1940s Nickel Plated Bottle Opener in the Style of Tiffany and Co.

Details

Description

Offered is a 1940s nickel plated stainless steel bottle opener that has a few sneak design elements and a bit … Read more Offered is a 1940s nickel plated stainless steel bottle opener that has a few sneak design elements and a bit of history. While it is visually almost identical to the iconic patented bottle opener by Marshall S. Dean that comprised a fold out corkscrew, this piece has a solid handle, and its knob at the end can also be used as a muddler for spices, coffee, cocktail ingredients, etc. There is also a Tiffany & Company version that is very similar, and it is quite possible that the Marshall S. Dean version was sold to numerous companies and private labeled under their names. This piece is stamped "Grosse Ile Golf and C.C. 1949", the C.C. is Country Club. Grosse Ile is a wealthy suburb of Detroit, Michigan and this club was known as the home of high society . The President of the club in the late 1940s was a Danish immigrant named William (Big Bill) Knudsen, who had risen from his first job in the US at a bicycle factory to Henry Ford's chief of production after Ford saw how Knudsen "assembled" the bicycles in a "line of different skilled men". Alfred P. Sloan was consolidating numerous car production companies into his new venture, General Motors, and hired Knudsen away from Ford in 1920. Between 1937-1940 Knudsen was Chairman of General Motors. In 1940 he was recruited by FDR to run the Office of Production Management under a new office, the National Research Defense Council, to help the US develop military equipment and industrial equipment after a 20 yr lapse post WW1 and the Great Depression. Knudsen took this job for a salary of $1/year to honor his appreciation for the US - his salary at GM had been $250,000/year. After Pearl Harbor, Knudsen prepared to go home to Detroit and get back to work for GM. He was instead conscripted as a General to the US Army, to date, the oldest person conscripted into the US military.

Measures 5.5" long, 2.5" wide, .625" deep See less