http://www.oldandinteresting.com Household antiques in use. History of domestic equipment and furnishings - how people made their beds, churned their butter, ironed their clothes. oldandinterestinghttp://feedburner.google.com http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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...... Tue, 3 Nov 2009 14:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/hanging-chimneys.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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...... Sat, 25 Jul 2009 19:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/laundry-ponches-punches.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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 keep dust from being irritating. Rushes or ..... Fri, 3 Jul 2009 13:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/medieval-watering-pot.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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. There used to be many areas of northern Europe better supplied with peat bogs than with trees. Peat, also called turf, was a convenient household fuel when there wasn't much firewood around. Some regions of North America made use of peat for domestic fires..... Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/peat-fire.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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..... Thu, 28 May 2009 11:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/meat-hastener.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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. Households could buy a whole sugar loaf or a lump broken off and sold by weight. But then what? How did people..... Thu, 14 May 2009 21:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/sugar-nippers.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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..... Sat, 18 Apr 2009 18:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/tallow-candles-snuffers.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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 an open hearth or...... Wed, 1 Apr 2009 23:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/bannock-flat-bread.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 'Covering floors with woven, hooked, braided, prodded, or crocheted strips of cloth' - 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...... Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/history-rag-rugs.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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 live somewhere with long, cold winters? After you've chopped through the ice with an axe..... Wed, 25 Feb 2009 10:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/washing-ice-hole.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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"?..... Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/bag-wash.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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 instead of a pastry lid. Why? In the late 18th century there was a shortage of wheat...... Sun, 1 Jun 2008 21:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/game-pie-dish.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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 fireplace ash off the irons. Some of the self-heating irons use gas. Others carry little tanks of alcohol or gasoline......... Thurs, 20 Mar 2008 17:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/gas-irons.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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 one end fitted into a wall, and the other end attached to one single bedpost, the only bed-leg. Then you have a one-legged bed neatly tucked into one corner of the small home. Often they're called one-legged bedsteads or one-leg beds, but jack bed is another name and, in Alabama, an Alabama bedstead....... Thurs, 13 Mar 2008 17:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/jack-beds.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com When you stop and think about it, you probably realise that brooms got their name because they used to be made of broom branches - except when they were made of birch or heather. Many other shrubby plants have been used across the world for sweeping and brushing. Tie a bundle of good local twigs together, with a tight, narrow grip at one end, and you can whisk dirt away. If you attach the broom to a broomstick, so much the better. Besom is an even older name for these cleaning tools than broom, though both names go back many centuries...... Sat, 1 Mar 2008 23:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/besoms-brooms.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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 can save a lot of energy, and may make some people think nostalgically of Grandma's kitchen. Of course the pressure cooker isn't ancient. It was a 17th century invention...... Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/pressure-cooker-history.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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 invented in the USA. Similar boards, supported on legs, were still in use in the Venice region in the mid-20th century...... Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/laundry-venice.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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. A hundred years ago nostalgia was for old wooden buckets. Craftsman-made tubs and pails were disappearing..... Thurs, 8 Feb 2008 18:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/coopers-buckets.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com At last we have 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 "traditional". The buck wash was a relatively infrequent cleansing of household linen and clothes. In the water were "bleaches" like ashes or urine. As bucking gradually became less popular during the 18th and 19th centuries......... Wed, 30 Jan 2008 22:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/lye-bucking.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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 with straw to cushion her knees. When Americans think of their great-grandmothers using a traditional washboard, or British people recall old washing dollies, French memories are more likely to be of a box and board............. Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/french-washboards.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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, are clearly intended for walking practice. Others, like the French basket "standing stools" in a 19th century painting, seem to be more for adult convenience. Though similar un-wheeled wicker walkers can help babies get around, those in the picture seem to be rather restrictive. (No apologies for discussing baby walkers on a website about housekeeping, since they have so often been useful to busy women who cook and do laundry.) Baby walkers appear in various 14th and 15th century works of art, including the Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves. The 16th century medical writer Ferrarius recommended them.......... Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/baby-walkers-history.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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 into a mattress shape and cover it with cloth. There's often plenty of straw available after cereal crops have been harvested, so it has been used for mattresses in many times and places, mattresses familiar both to ancient Romans and to British soldiers in World War Two. Chaff is softer but............... Wed, 9 Jan 2008 20:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/straw-mattresses.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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. Towards the end of the 18th century one grand English household, Wimpole Hall, underlined the distinction between expensive wax and butcher's tallow by having the butler take charge of beeswax candles, while the housekeeper kept account of the ordinary tallow candles. In small cottages there were people who could not afford any kind of candle. For them a cheap alternative was a rushlight............. Wed, 2 Jan 2008 18:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/rushlights.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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 other to pick up nuts thrown down during Christmas celebrations. In Germany St. Nicholas scattered nuts on his festival day (December 6th). Wed, 19 Dec 2007 22:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/nutcrackers.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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 build and maintain a domestic fire was an important housekeeping skill in pre-electric days..... Wed, 12 Dec 2007 22:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/fireplaces.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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. Bleaching and drying both used to be outdoor activities..... Wed, 5 Dec 2007 22:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/drying-outdoors.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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 one current US company offers similar dishes for your dining table. But who would choose to adorn their table with this tureen from Liverpool? The stoneware trussed goose........ Wed, 14 Nov 2007 20:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/tureens-poultry.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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 the 17th century aristocratic household discussed a couple of weeks ago. They would start married life with just enough silver for their dining table but were advised to go on building up their stock, keeping to classic designs that would not go out of fashion. An earthenware fruit bowl....... Wed, 7 Nov 2007 22:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/17th-century-housekeeping.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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. Using a hot stone or brick heated at the fireside is one way of carrying warmth from the hearth into bed. By the 16th century people were also taking pans filled with smouldering fuel from the fire itself. The well-known brass or copper warming pan on a handle was not the only way of doing this. There were also wooden frames designed to hold pots of fuel inside the bedclothes....... Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/bed-warmers.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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 her lists of expenses give us some idea of the flurry of scrubbing and laundering that happened before and after the family's annual visit to London...... Wed, 24 Oct 2007 20:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/17th-century-washing.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com Henry Seely patented his electric iron in 1882. It was a quarter of a century before any such thing started to reach ordinary households, and those first irons on sale were not his design. Did Seely realise he would be remembered as the inventor of a standard piece of domestic equipment, one taken for granted in his own country and in many others? It was one of the first things American families bought once their home had been wired up..... Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/vintage-electric-irons.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com Laundry blue has turned out to be one of the most popular pages on this site. There are so many uses for it, expected and unexpected: whitening and brightening horses' tails among them. And quite a few queries about where to buy it too. So..... Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/buy-laundry-blue.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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 a good rate for best results. Check through the glass peephole in the lid and see if the butter's made. Wed, 3 Oct 2007 18:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/end-over-end-churn.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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 other countries during the 19th century," said Edward Pinto, an expert on domestic objects crafted from wood. So when were washboards invented?..... Wed, 26 Sep 2007 20:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/washboards-history.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com 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. Peels, or baking paddles, have been used in many different cultures, in different eras: in brick, stone, clay and metal ovens....... Wed, 19 Sep 2007 20:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/bread-peel.aspx http://www.oldandinteresting.com Were these irons being marketed to 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." Another advertisement depends on a nun's veil. Not only does the nun represent purity, but her shining white, starched cornette is a symbol of perfect laundering. Surely it must have been pressed with a perfect iron....... Wed, 12 Sep 2007 00:00:00 GMT http://www.oldandinteresting.com/dalli-irons.aspx