Meet the Tin Men

The tin man of fictional Oz may have yearned for a heart, but not the tin men of Colonial Williamsburg.

Steve Delisle and his apprentice Joel Anderson have an abundance of heart and passion for the work they do each day to preserve 18th-century tinware-making techniques and sharing their knowledge for future generations.

Hundreds of visitors move in and out of the tin shop at James Anderson’s Armoury site every day, watching as Delisle and Anderson form cups, coffee pots, lanterns and other common objects out of tin.

From these simplest of objects, the tin men convey lessons about life – lessons relevant to both the past and present.

A cup may seem like a very ordinary object, for example, but it was crucial to a Revolutionary War soldier’s survival. He had to have it to serve in the field. Each cup was hand-crafted then by a tradesman using the same techniques now used by Delisle and Anderson.

These tin objects tell the story of the “industrial underpinning” that made it possible to win the war, says Ken Schwarz, blacksmith and master of the shop.

Items had to be produced on large scale for soldiers, and tin was much more affordable than copper and much lighter than other materials like cast iron.

“It’s the object as a conversation piece to anchor history,” says Delisle, who calls his job an interesting combination of “fabrication and interpretation.”

The shaping of two-dimensional pieces cut from sheets of tin into 3-D objects is, as he calls it, “tailoring in metal.”

The Tin Men Return

The tin shop just opened last November and is very popular with visitors now. Tin making is Colonial Williamsburg’s newest trade, the first to be added in 15 years. The shop was authentically re-created after extensive archaeological research unearthed the remnants of the original tin shop.

Schwarz, Delisle and Anderson all had input into outfitting the tin shop before it opened its doors to the public. Everything seen in the shop was researched for accuracy and authenticity. Even their tools were custom-forged at the blacksmith’s shop.

Colonial Williamsburg’s vast and diverse resources allowed every step of the project to be completed in-house, said Schwarz, including conception, design, architectural research, planning, engineering and construction. Even the building materials — the bricks, shingles, nails, hinges, windows and doors — were made on site.

Visitors flow through the tin shop all day to quietly see the work and talk with the men doing it. But it’s likely that few are aware of the depth of the tin men’s practical and historical knowledge of the trade, which wasn’t called tinsmithing until post-Colonial times.

A Québec native, Delisle said he’s always been interested in both metal working and history. He worked at Anderson’s blacksmith shop about eight years ago before going to graduate school. He also previously worked as a tool and die maker.

He holds a master’s degree in American Material Culture from the Winterthur program at the University of Delaware.

Prior to becoming Colonial Williamsburg’s first tin man last summer in the re-opened Armoury, he worked as a museum consultant for the American Revolution Center/Museum of the American Revolution (AMR-MAR) in Philadelphia.

At AMR-MAR, he researched and catalogued objects from the former Valley Forge Historical Society and from other private collections that were being sent to the museum.

But even as a consultant, he always answered the call of working with his hands in his own metalworking shop, where for over 10 years, he’s assembled tin-making tools and pursued tinplate work, in addition to taking classes from established tinsmiths.

His love of working with his hands goes back to summers spent with Jean-Paul Dubuc, his grandfather and his greatest influence. “He was a jack of all trades and he could do anything,” Delisle says.

While there’s always a certain degree of gratification in making things, his job as tin man integrates intellectual, manual and historical work which he loves. “I’m in heaven,” he says.

Course of Study

Delisle and Anderson don’t just research the techniques that would have been used in Colonial times – they also study the objects that would have been created from tin. The original daybook from Anderson’s Armoury shop, a journal that lists daily transactions including the items sold each day and their costs, is just one resource they use.

The daybook survives in the collections of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Schwarz says. It covers the years 1778-1780 and notes much of the work delivered from the tin shop.

“You have to use your own logic,” he explains. Often there’s just the name of an object listed in the daybook, and then from that and any other information that can be found, they must figure out what the object would have looked like.

Anderson, who was chosen for the six- to seven-year apprenticeship last August, has a strong background and interest in the Revolutionary War. He is a re-enactor and he also ran his own period clothing shop with Colonial-era military and civilian garments.

His love of Colonial history evolved from an early interest in his own family’s history, having grown up on a family farm in South Carolina dating to the 1750s. His interests expanded to local and then national history, prior to focusing on his primary interest in how the American Army was outfitted during the Revolutionary War.

Anderson worked as an artificer at Fort Ticonderoga in New York prior to joining Delisle in the tin shop. At the fort, he produced clothing and shoes for interpretive programming.

He also had experience in the museum field at both Walnut Grove Plantation and Middleton Place in South Carolina.

While he didn’t have actual experience working with tin, he had tailoring and shoemaking experience which are transferable to tin making. All of these trades involve cutting patterns from two-dimensional materials and molding them into three-dimensional forms.

Understanding 18th Century Methods

The materials and tools are different, but soldering in metal basically replaces the needle and thread used in tailoring and shoemaking.

He had the related transferrable skills and interpretive experience we were looking for, but more than that, “we look for the passion,” says Schwarz.

Anderson said he was humbled to be chosen from a large pool of candidates as the tin shop apprentice. “Colonial Williamsburg is the mother ship of living history museums with the highest standards and scholarship.”

Because of trades like tin making, the world has a better understanding of how things were made, of history itself and a better understanding of our world today, he says.

Since the shop opened, Delisle and Anderson have been busy fulfilling orders for tin items needed throughout the Revolutionary City.

A testament to the success of the shop so far is the upcoming conference of the Tin Tinkers Group in Williamsburg scheduled for June 20-21. This national organization promotes historical tin and coppersmithing from the early Colonial period.

Coppersmithing may be added at the shop in the future, says Schwarz, and work is also underway on a product line to offer for sale to visitors. The line will include items such as a tinderbox for fire starting and measuring cups.

Many visitors to the shop have also shown interest in purchasing a side-pouring coffee pot that’s on display so this may also be included in the line.

When working in front of the public, “we have to become curators of our own living exhibit,” says Anderson. It’s comparable to being a curator of a painting in a museum, but it comes with the added responsibility for creating a “connection” with visitors through direct communication.

While many visitors prefer to observe quietly, others engage Delisle and Anderson with questions about their process and the materials they use. “One object can be the talking point” – the tool for conveying the larger message, says Anderson.

“You have to be sensitive to what visitors are asking,” he says, while Delisle emphasized that they also have to communicate at various levels, as visitors range from scholars and college professors to small children.

“I’m always impressed with the kids who ask questions and are attentive and want to learn,” says Delisle. “It makes my day when they get something out of it that I know they’ll remember.”

Schwarz agrees. “We remember experiences like this from our own childhoods that changed the direction of our lives.”