Saga of the Bentwood Club, Rudyard Kipling and the search for the perfect ice cream spoon

With no palm trees and no ocean waves, John H. Mulholland’s Bentwood club was no Mar-a-Lago, but it did host family, friends and business leaders.

According to the Oct. 9, 1931, issue of the Milford Chronicle, the “beautiful Bentwood Club was enough to make one forget everything else. Of course, everyone in Milford knows of this lovely place situated on a convenient peninsula on Haven Lake.”

A voyage to America with, yes, Rudyard Kipling

Mulholland was born in Ireland in 1865. Although not a man of means, during the late 19th century, he crossed the Atlantic several times. In 1887, Mulholland struck a deal with the owners of a ship that was carrying cattle to England. In exchange for his passage, Mulholland agreed to care for the cattle that were kept on the vessel’s lower deck.

One of the passengers aboard his ship happened to be the noted writer and poet, Rudyard Kipling. It is not known if Mulholland, who spent most of his time tending the animals, personally met Kipling, but before the trip was over, the English poet knew who Mulholland was.

During the voyage, the ship was struck by a storm and the cattle broke loose from their pens. Mulholland had contracted to care for the animals, and he meant to abide by it.

Surrounded by scores of surging horns and hooves, Mulholland worked to calm the animals. When the storm subsided, he emerged from below decks, bloodied and bruised, but the cattle were safe.

Seven years after the voyage, Kipling published a stirring poem titled “Mulholland’s Contract” that described the voyage when: “The fear was on the cattle, for the gale was on the sea, An’ the pens broke up on the lower deck an’ let the creatures free—” Kipling depicted Mulholland’s struggle with the cattle as a religious experience that left Mulholland a changed man, but it is not known how much the stormy encounter with the cattle actually affected Mulholland.

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In search of the perfect ice cream spoon

By the early 20th century, Mulholland settled in Philadelphia, where he established a sign shop. Most ice cream establishments provided their customers with small metal spoons that gave the ice cream a metallic taste.

Working with the A. W. Robinson Basket Company in Laurel, Mulholland perfected a die press to stamp out his wood spoons from thin sheets of sweat gum veneer. He also developed a method that used steam to bend the spoons slightly.

The curved shape that Mulholland gave his “Bentwood Spoons” made them more comfortable and more efficient for scooping ice cream. Bentwood Spoons were so successful that they quickly replaced the metal spoons that had been the usual implements supplied by ice cream parlors.

The Bentwood Spoons remained popular until they were replaced with plastic utensils after World War II.

Mulholland built a plant in Milford to manufacture his spoons, and he established the Bentwood Club to entertain his guests. The grounds of the club were kept well-groomed with boxes filled with blooming flowers scattered around the wooded area to give some color.

According to the Milford Chronicle, “The grove beside the house is a wooden platform, which is surrounded by rail, and which the men use for boxing, while the women call it a dance floor. Besides this Mr. Mulholland has three canoes and an outboard motor to use when his guests want to fish or row. Indeed they could never be dull when visiting the Bentwood Club.”

As the newspaper declared, the “beautiful Bentwood Club was enough to make one forget everything else.”

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Principal sources

Milford Chronicle, Oct. 9, 1931.

David W. Kenton, “John H. Mulholland and his Bentwood Spoon,” Milford Historical Society Newsletter, Vol. 33, No. 2, Fall, 1995, pp. 1-5.

Federal Writers’ Project, Delaware, A Guide to the First State, New York: The Viking  Press, 1938, p. 217.

This article originally appeared on Salisbury Daily Times: How the Bentwood Club was built on search for perfect ice cream spoon