Old and Interesting

History of ironing and irons - flat-irons, sad-irons, mangles

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

No-one can say exactly when people started trying to press cloth smooth, but we know that the Chinese were using hot metal for ironing before anyone else. Pans filled with hot coals were pressed over stretched cloth as illustrated in the drawing to the right. A thousand years ago this method was...

History of Ironing Boards, Ironing Tables, Smoothing Boards

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

It may seem obvious that ironing has to be done on a flat surface, but there have been exceptions. Chinese pan irons were sometimes used on cloth stretched in mid air between two people. Ancestors of the ironing board include, in the West, the whalebone smoothing boards buried with Viking ladies,...

Hanging chimney, hinging lum, smoke hood, fogolar - funnel away fumes without building a fireplace recess

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A hole in the roof is a rough and ready way of ventilating a small home with a central fire. Smoke will linger in the room. Everything will be smelly and dirty. Sweeping and scrubbing will make only a brief impact, and clean laundry will not stay fresh for long.

Bagwash, wet wash, laundry clean but not dry

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Before coin-operated self-service laundries were introduced, how could people on modest incomes get their clothes clean without boiling up tubs of water, and spending hours rubbing on a board or working with a "dolly"?

Scottish folk museums, living history visits, crofts, rural life exhibitions, social history

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

UK folk museums, domestic life and social history exhibits, ordinary homes in the past - introduction

Antique armchairs, easy chairs, club chairs

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Watering pots with thumb hole, perforated base, for sprinkling floors and gardens in medieval, renaissance, Elizabethan periods, and dust control without modern cleaners

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Do you tackle dust in your home by watering the floor? No, me neither - but perhaps we would if we lived in a house with rushes spread like carpet on a stone or earthen floor. The replica 15th century English watering pot in the photographs is the kind used in that period to dampen floors and kee...

Kitchen antiques, culinary objects, historic kitchen equipment

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

>>Resources divided into: >>Museum collections of culinary objects >>Fireplace cooking, cast iron >>18th and/or 19th century kitchen items >>Early 20th and/or 19th century >>Earlier and miscellaneous Or jump down to the page to Victorian advice on equipping a kitchen

Linen press, napkin press, clothes press, screw press for table linen

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A linen press often means a big old-fashioned cupboard where you keep household textiles, but it can also mean a screw press for keeping linen smooth and neatly folded. This kind of press was used by the Romans for giving a good finish to new and laundered cloth. Over the centuries presses of thi...

Welsh folk life and social history museums, living history, farmhouses, cottages, domestic life

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

UK folk museums, domestic life and social history exhibits, ordinary homes in the past - introduction

Beds in late Medieval and Elizabethan England

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In the 14th century the poorest people slept on a straw mattress on the floor with whatever warm covering they could get. The richest houses had large elaborate beds, with ornamented canopies, richly-embroidered hangings, and soft featherbeds under the fine linen sheets. They were among the most...

Keeping house in 17th century England, servants, expenses, laundry

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

When Margaret Blagge married Sidney Godolphin in the 1670s, not long after this portrait was painted, she needed advice on how to equip and run her household. The Godolphins were very comfortably-off, but not really rich like this 17th century aristocratic household. They would start married life...

Laundry history 1800s, washing clothes in the 19th century, Victorian and Edwardian laundering

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The information here follows on from a page about the earlier history of laundry. Both parts offer an overview of the way clothes and household linen were washed in Europe, North America, and the English-speaking world, and are also a guide to the other laundry history pages on this website. The...

Rushlights, holders, making rush dips, lighting with pine splinters

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Candlelight is beautiful, but not cheap enough for everyone. For centuries beeswax candles were the best, lighting up castles and cathedrals. Most people used tallow (made from animal fat). The distinction between expensive wax and butcher's tallow was underlined in one grand English household, W...

Untitled Page

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Sorry - this part of the website hasn't yet been completed, and the links to some regions aren't working. If you can't find the information you want today, apologies, and please come back for another look in 2011.

