Antiques & Collecting: Seed tape displayed in cardboard box

It’s spring and time to plant the seeds that grow into vegetables and flowers that often are tasty salads for deer, rabbits, squirrels and other local wildlife.

In 1790, a Shaker religious community started to sell packets filled with seeds saved from the previous year. It was a new idea. Seeds for farmers had only sold in bulk quantities.

At first, the packets held only vegetable seeds, but by the mid-1800s, flower seeds also were sold. Sometime before 1918, Shaker seed tape was invented and sold.

Today, gardeners can buy seed tape for hundreds of plants or make their own. Just unroll some toilet paper and press one or two seeds into the paper at spaced intervals. Then roll up the paper until it’s time to plant.

The seed tape can be stretched into a shallow line in the dirt, then covered with more dirt, watered and kept free of weeds. Rows of plants will come up in a few days.

The American Seed Tape Co. of Newark, New Jersey, had a seed tape brand called Pakro that advertised in farm publications from 1918 to at least the 1920s.

Recently, a Wm Morford advertising auction offered an early cardboard Pakro seed tape display box that held 60 different types of seed tapes in original small boxes with color pictures like those on the packets. The 15-by-18-inch display sold for $1,033.

I have a vintage hammered aluminum chafing dish with original glass bowl, but I believe the aluminum “cup” placed in the space for the heating element isn’t original. The space is the perfect size for a tea light candle, but I hesitate to put a direct flame under the glass. What was used originally, and what would be safe to use now? Would Sterno be acceptable?

Don’t use canned heat if the glass dish is directly over the heat. A tea candle will help keep the food warm if the food is hot when it’s put in the dish.

Canned heat can be used if the chafing dish is the kind that has a metal outer dish that holds water, which heats the glass dish. A chafing dish that uses a water bath to keep the food warm has the French name “bain-marie.”

Current Prices

Fireplace fender, rectangular panel, cherubs, scrolls, ball finials, c. 1880, 10 1/2 x 41 in. $390.

Doorstop, organ grinder and monkey, red jackets, double sided cast iron, 1920, 10 in. $480.

Plate, yellow hand, figure, holding urn, green, blue, Viola Frey, c. 1986, France, 6 1/2 in. $550.

Baby Grand Piano, Steinway & Sons, high gloss black, E grade, bench, c. 1999, 60 x 57 in. $2,400.

Tip: Recycle your unused ashtrays as drip-catching candleholders, trays for change on your bedroom dresser or as a dish for imitation sweeteners.