Sugar tongs

Sugar was not always available in a loose form easily served with a spoon. At least to the middle of the nineteenth century it was obtained from sugar cane and sold in “heads” – conical hard lumps (from one to ten kgs), which had to be divided into larger pieces with a special axe and into smaller ones – by using tongs. The crushed delicacy was segregated, and shapely small chunks were placed in a sugar bowl. Small tongs, known in Polish as szczypczyki or kleszczyki, were added for the convenience of the users. They were produced in two basic forms imitating scissors or the letter U. Each ended with decorated prongs making it easier it lift the lumps of sugar; as a rule, the prongs were in the shape of sharp claws or, more rarely, of a hand or a shovel. Tongs vanished in about the mid-nineteenth century after the introduction of beet sugar, although today they may be used again for sugar cubes.