Game pie dishes, ornamented majolica covers, with pastry-coloured liners used as pie-crust

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Recipes for a good game pie, full of venison, or hare, or pheasant, tell the cook to cover the meat with a pastry pie crust. But ornate game pie dishes like the one in the photo allowed you to make a pie with no crust. There was an inner liner to hold the pie together, while the cover served inst...

Bannocks, flatbread, open fire baking, bannock spade, brander, bannock-stane,

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Flat bread cooked on a metal plate over a fire may seem like a simple style of baking, but there are some even more basic ways of turning flour into bread. Ancient alternatives include laying the dough on hot embers, or even in amongst the ashes. You can also bake dough on a hot stone placed by a...

Knitting belts, sheaths, sticks, wisps - holders to support a knitting needle in use

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Why discuss knitting tools on a website about housekeeping, chores, and traditional "women's work"? Today we see hand-knitting as a hobby, a creative craft practised in our leisure time, but it used to be an ongoing task, to be fitted in amongst all the other chores. Families had to be kept suppl...

How to starch muslin for Georgian, Regency, or Victorian dress

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

White muslin dresses, 18th and 19th century style, were often described as "simple". Compared with expensive silks and satins, they were indeed simple (particularly suitable for young women and girls?) but they were certainly not simple for the person doing the laundry. A detailed explanation (be...

Wooden buckets, coopers, galvanized pails of water from the well

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

If you had to fetch water from a well every day, plastic buckets would probably seem practical and convenient. Yet some of us who live in homes with piped water seem to have a nostalgic liking for old-fashioned metal buckets, now considered decorative as well as useful.

Washing bats, beetles, laundry bats, dollies, battling-blocks

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

"Vintage" washboards with a corrugated metal or glass surface for rubbing clothes clean are quite a modern laundry tool, from the inventive 19th century. Beating the laundry against a rock with a stick, stone, or board is a more ancient way of getting the dirt out.

Korean ironing sticks, clubs, blocks, Japanese fulling mallets

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In Korea the drumming of traditional ironing sticks was traditionally called a joyful sound. Even though it didn't please all ears, it was a symbol of a secure home life. In Japan the beating of a single mallet pounding fabric smooth was associated with melancholy - in poetry at least. In Korea t...

London and south east, open air museums, rural life and folk museums, social history

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

UK folk museums, domestic life and social history exhibits, ordinary homes in the past - introduction

West Midlands, East Midlands, Cotswolds - folk life and social history museums, living history, farmhouses, cottages, domestic life

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

UK folk museums, domestic life and social history exhibits, ordinary homes in the past - introduction

Box beds, bed recesses, press beds and bedsteads

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This pair of beds takes up the whole of one side of the main living-room/kitchen in a Scottish Highlands cottage. And, yes, the second one is even shorter than the first - presumably for children, since even the main bed is small by modern standards. Scotland has a strong tradition of box beds, w...

Tallow candles, dipping, trimming the wick, snuffing

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Tallow candles don't sound good to us - a sooty wick burning in animal fat - but for centuries they were a reliable way of having some light after dark. In a small home the fire in the hearth was often a major source of light, but you could brighten up different areas, and even have a light you c...

Communal wood fired masonry ovens - baking, bakehouses and communities

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Baking bread or pizza in your own wood-fired stone or brick oven is a newly discovered pleasure for enthusiasts in the western world, but it's routine for people in some countries. If they don't have an oven at home, they take their homemade dough to communal ovens or bakehouses, often following...

Crimping, fluting, goffering, Italian irons: smoothing frills, ruffles, puffed sleeves

Wed, 06 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Anyone who's pressed clothes with an iron on a flat surface knows it's easy to make a crease. So how can you iron waves of ruffles and keep the flounces without flattening them? One solution was a goffering iron, also called an Italian or tally iron. This was like a metal test tube set horizontal...

Butter churns - history of domestic butter-making

Thu, 07 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Home butter-making took time and energy, but only needed simple equipment. Low-tech methods were still well-known in rural parts of developed countries like the USA in the mid-20th century. In the UK it became less common for ordinary families to make their own butter in the course of the 19th ce...

