Vintage Kitchen Canisters
Buy the best vintage kitchen canisters selected and recommended by interior designers. By Tara Gosselin.
Industrial, shabby chic, and farmhouse styles are drawn to the timeless touch that a vintage kitchen canister set can bring to their homes. Use them as decor pieces and place them on shelves, or as functional pieces to store flour, sugar, and pasta. For farmhouse styles, stick with tin and metal canisters, and for shabby chic styles, choose porcelain and ceramic. No matter which material you choose, know you are keeping history alive and well in your kitchen.
Vintage Kitchen Canisters
Buying Guide
Tara Gosselin
Interior Design Expert
Tara is a San Antonio-based award-winning landscape architect, writer and educator, passionate about eco-friendly solutions and growing her own food. She knows all it takes to help you create a sustainable backyard retreat that combines blissful charm with a modern take on landscaping.
Metal kitchen canisters are great for keeping flour, sugar, pasta and more safe from moisture, insects and rodents. They cannot be broken like glass canisters. Another plus is that they give you the opportunity to use them to beautify your home. You can match colors or color-coordinate them to the colors in your kitchen.
By the 1850s, tin canisters were standard in U.S. kitchens because traveling salesmen sold them filled with coffee or tea. Some of these canisters carried the company name. In the 1940s, enameled canisters were used widely. They often bore labels such as “flour” and “sugar” that identified their contents. In keeping with practical identification, many canisters with labels are available today.
Metal kitchen canisters are available in dark colors like espresso and deep blue, bright colors such as avocado green and fire engine red. They offer more choices by being available in shiny finishes or hammered finishes as well as in patterns and with floral motifs. Metal kitchen canisters are also available with reproductions of famous labels and styles of bygone days. Pieces of any era can be found in one or more of the following materials: stainless steel, galvanized tin, chrome or aluminum.
While some retro metal kitchen canisters come in very busy and colorful patterns that cover every inch of the storage vessel, others have a clean and very modern look. That’s because in the 1950s chrome accents were popular, as were the colors pink, aqua, turquoise, black, gray and copper. The materials used in making canisters of several eras are sometimes mixed. For instance, a set might have metal containers and wood tops.
You can place metal kitchen canisters on your kitchen counter, but they are not just for foodstuffs. Use them in your laundry room or bathroom. Parents can use them to store children’s crayons, marbles, game pieces and more. If you’re a hobbyist, a person who makes home repairs or someone who sews, use them to keep nails, screws, glue, pins, needles, thread and more. Remove the lid on them to keep tall items such as wooden spoons, rulers and paint brushes. Since they come in so many colors, you are sure to find one that complements the decor of your home.
Since historically they were always about food preservation, metal kitchen canisters have airtight seals. Some have push-down lids while others have latches. Still others have handles or knobs on their tops. Metal kitchen canisters usually come in sets of three, four or five. The pieces of most sets can be nestled inside each other to conserve space when not in use.
Even though we now have cabinets with lots of shelves in our kitchens that’s no reason to ditch storage containers for that room. Even if you don’t need them for your kitchen, you don’t have to think too hard to find other places in your home where you can use metal kitchen canisters.