Cooper (profession)
Encyclopedia
Traditionally, a cooper is someone who makes wooden staved vessels of a conical form, of greater length than breadth, bound together with hoops and possessing flat ends or heads. Examples of a cooper's work include but are not limited to cask
CASK
Peripheral plasma membrane protein CASK is a protein that in humans is encoded by the CASK gene. This gene is also known by several other names: CMG 2 , calcium/calmodulin-dependent serine protein kinase 3 and membrane-associated guanylate kinase 2.-Genomics:This gene is located on the short arm of...

s, barrel
Barrel
A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container, traditionally made of vertical wooden staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. Traditionally, the barrel was a standard size of measure referring to a set capacity or weight of a given commodity. A small barrel is called a keg.For example, a...

s, bucket
Bucket
A bucket, also called a pail, is typically a watertight, vertical cylinder or truncated cone, with an open top and a flat bottom, usually attached to a semicircular carrying handle called the bail. A pail can have an open top or can have a lid....

s, tubs, butter churns, hogshead
Hogshead
A hogshead is a large cask of liquid . More specifically, it refers to a specified volume, measured in either Imperial units or U.S. customary units, primarily applied to alcoholic beverages such as wine, ale, or cider....

s, firkin
Firkin
A firkin is an old English unit of volume. The name is derived from the Middle Dutch word vierdekijn, which means fourth, i.e. a quarter of a full-size barrel.Nor need you mind the serial ordealOf being watched from forty cellar holes...

s, tierce
Tiercé
Tiercé is a commune in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France....

s, rundlets, puncheon
Puncheon
Puncheon is a tool or instrument for piercing or punching, such as those used for impressing designs onto coin dies. The "barrel" meaning is thought to derive from the fact that it would have been marked by use of a punch to denote its contents....

s, pipes, tun
Tun
- Science and technology :* TUN/TAP, a computer network device driver* TUN , a Danish product standard for building materials* Tun , a part of the Mayan long count calendar system* A unit of time in the Mayan Long Count calendar...

s, butts
Butt (unit)
The butt or pipe is an old English unit of wine casks, holding two hogsheads ....

, pins and breakers.

The word is derived from Middle Dutch
Middle Dutch
Middle Dutch is a collective name for a number of closely related West Germanic dialects which were spoken and written between 1150 and 1500...

 kūpe "basket, wood, tub" and may ultimately stem from cupa, the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 word for vat http://www.bartleby.com/61/39/C0623900.htmlhttp://www.bartleby.com/61/36/C0623600.html. Everything a cooper produces is referred to collectively as cooperage. "Cask" is a generic term used to describe any piece of cooperage containing a bouge, bilge, or bulge in the middle of the container. A barrel is technically a measure of the size of a cask, so the term "barrel-maker" cannot be used synonymously with "cooper." The facility in which casks are made is also referred to as a cooperage.

Traditionally there were four divisions in the cooper's craft. The "dry" or "slack" cooper made containers that would be used to ship dry goods such as cereals, nails, tobacco, fruits and vegetables. The "dry-tight" cooper made casks designed to keep dry goods in and moisture out. Gunpowder and flour casks are examples of a "drytight" cooper's work. The "white cooper" made straight staved containers like washtubs, buckets and butter churns, that would hold water and other liquids, but did not allow shipping of the liquids. Usually there was no bending of wood involved in white cooperage. The "wet" or "tight" cooper made casks for long- term storage and transportation of liquids that could even be under pressure, as with beer.

Today, the profession of the cooper is synonymous with the wine and spirits industry where the cooper assembles casks and operates machinery that builds barrels.

