VIKO Aluminum Lunch Pail
date: label: date made
content: 1910-1930
name: label: maker
content: Aluminum Goods Manufacturing Company
notes: label: Description
content: Medium sized aluminum metal lunch pail with a long, thin handle on the pail and a lid with a shorter handle. It would have been used for liquids such as soups or milk, and could have accompanied other food containers from tobacco or food, or wrappings or pouches made of paper, leather or fabric. Lunch pails more typically were used in rural schools when students would have eaten on school grounds and not gone home for lunch.
label: Description
content: This lunch pail is marked with a registered trademark of VIKO/ The Popular Aluminum/ MADE IN U.S.A. It is the brand for Aluminum Goods Manufacturing Company of Manitowoc , Wisconsin (also known as "Goods" The company was formed in 1909 from a merger of Henry Vit's Manitowoc Novelty Company, Joseph Koenig's Aluminum Manufacturing, and New Jersey Aluminum Company of Newark. The brand name VIKO is an amalgamation of the founder's names: VI from Vits and KO from Koenig. With the outbreak of World War I, the company was producing not only pots and pans and hubcaps, but also mess kits, canteens, cooking utensils, and school lunch pails. Over 1 million canteens were produced by "Goods"; by 1917 the company had also introduced the brand name of Mirro.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Wisconsin, Manitowoc
topic: label: general subject association
content: School Personal Equipment
label: used
content: Education
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Education
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Dr. Richard Lodish American School Collection
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2014.0244.176
label: accession number
content: 2014.0244
label: catalog number
content: 2014.0244.176
objectType: label: Object Name
content: lunch pail
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: aluminum (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 14.4 cm x 11.5 cm x 8.7 cm; 5 21/32 in x 4 17/32 in x 3 7/16 in