same thing on the other side, and sewed that in as well. To get the tension right (if it’s too loose, the book will just flop around everywhere), I measured the length, and then cut off two inches so that the elastic would have to stretch the last two inches, giving the right tension.
And here’s the final result:
As you can see, there have been a few changes. The enlarged pen-loop will now hold a modern cartridge-converter sized fountain pen (the pen in question is a Montblanc No. 145), and it has been made out of leather of a very similar shade to the original. In time, it will age to look more or less exactly the same.
The black elastic strap now holds the book in place, allowing me to flip it over either side, and access the two large pockets without having to remove the book entirely.
