L*ncsst*r Farming. Saturday, Oct 2. 1976
50
By SUSAN KAUFFMAN
Feature Writer
What dehydrated vegetable can be fashioned into
dishes, dippers, musical instruments, jewelry, lamps,
hats, purses, thimbles, funnels, baskets, slippers, toys,
birdhouses, fish net bouys, and dish cloths? The answer
is not a new wonder hybrid, but a common plant known to
man for at least 9,000 years-the gourd.
If you cannot imagine the gourd as the basis for all these
items, then see Ralph Schneider’s collection of handmade
gourd crafts at 63 Woodland Avenue, York. Schneider, a
retired tool engineer, puts his creative talents to work
designing and making these numerous objects from
gourds he raises on a farm near Hanover, York County. In
addition to showing his display items, he can tell any
person all he ever wanted to know about gourds.
Schneider will quickly rebuke you if you say you can’t
raise gourds in Pennsylvania by showing you his
specimens from this year’s harvest.
Six years ago, Schneider became a member of the
Gourd Society of America and began to search out more
and more history of the gourd and many ways to create
art objects from gourds. According to Schneider’s
research, the earliest known date of gourds in use was
B.C. 7,000. Several perfect specimens have been found in a
cave in Mexico where the dry, arid conditions allowed the
gourds to remain in good condition. Proof of the age was
detected by the carbon 14 process and scientists have
agreed on these gourds’ authenticity and age.
Gourds have also been found in Egyptian tombs, have
been mentioned in the Bible at least five times - the most
conspicuous reference in connection with Jonah’s
Ralph Schneider poses with two of the elephant were made from cave
his creations. Both the chicken and man's club gourds.
This display illustrates several of the different types of objects you can make with gourds.
He creates with gourds
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argument with God over the salvation of the city of
Ninevah - were a basis of many Polynesian religious
ceremonies, and were used extensively by the American
Indians as food and water containers.
Egyptians and Polynesians, alike, used the gourd as a
religious ceremonial object. Food was placed in the gourd
containers and buried with the dead to supply them with
enough to eat until they reached their new world. The
Polynesians, not knowing modem scientific information
about heredity and genes, had the various types of gourd
seeds sown by men whose physical appearance resembled
the desired gourd. For instance, the long, thin serpent
gourd seed was planted by a tall, thin man and the squat,
fat birdhouse gourd was planted by a short, pot-bellied
man.
The Polynesians used the fishnet gourd shaped like a set
of barbells to bouy their fishnets and as water wings which
were harnessed on their small children so they could learn
to swim at a very early age, often before they could walk.
The American Indian used gourds as forms for making
clay pots. The gourd shells would turn into ashes upon
baling, leaving only the hardened pottery. Even though
gourds will burn easily, the Indians learned how to use
them for cooking containers. The food to be cooked was
placed in watt - aside the gourd container, then hot stones
were added to heat the water and cook the food. A cool
stone was replaced by another hot stone until the food was
cooked.
The Indians also used gourds as birdhouses. They found
that gourds which accommodated the Purple Martin were
highly useful because the Martins kept the crows away
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The “Spirit of 1776” display characters, Schneider did extensive
contains a militiaman, an old man in a research to arrive at the authentic
victory march, and a youthful details,
drummer. To come up with these
from the grain fields and kept the insect population under
control naturally.
The early American settler used the gourd for food and
water containers, sewing baskets, thimbles, funnels, and
dishes. Another use of the gourd was alluded to in a
Tennessee law which stated, “A person cannot sell a dead
man’s pungent to pay for his funeral expenses.” A
pungent is a back scralcher made from the long-necked
gourd.
Today, some enterprising people are marketing the
dishrag gourd’s lining as a natural “beauty spong” which
promises to remove skin imperfections. Schneider ad
vises people to use this coarse fiber as a pot and pan
scrubber rather than as a cosmetic doth, or use it as he
does for the clothes and hair of his gourd craft items.
Perhaps the most popular way to use gourds in modem
America is to make decorative objects and com
memorative figurines. Schneider has taught gourd craft
classes and his basic instruction is to use your
imagination. Look at a gourd and see w*v possibilities it
has to become a chicken, a kangaroo, an elephant, a
camel, a wiseman, an ostrich, a groundhog, an owl, a
penquin, or whatever your imagination devises.
The caveman’s club gourd, so named for its ap
pearance, g-"- - ,ith a straight stem when grown on a
trellis and , eiops a curved stem when grown on the
ground. It is the basic shape of the kangaroo, chicken,
elephant, camel, and ostrich.
The warty hardhead gourd, named for its bumpy sur-
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