AUSTINTOWN, Ohio -- Ruth Capper, president of the National Cookie Cutter Collector's Club, milled through her collection of over 10,000 antique cookie cutters of all shapes, sizes and types, explaining who made each one and where she acquired them just a month ahead of the upcoming National Cookie Cutter Collector's Club Convention.
Capper's collection spans decades, dating back to the 1930s. She has it organized by manufacturer and stores it in dresser drawers in her spare rooms and shelves in her basement. She's amassed one of the most expansive collections of thumb cutters, an entire plastic bin filled with Disney cookie cutters, drawers packed with cookie cutters packaged with Scholastic books, prickers, doughnut cutters, over 200 cookie jars and cookie cutters from around the world depicting everything from intricate flowers to train cars and planes to the leg lamp from "A Christmas Story." However, some of her favorites were crafted by local and regional tinsmiths, most of whom are gone now, including Bob Jones, who was the tinsmith for the Ford Museum.
"At the first convention we held in New Philadelphia, we had seven tinsmiths there, and every one of them are gone today. And some of them made really detailed cutters," Capper said.
This year's biannual convention will be held June 19 to June 21 at Courtyard Canton, 4375 Metro Circle NW, North Canton, Ohio.
Capper's love of cookies stretches back to her mother's kitchen. Her friends were always welcome in her childhood home, and her mother served them ham salad sandwiches and chocolate cookies that everyone looked forward to eating.
Although many collectors don't use their cookie cutters to bake, Capper makes dozens of cookies for events and holidays, sharing her love of baking with others the same way her mother and grandmother did. She makes one batch a day when she's baking for events -- about six to eight dozen cookies.
She started buying cookie cutters because she enjoyed baking, and she bought a lot of cookie cutters from Ed Fox of Little Fox Factory in Bucyrus, Ohio, where the first meeting of the National Cookie Cutters Collectors Club was held. Taking note of her growing interest, Fox informed Capper of an upcoming meeting of the National Cookie Cutter Collector's Club in the late 1970s. One meeting was all it took to hook Capper.
"I never will forget that day," Capper said. "They had all of these Hallmark cutters laid out on the floor in front of the TV. I had never even seen some of them before. And I said, 'Oh my God, I can't believe this.' And this one lady said, 'Well, they're for sale. You can buy them if you want them.' Well, I ended up buying them."
A month later, Capper attended her first convention in Michigan and came home with 10 grocery bags full of cookie cutters -- and hadn't spent $100.
"When you first start out, you buy everything that you see. Then, you get selective," Capper said.
However, the next convention she attended a couple of years later in Washington, D.C. was chaotic, and Capper was ready for a change.
"I said to one of the fellas, when we were walking to dinner, 'You know, this is a mess. It's a three-ring circus.' He said, 'It sure is. Why don't we volunteer to have the next convention and have a circus for our theme?' So that's what we did," Capper said.
Incidentally, Capper served her first term as president of the National Cookie Cutters Collectors Club for the circus-themed convention in 1982, where they elected officers for the first time, bringing stability to the club.
Capper formed the Tusky Valley Dough Girls in the New Philadelphia/Dover, Ohio area in 1996, when she lived in Dellroy, Ohio, to help the national club with the convention and to bring local collectors together. As the club grew, it would hold meetings called "Around Ohio," and members would come from New York, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Maryland and the Washington D.C. area to meet in the spring and fall.
"Of course, we all became friends," Capper said.
Capper met one of the best friends she ever had through the Tusky Valley Dough Girls. When she met Margaret Mayerat, they "clicked instantly." She traveled to New York a few times a year to visit Mayerat until her passing in 2014, and still keeps in touch with her son and his family.
Although only two of the 12 members of Tusky Valley Dough Girls still live in the area -- Capper relocated to Austintown, Ohio five years ago -- they still meet every other month from April to November. They also manage to stay informed about one another's lives through the NCCCC's quarterly newsletter, Cookie Crumbs. The newsletter includes updates from cookie cutter clubs in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, California, Florida, Kansas, Texas, Louisiana and Colorado, with people from neighboring states filling out those clubs, and family news like illnesses, accidents, marriages, births and other notable events.
"If somebody's sick, we like to know it so that everybody can send them get-well cards," Capper said.
However, the scope of the friendships Capper has developed through the club hasn't been limited to reading about other members in the quarterly newsletter. Capper talks to someone from the club on the phone every week. She's hosted other members at her home, and has even filled her house with visiting cookie-cutter collectors.
"I had people sleeping on the floor. But, you know, didn't make any difference, they came and stayed, and they had a good time," Capper said.
She's visited most members' homes east of the Mississippi River, and even a few out west. She's visited with their families, seen their cookie-cutter collections and spent hours talking with them about their cookie cutters and their lives.
"The most important thing has been the gaining of friends," Capper said. "I feel like I have friends from coast to coast."
The theme of this year's convention is "Cookie Land or bust," and while the sitting president is typically responsible for the theme, it wasn't Capper's idea. During her time as vice president, knowing she'd serve as the next president, Edith Klinger, of Celina, Ohio, came up with the idea of building a theme around the game Candy Land. She took meticulous notes, planning the event, and purchased things for the goodie bags. However, Klinger was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and died 14 months later on Jan. 29, 2023, at 80 years old.
Capper stepped up to take her place because "she belonged to the Tusky Valley Doughgirls."
Seeing Klinger's vision through, Capper has been working with Klinger's daughter, Tina Frayer, of Fort Wayne, Indiana, to get everything ready for the convention. Unfortunately, Frayer, too, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and has been undergoing treatments.
With less than a month to get everything ready, Capper has been tirelessly preparing. In her dining room, she has over 9,000 cookie cutters from four estates, sorted by manufacturer, to sell for a donation; hand-sewn goodie bags; decorated folders, and 50 baskets to raffle.
"I can't get through my dining room hardly. There's so much stuff," Capper said.
The donations and raffle will help fund the next convention and benefit the National Cookie Cutter Historical Museum in Joplin, Missouri.
In addition to the cookie-cutter sale and basket raffle, this year's convention will include a parade of flags for each state with a collector's club, a cookie walk, a scramble to trade cookie cutters, a door decoration contest, a show and tell, a museum report and benefit, a banquet on June 21, awards, guest speakers, the announcement of the 2027 convention's theme and plenty of cookie breaks. The cookie walk will feature cookies made by collectors from around the United States. The speakers will cover topics including how to make a cookie cutter, a presentation from Jane Johnson about a children's book she wrote about cookies, Betty Crocker, Candy Land unwrapped and more.
There are 50 collectors registered for this year's convention so far, and as many as 200 have attended past conventions. The registration deadline is June 1. More information can be found at cookiecuttercollectorsclub.com or by calling Ruth Capper at 330-509-2205.
All are welcome to join the cookie cutter collectors. The club is composed of both men and women, members who just like to decorate, members who write reference books and those who collect cookie jars. But most of all, the cookie cutter collectors are a group of tight-knit friends.
"They have become true friends," Capper said. "You feel like some of these people are almost part of your family. We really look at each other as if it is a family. It's a family of cookie-cutter friends."
Capper will be on the lookout for friends she hasn't seen in a while at this year's convention, but also a cookie cutter that has alluded her extensive collection thus far -- the Mirro purple witch.
"You know, you share in your sorrows and you share in their happy times. And, you're happy whenever they find a cutter that they've been looking for," Capper said.