While plastics, stainless steel, pallets, and corrugated cardboard have replaced most wooden containers and largely made the cooper obsolete, there is still demand for high-quality wooden barrels, and it is thought that the highest-quality barrels are those hand-made by professional coopers. Examples may be seen in the cooperage at Seguin Moreau, a cooperage which was incorporated into the House of Rémy in 1971 for the express purposes of providing barrels made of Limousin oak. Limousin oak is renowned for the rich vanilla-like flavor it imparts to cognac. Rémy Martin
Rémy Martin
Rémy Martin is a brand selling cognac , specialist of the Cognac Fine Champagne originally produced by Rémy Martin, a French winemaker, who founded the company in 1724...

 will then produce Rémy Martin Grand Cru in these barrels with a retail cost well in excess of USD $1500 per bottle,http://cognac.com/there-is-a-cognac-for-everyone-cognac-prices/, a single barrel being expected to hold nearly a quarter of a million dollars worth of cognac.

Coffin
Coffin
A coffin is a funerary box used in the display and containment of dead people – either for burial or cremation.Contemporary North American English makes a distinction between "coffin", which is generally understood to denote a funerary box having six sides in plan view, and "casket", which...

-makers are also sometimes known as coopers, though this is an uncommon usage.

Cooperage as a namesake

In much the same way that the profession of smithing
Smith (metalwork)
A metalsmith, often shortened to smith, is a person involved in making metal objects. In contemporary use a metalsmith is a person who uses metal as a material, uses traditional metalsmithing techniques , whose work thematically relates to the practice or history of the practice, or who engages in...

 produced the common English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 surname
Surname
A surname is a name added to a given name and is part of a personal name. In many cases, a surname is a family name. Many dictionaries define "surname" as a synonym of "family name"...

 Smith
Smith (surname)
Smith is an English family name originating in England. It is the most common surname in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States, the second most common surname in Canada, and the fifth most common surname in Ireland...

 and the German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 name Schmidt
Schmidt (surname)
Schmidt is a common German occupational surname derived from the German word "schmied" meaning "blacksmith" and/or "metalworker". This surname is the German equivalent of "Smith" in the English-speaking world....

, the trade of cooperage also gave the English name Cooper
Cooper (surname)
Cooper is a surname originating in England, and means maker of barrels; see Cooper . Cooper is the 32nd most common surname in the United Kingdom.Many notable persons share this surname.- A :...

, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 name Tonnelier and Tonnellier, Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 name Βαρελάς/Varelas, Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

 name Bødker, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 names like Faßbinder (literally cask binder), Böttcher (tub maker), Fässler
Fassler
Fassler or Fässler is the surname of:* Ron Fassler* Marcel Fässler , Swiss racing driver* Marcel Fässler , Swiss bobsledder...

 and Keiper, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

 names like Kuiper
Kuiper
Kuiper is a Dutch language surname and may refer to:*Abraham Kuyper , Dutch politician and theologian*Adrian Kuiper , South African cricketer*David Kuiper , Dutch rower*Duane Kuiper Kuiper (or "Kuyper") is a Dutch language surname and may refer to:*Abraham Kuyper (b. 1837), Dutch politician and...

 or Cuypers, the Latvian
Latvian language
Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...

 name Mucenieks, the Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

 name Kádár
Kádár
Kádár is a Hungarian surname which may refer to:* János Kádár , Hungarian politician* Ján Kadár, Slovak-Hungarian film director* Tamás Kádár, Hungarian footballer* Matthias Kadar, a composer of German-Hungarian descent...

, Bodnár, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

 names such as Bednarz, Bednarski or Bednarczyk, the Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...

 name Bednář
Bednar
Bednář , Bednar or Bednarz may refer to:-People:*Andrzej Bednarz, a professional Polish football player for Zob Ahan FC*Andy Bednar, a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1930 and 1931*David A...

, the Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...

 names Dogaru and Butnaru, Ukrainian
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....

 family name Bondarenko, Ukrainian/Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

 name Bondar, the Jewish name Bodner and the Portuguese names Tanoeiro and Toneleiro, Spanish Cubero and Macedonian Bacvarovski (Македонски: Бачваровски).

External links

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