Cutting sugar loaves, nippers, sugar nips, tongs, lumps, powdering sugar, casters, sprinklers, shakers

Sun, 10 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Until Victorian inventors figured out a way to get sugar to the grocer's shop in ready-to-use granulated form, it was always transported in large cone-shaped sugar loaves. (See below) Households could buy a whole sugar loaf or a lump broken off and sold by weight. But then what? How did people pr...

Baby walkers, standing stools, antique go-carts, baby runners, walking stools, trainers

Wed, 13 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Does a baby walker help a child learn to walk? Or does it just hold it safely while its carer is occupied with something else? Some, like the 14th century walker in a church embroidery (below left), are clearly intended for walking practice. Others, like the French basket "standing stools" in a 1...

Bucking with lye, soaking in ashes and water, buck-tub, bucking-cloth and the buck wash

Fri, 22 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

At last we have found a picture showing the old way of bucking laundry in lye. Bucking was a washing method known in late medieval times, and was still in use in the 19th century, though by then it was being replaced by the tub filled with suds, for the weekly soap wash we now think of as "tradit...

Jack beds, one-legged beds, Alabama bedsteads, bed-frames fixed to walls of pioneers' log cabins, supported by a single pole or bedpost

Sat, 23 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Imagine a pioneer family, ready to settle in a new part of America, building a small log cabin. They have brought no furniture with them, and need a quick, simple way of making a bed-frame. They can fix two sides of the bed to two adjacent walls. Two poles will be the other two sides: each with o...

Peat fires, turf fires, cooking over peat, stacks, cutting spades, carrying peat home

Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Peat fires may seem like a wintertime topic, but in fact summer is the time for cutting turves of peat, drying them, and stacking them.

Early electric irons, self-heating flat irons, sad irons

Thu, 28 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The search for a foolproof "self-heating flat iron" was under way by the mid-19th century. In 1852 a patent was issued in the US for a new, improved charcoal-burning iron which would make "practicable the permanent heating of smoothing irons". By 1860 there were gas irons available in several cou...

Stoneware butter churns - American folk art

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

You can usually find some nice antique butter churns on ebay. Barrel churns or small glass ones for kitchen butter-making, or a traditional up-and-down churn (right). But they're not in the same league as one sold at a Sotheby's auction in January. Coming from a "distinguished" private collection...

Lye, chamber lye, ashes and urine for washing laundry

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Lye soap was the soap of pioneer America, a mixture of boiled animal fat and lye: lye made from water run through ashes from a wood fire. This had been the basic recipe for many centuries and produced a dark soft soap known as black soap. The lye could be used on its own for laundry, with soap as...

Hasteners, meat screens, roasters, hasters - heat-reflecting fireside screens and boxes

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This meat hastener was used in front of an open fire to reflect heat back onto a joint of meat hanging from the hook. The hook is joined on to a bottle jack - a contraption which had to be wound up on a spring to make the joint twist from side to side while roasting. The combination of bottle jac...

Pottery - earthenware, redware, Border ware, delftware

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Sulphur matches, brimstone for light and flame from a tinderbox

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Brimstone matches were thin pieces of wood dipped at each end in sulphur, also called brimstone. For anyone using a tinderbox to strike a light they were a great help, even though they seem very inferior to us now in the age of friction and safety matches.

Roasting jacks, string roasting, dangle spits, clockwork jacks

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The Victorians used splendid brass clockwork jacks for spinning roasting joints of meat slowly round in front of a fire. These bottle jacks (named for their shape), or clock jacks, make fine antiques and are interesting to food historians, but we should not end up with the impression that this wa...

Lighting a fire, hearth accessories, cleaning a fireplace

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In northern parts of the world days are short and cold in the last weeks of the year. People there want light and heat, and their festivals, like Halloween, Martinmas and Christmas, are traditionally celebrated with extra lanterns and fires. More important is daily warmth indoors. Being able to b...

