Deer Antler Copper Coin Jagger Wheel / Pie Crimper

Description

This is an awesome antique “pie crimper,” also called a “Jagger Wheel,” which is probably the coolest pie crimper ever made. Some have theorized that a frontiersman-type husband made this for his wife. Or maybe he was just a guy who also liked to cook. Or possibly a crafty and talented woman. They were used to cut and slice dough, just generally. It’s made out of a deer antler, and uses a thick, early British coin as the crimping wheel.

The coin is a massive British 1797 Cartwheel Penny as the wheel. You can still see the “G” on the border of one of the filed edges. The antler is also personalized with what looks like a backwards N. These were used like a pizza cutter with a serrated edge, to cut flour dough. They were mostly used to cut small strips to design a latticework on top of a pie. It’s possible also that the lower antler time was used to poke holes in a pie to ventilate it.

I got this from my expert picker buddy Karl, who found it in an assortment of interesting things, found all together in a box in Ohio, I believe, including an antler awl, an iron trade musket trigger guard, leather shot pouch, and a few other things. We actually didn’t notice the coin wheel until we were packing it up.