This artifact is a type of sugar cutter, or more commonly called a pair of sugar nips. They were designed to cut sugar from a sugarloaf—a cone-like block of refined sugar. Sugarloaves were molded from dark molasses that had been refined into white sugar. Sugar nips were popular in households until the mid-1800s, when granulated and cube sugars were invented by Czech sugar factory manager Jakub Kryštof Rad, who patented sugar cubes after his wife cut her finger while using a pair of sugar nips.
Most sugar nips looked like the one above. Heavier cutters were sometimes mounted on a wooden base to provide better leverage and make them safer to use, like the one in our collection.
