Mystery Object

 

I came across this yesterday at the Bargain Loft and spent a while pondering what it could be.  Not a very good photo I am afraid.

Others were also perplexed, even when we read the description on the tag, which said it was a replica of a vintage cranberry picker.

 

It did make more sense when it was correctly placed in the way that it would have been used to collect the berries in the flooded fields..  With the handle at the top it would be possible to skim the picker along the surface of the water, catching the berries between the prongs - and stripping them away from the plant?

The main design fault as far as I could see (if I have correctly understood how it worked) is that it would be heavy with water collected in the scoop as there were no holes to let it through.

Looking up actual vintage cranberry pickers on line I see that they were also made of metal sometimes and are also used for blueberries and huckleberries - or were until around 1900.  So I think that the picker must have been used as a kind of comb or rake with an upwards movement through the bush, pulling the berries off and dropping them into the scoop.

Flooding the cranberry field to harvest the berries is perhaps a later idea.