Collecting Spreaders

Collecting Spreaders

An online collectors' guide and occasional blog about collecting these surprisingly clever items: cheese spreaders

Cardinal / Spreadables

An early (and 2nd-most prolific, after Boston Warehouse) manufacturer/importer of spreaders was Cardinal, Inc. (of Rahway, NJ, and also of neighboring Port Reading, NJ). It’s unclear whether the company still exists, although it certainly does not sell spreaders any more.

Cardinal sold many of its spreader sets under the Spreadables™ trademarked name, although after it stopped selling them, it may have sold the use of that name to another company, Lifestyle Home of Edison, NJ, which issued a small number of sets under that name).

Here’s a set of barbecue grilling themed spreaders from Cardinal, Inc.’s Spreadables line.

The Cardinal Spreadables sets unfortunately do not have copyright dates on the boxes or UPC stickers the way Boston Warehouse sets do, so it’s hard to know when they were made. I estimate most were produced in the 1990s and 2000s.

The stainless steel blades of Cardinal spreaders are generally (but not always) stamped with the Cardinal name and/or logo, and the spreader houses also usually bear an imprint stamp too, so it is often possible to identify sets made by the company even if the original box is missing.

The Cardinal/Spreadables spreaders are generally not as well-made or well-designed as those of Boston Warehouse — their paint colors are not as vivid or hard-wearing, their design is often cruder, and many of them seem to be knock-offs of Boston Warehouse sets (which I believe were produced first).

But Cardinal did make a number of sets that are quite interesting and original in their subject matter, and very detailed in their execution:

These ornately decorated traditional German beer steins are impressively detailed.
And as I described in my page About Spreaders, these traditional Chinese opera string instruments are perhaps the most interesting subject matter I have ever seen.

I have come across around 100 sets of 4 spreaders made by Cardinal/Spreadables, plus at least 40 Cardinal spreader houses. Cardinal didn’t make nearly as many different sets of spreaders as Boston Warehouse, although a much higher proportion of their sets were spreader houses (nearly a third). Cardinal undoubtedly produced more than the numbers I currently know about, but it is impossible to guess the total number. I imagine that they were probably produced in smaller production runs than those of Boston Warehouse, so some of the sets likely come to auction far more rarely.

Here is my keyword-searchable database of Cardinal/Spreadables spreader sets, with images.

And my collected images of Cardinal Spreadables sets on my Pinterest board: https://www.pinterest.com/bethinIowa1457/cardinal-spreaders/