D. Picking and Company

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D. PICKING AND COMPANY

119 S. Walnut St.

The present physical plant of D. Picking and Company is, in fact, exactly as it was when the business began in 1874. The present owner’s great grandfather began making hammered copper kettles in the early 1870’s as a sideline to his hardware business. This work was conducted in the back section of the brick store. The kettles soon proved so popular that the store was enlarged in 1874 to include a copper goods factory. A few years later the hardware store section was removed. The present building, therefore, includes the original brick back of the store in which the business began and the frame addition of 1874. These buildings are joined and form one long, narrow, two-story structure. The front left door enters the office, the right door, the shipping room. Behind the shipping room are a storage area for copper sheets and a work area for cutting patterns. The next room contains the brazing and forming equipment. The last, rear, work area is for hammering and acid cleaning. One large room on the second floor of the frame section is for applying kettle ears, bales and handles and final polishing. The second floor of the rear brick structure is for storage. The building is heated throughout by coal stoves installed in 1874.

The only major change apparently ever made to the factory was the installation of telephone and electric service shortly after 1900. Electric motors are used to power the same line shafts formerly powered by steam and gasoline engines. Helen Picking Neff states that the interior has never been painted nor altered since the new building was finished in 1874. There are even 19th century “pin-up” pictures remaining beside some benches.

Today it is not unusual to find a business one hundred years old, but it is most unusual to find one in its original, and for all practical purposes, unaltered physical plant. Even more unusual is the fact that the present owner, Helen Picking Neff was born in 1916 and still works every day managing the business, as did her father, Robert B. Picking until his death at age 103 in 1983.

The feeling of continuity with the 19th century is pronounced when one visits the Picking Company, the only remaining hand-hammered copper kettle factory in the United States. To demonstrate this continuity, a 1905 catalog can still be used to choose products from the present day D. Picking and Company. Though a wide variety of hollow copper ware has been manufactured through the years, today the demand is mainly for apple butter kettles, candy kettles, flat bottom kettles (buckets) and tympani (kettle drums). The latter products are well known in the musical world and are considered by several prominent musicians to be the best kettle drums manufactured in the world. Until World War II most of the copper cheese kettles in the United States were made by the Picking Company. After the war, stainless steel kettles became more popular.

D. Picking and Company deserves to be better known and documented. The owner and her family’s tradition, the physical plant and the products are unique in Ohio, the United States and, possibly, the world.