The Club of Queer Crafts

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 86, 2 July 1927, Page 8

The Club of Queer Crafts

No. 7 - The Peanut Roaster & Others QNCE upon a time—and this is no fairy story, you are going to be told —there arose in Auckland., a firm which hoped to make the skewers to skewer all Auckland's meat. But the tale practically ends there. The firm is no longer in existence. It skewered its last roast many moons ago. That is only one of the curious businesses that are, or have, been conducted about Auckland. Let us run through some of them at a rather breathless pace. In the list of seasonal occupations has the manufacture of flypapers ever been considered? Yet in the summer several men are engaged preparing the sticky papers to trap the pests that constitute summer’s greatest nuisance.

How many women realise that they are supported by local industry insofar as the wooden heels of their shoes are made in the city? And how many men realise that the heel-plates and toe-plates of their stout winter boots are a product of Auckland manufacturers? Not only is that so., but the lasts on which many of our boots are made are manufactured in the city. There are quite a few queer working trades. In Newmarket wooden toys are made. Many of our hats are made on blocks turned by Auckland wood-turners. One solitary Chinese in Grey Street is engaged in making furniture, and one of the last representatives of the independent coopers worked at his craft in Swanson Street until quite recently.

“Curiouser and curiouser” is the trade of “peanut roaster,” yet in the centre of the city a man carries on roasting peanuts for the populace. There are two or three firms in the business of whip and thong maker —even in these days when horses are being superseded by motors. Not very long ago two cutlers from England set up their apparatus in the city, and are now making hand-made cutlery of various kinds. Until recently those flat packets of paper: stalk matches were made in the city, but they are now being made in Australia.

Another queer trade is the making of blue prints for draughtsmen. Newmarket is the scene of two little-known industries, the manufacture of toothbrushes and braces. There are also in the city teachers of navigation and taxidermists, makers of artificial limbs and makers of ice-cream cones, interesting working jewellers, carvers and process-block makers. And not far from Auckland is a man who has manufactured cork waste linoleum, rolling out his experimental samples with a bottle.