Boston Warehouse

The company that produced the largest number of spreader sets (nearly 1,000), and the originator of the whole concept of figural resin-handle cheese spreaders, is Boston Warehouse.

Boston Warehouse Trading Corporation was established in 1974 by British ex-pat Peter Jenkins. His company started out importing European kitchen and housewares items; the company’s most popular items in the 1980s were a ceramic garlic keeper and a ceramic garlic baking container. By the late 1980s, Boston Warehouse had switched from importing most of its items from Europe to having them made in Taiwan and then in China, like many import companies at that time.

Boston Warehouse issued its first six sets (of four) spreaders in 1993: their Vegetables (12-102), Garlic (12-106), Fruits (12-107), Corn (12-138), Nutcracker (12-114) and Bar Condiment (12-190). The earliest Boston Warehouse spreaders, perhaps even some through 2005, had stickers on each blade stating “Resin handle — hand crafted in China”, since resin was a new concept in kitchenware.

A Hot New Trend

By the mid-1990s, resin-handled spreaders were becoming a hot new thing, and Boston Warehouse was making numerous new designs each year. In 1999 alone they came out with nearly 60 new sets of four, and the company partnered with a series of mostly American artists to design new sets, including Debbie Mumm, Susan Winget, Warren Kimble, Jilly Walsh, Anna Maria Horner, Dan Morris and Guy Buffett, and the pajama company Nick & Nora. 

Boston Warehouse released spreader sets under several line names too, such as Bali Hai for tropical themed spreaders (Bali Ha’i is the name of a mystical island in Rogers & Hammerstein’s 1949 musical, “South Pacific”) and Concepts 4 Casual Lifestyles. The company also designed sets for retailers like Target, Williams-Sonoma and some of the early Harry & David spreader sets.

Between around 1999 and 2003, Boston Warehouse also issued a limited series of spreader houses, with themed base houses to hold sets of four matching-themed spreaders (these spreader houses are not always marked with the Boston Warehouse name on the underside of the base, although the spreaders always have the brand stamped on the blades). Around 2002, the company also begin to sell a series of dip bowl and single spreader sets.

After 2005, the company continued to issue spreaders sets, but many of them were simplified designs compared to earlier designs: sometimes four identical spreaders in a set (instead of four different but related ones), or often less detailed, more modernistically simplified shapes. Later sets issued after 2015 sometimes contain only two spreaders, and with a wider, flared blade shape.

Collecting Boston Warehouse Spreaders

Generally, the Boston Warehouse spreader sets are highly collectable and are some of the highest quality sets ever made: the design shows great creativity and a clever sense of humor; the choice of subjects is wide-ranging and appealing; the paintwork is smoothly executed and the paint itself is durable, glossy and colorful. The knife blades are personalized, inscribed with the company name (which is not common — most blades are inscribed only with some version of “Stainless China”); and the packaging is well designed and well marketed.

Boston Warehouse issued nearly 1,000 different spreader sets: more than 730 sets of four, 59 spreader house sets, nearly 170 sets of two, plus probably 100 dip bowl & single spreader sets. I have confirmed these numbers with Boston Warehouse (they very kindly generated a list of all the sets of four, sets of two and spreader house sets that they ever issued, and shared that with me — many thanks to them!).

Click here to access the Boston Warehouse Spreader Database, searchable by keyword and with images for easy identification.

Additionally, I have collected images of many of the Boston Warehouse spreaders in my Pinterest boards: 

https://www.pinterest.com/bethinIowa1457/boston-warehouse-cheese-spreaders/