Bill Metz: Transcript

Amana tinsmith
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My name is Bill Metz. And I live in the village of Middle Amana. In fact, I still live in the same house that I was born in. Now tinsmithing was one of the crafts that was prevalent in the old Amana community. Now, when we talk about the old Amana community, we’re talking about pre-1932. And we here at the Arts Guild, we try to work very hard at maintaining some of these crafts that were prevalent in the old community.

And I started this about I think in 1981, so I’ve been at it about 22 years. I’ve spent a lot of time collecting all the old equipment that enables me to do things that was made here in the Amanas. And basically, I like to reproduce tinware that was used in the communal kitchen.

Primarily, why I have several projects that I really enjoy doing. One is the wedding cake pan. Anyway, it’s a cake pan that was used in the communal days, and it has four points on it, but also four rounded corners. It’s kind of an eight-sided type of thing, and some people refer to it as the star pan, but I go along with the wedding cake pan theme, because the pan wasn’t used but for special occasions. And the wedding was probably the premier occasion that they had. Now, my mother told me at one time, she said, “There’s a marble cake recipe that goes with the cake pan.” And my mother told me that if you made something other than this marble cake recipe, the cake wouldn’t pan out. Now, I don’t know if that holds true or not. So, I have a whole array of things that I work on.

Maybe I should go into the materials that I use now. I use what’s referred to as tinplate, which is black iron, coated with tin. It has kind of a nice shiny—it looks kind of like chrome when it’s new. And this is what I use. And the reason we use this particular material is that, that is what was used in the olden days. Now, in the olden days, all of the materials they were of the same quality, but it was physically hand dipped in molten tin. I have four pieces of equipment that I think was used in the communal tin shop in Homestead until 1941. And it’s just kind of a word-of-mouth type of thing that lets me know that that is where it was used. And I have no documentation or anything like that to prove otherwise.

I have another little story about—one of the machines is called double seaming machine. Now, I’ve spent 20 years looking for this thing. And a year ago, I happened to talk to a gentleman that lives down the street from my house. And I was explaining to him what I was looking for, and he says “I think I got one in the attic.” And he had one in his attic, and here I spent all these years looking all over the country, where ever I am, for a machine and I find it a block from home. But the unfortunate thing is, I don’t know how to use it. I just have seen pictures of it, I’ve never seen anybody use it. So, I haven’t even taken time to play with it and learn how use it. The only thing that I do do the modern way is when I have to solder something, I use an electric iron.

But born and raised here, we’re all pretty proud of our history that the people yesterday, that my parents and great-grandparents gave us, you know. The crafts was just part of it. And we try to maintain that.