Medalta’s Sanitis CupDuring the World War II, the Canadian governmentasked Medalta Potteries if they could produce hygieniccups and mugs. It was believed that sickness and lost workdays could be reduced if cups were more sanitary. Concernfocused on the cracks and crevices sometimes foundwhere the handle joined the body of the cup—a breedingground for bacteria. (Handles were always cast separatelyand attached to the cup with liquid clay before firing.) Aseamless joint between the handle and cup, or no joint atall, would eliminate the problem.Medalta’s solution was to mould cups with a solidtab handle. To shape the tab into a functional handle,factory superintendent Ed Phillipson invented the SanitasHandle Cup Machine in 1946. (Sanitas is the Latin wordfor health.) Before firing, the cup was positioned onthe machine. Pulling a lever caused two medal dies tosimultaneously strike each side of the cup’s tab creating aperfectly formed handle with rounded edges and a fingerhole. This labour saving device created handles that werestrong, neat, smooth and sanitary.A 1947 catalogue shows five different shapes of cupsand a coffee mug made with Sanitas handles. WhenMedalta closed in 1954, the Sanitas machine, alongwith its Canadian and United States patents, were soldto Buffalo Pottery in Buffalo, New York, for $110,000. Arecent inquiry to the Niagara Ceramics Corporation, thecompany that has owned Buffalo Pottery since 2004 andtoday manufactures 16 lines of restaurant ware, foundthat the device had long since disappeared. Today, handlesare attached to cups in the same way as they were in thepast. The apparent advantages of the Sanitas machineseem to have been short lived or non-existent.Medalta Continued from page 8.made cups more sanitary. Medalta Potteries dominatedthe western Canadian hotel and restaurant market. Inthe 1940s, they supplied the tableware for Canadianmilitary bases across the country.Andrew Leyerle is a cabinetmaker who alsolives in Toronto. “I have, in the vaguest of ways, and aspart of a larger but completely unsystematic bowl mania,been buying Medicine Hat* bowls for the last 15 years. Iam a collector only in the sense that I extend a modesteffort to find and acquire this type of material culture.I haven’t made the slightest attempt to determine therange, market or industrial context of these artifacts, andI don’t aim for complete typology or place undue valueon rarity. I have simply become attached to an aestheticand have followed it through this manufacturer.”When I first saw the teapot, shown here, in theantiques mall in Orono, Ontario, I didn’t recognize it askin to the bowls. I picked it up as a curiosity. I wasn’teven slightly tempted by its ungainly appearance. Theshape of the spout brought to mind the elephant inone of Rudyard Kipling’s Just So stories. The shape ofthe handle seemed incongruous, and the finial on thelid—preposterous.”But I saw that the line of the glaze on the inside ofthe cap was sensuously freeform and that the contiguouscolours and textures of the glaze and bisque wereluscious. It was priced very low and marked MedicineRemoved from itsmould, a Medalta cuphad a solid tab handle.A drawing of theSanitas machine asseen in its patentapplication.10 • <strong>Discovering</strong> <strong>ANTIQUES</strong>The Sanitasmachine stamped acup handle into itsfinal shape.Andrew Leyerle has fun with his seven-cup Medicine Hatteapot (No. 127). Made from about 1938 to 1950, it came inyellow and two shades of violet blue, and in five sizes....continued on page 12
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