Folk life, rural history, people's museums, old town and village life, exhibits in Scottish cottages, farms etc.

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Click on any region to find places you can visit for a look at past ways of life, with an emphasis on "ordinary" people and daily lives. Even though grand castles and stately homes are fascinating too, they aren't listed here. This directory is for exhibits of our ancestors' domestic life, their...

Clothes horses or winter hedges as drying and airing racks

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A winter hedge was a handy place to dry your laundry when you couldn't put it outside, though not as good as the hedges and bushes outdoors in summer. Then your washing would dry in the fresh air while the sun bleached it.

Gas irons, laundry stoves, self-heating irons, gas ironing furnaces

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

It's 1858 and you've just heard of the wonderful, new self-heating irons. They're going to make life so much easier: no more running backwards and forwards to a hot stove or fire to change a cool flat iron for a freshly heated one, no more working in a roasting hot kitchen, no more trying to keep...

Moule's earth closet, composting toilet

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Born in 1801 and a hero, in a small way, of the 21st century green eco-movement, the Rev. Henry Moule patented an earth closet toilet system in 1860. His motives were to save his poor Victorian parishioners from cholera by devising a sanitary but simple set-up, suitable for homes where indoor pip...

Cold frames, cloches, cucumber frames in Victorian gardens

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

These pictures are of Victorian garden cloches (bells) and cold frames. Acting as mini-glasshouses, they are an elegant variation on the usual wooden cold frames with window-pane rooves.

Cottage four poster in Victorian England

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Four-poster beds in carved dark wood are an easy way for a film director to suggest a grand household in Elizabethan England. But this one belonged in a 19th century Yorkshire cottage bedroom. Admittedly it's far too small to suggest grandeur. At only 4ft 6inches long, it's shorter than most 20th...

Washing laundry in ice holes and snowy weather

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This painting of the artist's sister, Lyydi Halonen, doing laundry through an ice hole in Finland in 1900 reminds us how difficult housekeeping without electricity can be. Washing at the riverside in summer weather may seem pleasant enough despite the hard work involved, but what happens if you l...

End over end barrel churns, churning by swinging and rocking

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

If you shake cream in a jar with a tight lid for a long time you can make butter. If you half-fill a barrel hung on a handle, like the one in the photo, seal it, then flip it over and over, you may get the job done in less than half an hour. About 40 turns of the handle every minute is said to be...

Living on the move - nomadic lifestyles and portable, versatile furniture

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Homes you can move around are part of a travelling exhibition on "flexible living". Western culture makes a strong distinction between "nomads and settled peoples", and so we feel "huts, tents and igloos are no more architecture than baskets, hammocks or cushions count as furniture," according to...

Medieval tablecloths and table linen

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Fine table linen was essential for fine medieval dining. In the late medieval period the best tablecloths were as white as possible, ornamented with allover woven patterns, embroidery, separately stitched coloured borders, fringes, stripes, or some combination of these. There were plainer linen c...

Laundry ponch, punch, posser, plunger, stomp, beater, washing pounder, dasher - naming old laundry tools

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

OldandInteresting has mentioned before that it's difficult to get a detailed picture of regional differences in the names for simple domestic items - let alone differences from one English-speaking country to another. The butter pats/Scotch hands names are just one example.

Folk museums, living history visits, open air and rural life exhibitions, social history in north-west, north-east England, Dales etc.

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Please send an email if you want to suggest an addition to this list of museums and other exhibits about "ordinary" or "folk" or "everyday" ways of life in the past. So far we're trying to cover Britain and then Ireland, but suggestions for a similar USA list are also very welcome. Even though gr...

Folk museums, living history visits, open air and rural life exhibitions, home life in the past, social history in the UK

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Please send an email if you want to suggest an addition to this list of museums and other exhibits about "ordinary" or "folk" or "everyday" ways of life in the past. So far we're trying to cover Britain and then Ireland, but suggestions for a future USA list are also very welcome. Even though gra...

