Coopers

Cooperage industry

Cooperage is the manufacture of barrels and dishes made of oak, pine, spruce, aspen riveting. The forerunner of cooperage was hollowed-out cookware made from a whole tree trunk. In everyday life, holloweddishes were used by humans to store honey and all kinds of bulk products.

Over the years, cracks began to appear on the dishes, and the first step towards cooperage was taken — the hoop was invented. The master made his products from special plates, which were called rivets.

By the middle of the twentieth century, the manufacture of wooden cooperage dishes was losing its need, as it was replaced by dishes produced in factories.

Cooperage industry

At the end of the XIX century, the newspaper Sibirsky Listok wrote about this fishery as follows: "The material for making wooden dishes is dry-standing coniferous forest: cedar, pine and larch, and only the best commercial forest, without branches, is used for work; where there is little such forest left in the forests, tickets are taken for cutting it, a log of three fathoms in length and 42 vershka in diameter costs from 70 kopecks to 1 ruble 50 kopecks, 12−16 tubs of medium size come out of such a log.

Having harvested the forest, it is sawn into pieces of such length as is needed for one or another dish, then these stumps are split into planks, planed, dried in the oven and folded, fastened with hoops, which are made from halves of willow or cherry twigs. They make large and small dishes: tubs, tar pits, pickles, gangs, troughs, buckets, cups, etc. To work, you need to have an axe, a saw, a chisel, a plow, or "jointer", a plane, two scrapers — straight and curved and a compass, total guns for 100−200 rubles, they make dishes in winter in their free time; the average worker will make 2−3 tubs or tubs per day, or one barrel, or several pieces of small dishes, which are valued depending on the work and material; all earnings for the winter range between 30−60 rubles, in Eastern Siberia it is slightly higher. The dishes are sold by the artisans themselves, without intermediaries, to nearby villages or transported to neighboring rural and urban fairs, sometimes they are bought up by merchants in the villages."

Cooperage products

The production of cooperage is an art that has been preserved for centuries. There is a large number of cooperage products (such a spread is due to the fact that wood is one of man’s favorite materials). Among cooperage products, barrels and tubs are known, which are used for storing and transporting dry and liquid products, for pickling vegetables, cucumbers, tomatoes and mushrooms. Historically, barrels were used in the manufacture of wine and beer and for aging drinks.

Another group of cooperage products consists of fonts, buckets, vats, gangs, tubs, buckets. They are used in everyday life and in industries. The water stays cold in a wooden bucket for a long time, this is especially valuable in a hot steam room in a bath when we need a bright temperature contrast. And a bucket made of cedar is best suited here.

Modern coopers make flower pots, fonts and barrels for bathing. Today it is difficult to imagine even a modern bathhouse without these containers, but this is one of the first human inventions for everyday life and hygiene.