30 LB Kitchen Scale (Mint Green) by Pelouze MFG Co., c 1940s

Pelouze Scale & Manufacturing Co., 232 E. Ohio St., Chicago, IL

There’s no getting around it. Kitchen scales, aka “family scales,” take up a lot of the real estate in the Made-in-Chicago Museum. This mint green beaut is one of several scales in our collection made by the Pelouze Manufacturing Company, maybe the best known of the many Chicago based spring scale companies of the early 20th century.

Pelouze Family Scale by Pelouze MFG Co., c. 1930s

Pelouze Manufacturing Company, 232 E. Ohio St., Chicago, IL

Here it is. The one that started it all.

This was the faded green Pelouze “Family Scale” that caught my eye at a junk shop in the first week of 2015. As explained on the About Us page, for whatever reason, this finding lit the proverbial fuse of discovery / obsessive compulsiveness within me, and eventually laid the imaginary foundation for my imaginary museum.