Dalli irons, Dalli smokeless fuel

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Were these irons being marketed to women or men? "Marriage Troubles Avoided - by using the Dalli box iron", says one ad. "Heat and work of the ironing day makes wife and servant irritable."

Bed warmers in Scotland, France, Italy and Switzerland

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A beautiful antique brass warming pan filled with glowing embers warms the sheets well and so does a modern hot water bottle. But who warmed their bed with a pig? Who used a monk? And where did people use cherry stones?

Great wash, grand wash, washing days

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Victorian advice on housekeeping routines set in stone the idea that Monday should be wash-day, so that everything could be dried, pressed, aired and folded well before Sunday, the day of rest and clean clothes. The rhymes in the left-hand column show there's a long tradition of a "virtuous" week...

American redware - red earthenware, antique redware values

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

When the first European settlers arrived on the other side of the Atlantic they soon started using the plentiful red clay to make unpretentious earthenware pots, pans and plates, much the same as those they had used at home. In the 18th and 19th centuries there were skilled potters all over the U...

Where to buy dolly blue, bluing, suppliers and stockists of laundry blue

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Thank you to everyone who's asked about suppliers of laundry bluing. This list of sources of various kinds of washing blue - liquid, solid, or powder - online should help. If you have any other suggestions, do let us know.

Laundry history, washing clothes in middle ages, renaissance, tudor, restoration, colonial, georgian times

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Once upon a time a metal washboard and bar of hard soap with a tub of hot water was a new-fangled way of tackling laundry, though today it's a common picture of "old-fashioned" laundering. (Read about this on a page about the later history of laundry in the 1800s.) What went before? How did peopl...

Broom making, besoms, British and European birch and heath brooms

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

When you stop and think about it, you probably realise that brooms got their name because they used to be made of branches of broom, a yellow-flowering shrub - except when they were made of birch or heather. Many other shrubby plants have been used across the world for sweeping and brushing. Tie...

Notes and sources for washing machine articles

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Jacopo Strada, (Octavius Strada, Benjamin Bramer): Kunstliche Abriss allerhand Wasser- Wind- Ross- vnd Handt Mühlen, beneben schönen vnd nützlichen Pompen, auch andern Machinen, damit das Wasser in Höhe zuerheben ... Durch den Truck publicirt ... durch Octauium de Strada à Rosberg ... Iacobi...

Marseilles quilts, Marcella bedspreads - white woven quilting

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

White soft furnishings belong to bedrooms more than any other part of the house. If you like this look, you'd have appreciated the Marseilles "quilts", very popular in the 19th century - so well-known that they turn up regularly in 19th century novels, often described as snowy. One plausible theo...

Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge museums of folk, domestic, rural life

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

UK folk museums, domestic life and social history exhibits, ordinary homes in the past - introduction

Washboards, boxes and wash-houses in France, Italy and Spain

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Washerwomen at the riverside were a common subject for 19th century French artists. Some of their work shows not only the French version of a washboard, but the three-sided box or caisse that went with it. The woman knelt in the box and her skirt stayed dry. For more comfort, she could pad it wit...

Edward Beetham, Isabella Beetham, Betham, London and Westmorland

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The Bethams of Westmorland were gentry who could trace their heritage back several generations. Edward, born c1744, was a bit of a rebel. He upset his father by joining a travelling theatre company in Appleby, and then making his way south to London. His father then stopped any financial support....

Mangling board, hand mangle, board and roller

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Hot metal pressing irons are so common that we may forget how widespread wooden mangling boards once were. People who have heard of mangle boards may know they were traditional courtship gifts carved by young men in Scandinavia or the Netherlands. They were found further afield too, and were a st...

History of washboards, invention of zinc scrub boards & other rubbing boards

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In 1868 the New York Times called washboards "a great American invention" and ran a story about a man taking "a wooden grooved washboard" home to his sister in Germany as a novelty. Yet "it is believed that ribbed wooden scrubbing boards originated in Scandinavia and the manufacture spread to oth...

Tureens, serving dishes, pottery poultry, ceramic game

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Bird-shaped tureens were popular in the 18th century, and have never completely gone out of fashion since. These English duck- and hen-shaped tureens from 1755 have plenty of appeal today, even though we have become rather coy about the link between real animals, butchers, and our food. At least...

Enamelware, vintage porcelain or enamel kitchenware, graniteware, agateware, speckleware, timeline

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Think about enamel kitchen utensils today, and you probably imagine something coated all over in enamel. That certainly wasn't the case in the early years. To begin with, cooking pots were lined inside with enamel, but they looked like any other cast iron on the outside. People wanted a way of co...

Rag rugs, mats and carpets - braided, hooked, crochet, woven, proddy, proggy, clippy

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Sometimes it's hard to be precise about the history and origins of simple domestic crafts and equipment. Writers weren't usually interested in recording the details of everyday housekeeping and low-status domestic crafts until the 19th century. Even then we have limited descriptions of rag rug ma...

Laundry bluing, Reckitt's blue, dolly blue, washing whitening

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Before we had modern laundry detergents with optical brighteners, there was a mysterious little blue bag which was stirred around in the final rinse water on washday. This was laundry bluing or blue. A factory-produced block was the "modern" (mid-19th century onwards), commercial version of older...

Butter crocks, moulds, stamps, butter dishes, paddles, pats, Scotch hands

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

After the cream had formed lumps of butter, it still wasn't ready for serving or preserving. It was taken out of the churn, probably with wooden scoops, ready to be refined, salted and shaped.

Salt glazed stoneware - butter churns - American folk art

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Unless you need your butter churn to be, surprisingly, dishwasher-safe, you can usually find nice antique churns on ebay. Barrel churns or small glass kitchen-size ones, or a traditional up-and-down churn (right). But they're not in the same league as one sold at a Sotheby's auction in January. C...

Cooking with lime heat, fireless cooking in medieval, renaissance and victorian times

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I was intrigued to discover a medieval version of today's self-heating cans of soup, beans, and coffee. In a Welsh museum is an Anglo-Norman double pot, a smaller cooking pot inside a bigger one, designed for cooking without any need for lighting a fire. In the space between the two pots you coul...

Straw mattresses, chaff beds, palliasses, ticks stuffed with leaves

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Straw doesn't have to be stuffed into a mattress cover before you can sleep on it. A loose heap seems very comfortable compared with sleeping on a hard floor - or you can put the straw into a wooden bed with sides like the Danish one illustrated below left, or this Polish bed. You can also tie it...

Laundry boards used by washerwomen in Italy, especially Venice

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Regular readers will see from these 18th century Venetian pictures that we are once again looking for ancestors of the classic 19th and 20th century grooved washboard. These washerwomen using boards were painted by Pietro Longhi around 1740, nearly 100 years before the metal ridged washboard was...

Cleaning and laundry expenses in 17th century London, at Bedford House

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Mrs. Bruce was housekeeper at the Duke of Bedford's London home in the late 17th century. It was a responsible job overseeing domestic arrangements in a large mansion*, but she didn't know how to write. She dictated her part of the household accounts, and these lists of expenses give us some idea...

Charcoal irons, antique and modern, rooster design

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Birds seem to belong on charcoal irons - but why? Not only is there at least one 21st century Chinese charcoal iron with a bird perched on the "prow" being sold widely across Asia and Africa, but this design has been around for a long time. Several museums in East European countries display vinta...

History of earliest washing machines, Schäffer, Beetham's washing mill, first inventions

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This is not just a story of inventions, inventors and their patents. Patents don't tell us enough about the earliest washing machines. We want to know what machines were actually manufactured. Who sold them? Who bought them? Did people like them?

Warming pans, bed wagons, bed warmers with coals or wood

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Hanging a warming pan near the hearth is not just a decorator's idea. The fireplace was always a sensible place for it, so it could easily be filled with glowing coals or wood embers before being taken away to warm the bed.

South West, West Country folk life and social history museums, living history, farmhouses, cottages, domestic life

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

UK folk museums, domestic life and social history exhibits, ordinary homes in the past - introduction

Washing dollies, possers, laundry possing-sticks

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Anything anyone says about laundry tools from pre-washing-machine times is going to apply to some areas more than others. In England alone, there was a wide range of names for the pieces of wood used to help get the household linen clean.

Tinderboxes, flint and steel, tinder, striking light and fire at home

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

If you’ve ever got up on a cold, dark morning and flipped a switch or struck a match, you’ll be glad you’re living after the mid-19th century. Once upon a time, anyone in a northern winter who didn’t keep a fire burning all night had to start the day by clashing flint on steel to make a spark. Or...

Baker's peels, bread paddles, baking shovels, oven peels

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A peel is an ancient baking tool, yet also completely modern. For thousands of years bakers have moved loaves in and out of hot ovens on a long-handled shovel. 21st century urban people, even those with no interest in cooking, may have seen this happening at a pizza restaurant.

Featherbeds, duvets, eiderdowns, feather ticks - history

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Featherbeds were only for the rich in the 14th century, but by the 19th century they were a comfort that ordinary people could aspire to - especially if they kept a few geese. The beds, also called feather ticks or feather mattresses, were valuable possessions. People made wills promising them to...

History of pressure cookers, steam digesters, Papin, Appert, Shriver, Vischer

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

If you try to live a greener life, wasting less, cutting back on energy, you may re-discover ancient, simple domestic routines that are a source of pleasure - like walking into a sunny garden to put your laundry out to dry. Pressure cooking doesn't have quite the same feel-good levels, and yet it...

Cleaning stone, wood floors without chemicals, using sand and traditional scouring methods

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Today we have detergents, household cleansers, and steel wool. But what did people use to shift dirt from unpainted, uncarpeted floors before modern technology? How did they deal with burnt food and rust on iron cooking pots?

Box mangles, early mechanical mangles

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Simple box mangles were in use in the 18th century, but they needed two people to push and pull the heavy box back and forth with leather straps or wooden handles. The weight of a box filled with stones, or sand, was used to press household linens and clothes wound on rollers below, or sometimes...

Laundry maids, paintings of washerwomen and laundresses

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

The women doing their washing in the river (left) look the part. We can believe the artist had seen them at work somewhere in 19th century Brittany, even if he romanticised it a bit and chose a pretty young girl for the foreground.

Breton box-bed, lit-clos, French cabinet bed

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Brittany is famous for its lit-clos (enclosed bed) tradition. Its box beds often have beautiful, intricate carving on the doors, and are sometimes one above the other in a double-decker, two-storey arrangement. The two pictured both come from Finistère, the north-western tip of France. The right-...

History of starching clothing and household linen - Middle Ages, Renaissance, Victorian starch products

Wed, 23 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Starch has come a long way: from a sour mix boiled and brewed to a press-button spray. Manufactured starch that could be conveniently mixed at home as "cold starch" without boiling was available by the 19th century, suitable for clothes that didn't need a perfectly clear starch mixture. Victorian...

Warming beer, making mulled ale or flip the traditional way

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In this photo* of a 1790s English kitchen are two different brass containers for warming beer. If you want to try spotting them yourself before reading on, look on the wall to the right of the fireplace and on the mantelshelf. Attractive copper antiques now - but once they were used for warming a...

Four poster beds

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Drying outside, bleaching greens, washing lines, drying grounds, clothes pins, pegs, whitsters

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

When Sunlight Soap was named in the 1880s, spreading laundry in the sun was the best way of whitening it. For centuries this had worked to counteract yellowing from storage, from soaking in urine, or from certain soap ingredients.

Nutcracker, Christmas nuts, Yule, scrambling for nuts, winter holidays, character nutcrackers, feasts and festivities

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:00:00 GMT

A bowl of nuts, with polished or carved nutcrackers, is part of many traditional winter holiday feasts. But they don't have to sit beautifully on a table. Scrambling for nuts on the ground was a tradition for centuries in various European countries. In Elizabethan England boys would jostle each o...