Darning eggs, balls, & mushrooms

darning egg elm — Darning egg made from elm. Photo by HomeThingsPast

A hundred years ago could anyone imagine that darning tools would now be unrecognisable except to antiques or crafts enthusiasts? There always used to be a steady supply of darning in the family mending bag. A woman sitting darning was a common sight, and so was a darning egg. Inside a stocking or sock with a hole in, the “egg” or darner made it easier to stitch a neat repair: not too tight, not too slack.

The simplest old darners are rounded pieces of hardwood – boxwood, maple, apple, elm – with a lovely smooth surface. Edward Pinto, the treen expert, thought the egg was the oldest shape in common use. They were also called darning balls.

sock with darning ball inside — A darning ball inside this sock makes mending easier. Photo by Lisa Dusseault.

Other names and other shapes include darning mushrooms, darners, lasts and wooden “gourds”. Real gourds or cowrie shells could be used, and special 19th century darners might be coloured glass, pottery, or ivory, or have silver handles.*

Darning eggs that open to reveal neatly-stowed sewing accessories are attractive pieces of treen (woodware), appealing to collectors who would never actually use them. There’s something about a clever design with small things unexpectedly tucked inside a well-crafted piece of hardwood. (See pictures near the bottom of the page.) Desirable antiques now, these used to be bought as gifts. Hollow olivewood eggs with needle and thimble inside were exported to England from Southern Europe. You may also come across darners with a detachable handle doubling as a needle case.

In France, every village woodturner had his own style of egg, as you see in this well-illustrated post, and it was once a common present for a bride. Handles were less common than in the UK or USA.

A darning-egg or ball, held in the left hand, is slipped under the hole, with the stocking stretched smoothly, but not tightly, over it.
The Dressmaker, 1916

Glove Darners

Darning eggs painted wood — Classic shape for darning eggs with turned handles - plus paint. Is that a yawn at the thought of more darning? Photo by knitting iris.

When a glove needed darning, little darning eggs were pushed into the fingers. Some glove darners had different-sized balls on each end of a handle. With big sock darners, the handle itself could sometimes be used for glove repairs. Not all glove darners had a handle. Some were simple egg shapes dropped into the finger. The handle-free type was usual in France, as with the sock darning eggs.

All these curved darners were best suited to mending small pieces of knitted clothing. They were not meant to be used for “flat darning” of woven cloth.

*See Old-Time Tools & Toys of Needlework by Gertrude Whiting. Pinto’s Treen and other Wooden Bygones: an Encyclopaedia and Social History and Thompson’s Sewing Tools And Trinkets: Collector’s Identification & Value Guide, Vol. 2 are other sources of information.

Darning eggs with sewing kit inside — Darning egg designs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Pincushions, needles, thimbles were often found in hollow darning eggs. The middle one also holds a glove darner, scissors, yarn, and an emery bag for polishing pins and needles.

Pictures

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: striped sock, mushroom, painted mushroom, painted eggs. More picture info here
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Card tables and a social life

antique American card table — American mahogany card table with gold touches. Hinged top opens out to about 36in. square. c1828. Photo by Jenny O'Donnell

Many finely-crafted card tables were made in the 1700s and 1800s. The social lives of prosperous families in America, Britain, and other parts of Europe depended on having a card table, or two, for friends to play at in the evening.

Before 1700, card-playing was popular with very rich people, and less so with people who were moderately wealthy. It stayed fashionable with the aristocracy in 18th century Europe. Wealthy gamblers sometimes lost huge sums of money in gaming houses or private mansions where a ‘banker’ oversaw games of chance like faro or basset.

During the 1700s and 1800s more people came to have more leisure time, and they furnished their homes to reflect this. Comfortably-off hosts in middle-sized houses organised card tables for their evening guests. People still played for money but the games, like whist or piquet, involved more skill and less betting. The players might enjoy conversation more than cards once a nice little group was gathered round the table. This often provides a useful scenario for dialogue in novels. Young women confide secrets over cards in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, and older ladies whisper animatedly at Cranford card tables described by Elizabeth Gaskell.

17th century card table — Playing cards c1637. By Dutch painter Jan Olis

Before it became fashionable to have special furniture crafted by cabinet-makers, cards were often played at tables covered in a floor-length cloth, as you can see in various paintings of elegant 17th century players. Artists also show poorer card players, usually men, gathered round a stool or barrel when they had time for card playing.

Decorative or simple?

Early 19th century Empire or Regency tables, and later Federal Era tables in the USA, generally had fold-over tops concealing a playing surface, which might be covered in green baize. Carved pedestal bases had legs that could swing out to support the square opened top. Mahogany was a popular choice, but walnut, maple, rosewood or satinwood were also used.

pair neo-classical card tables — Card tables made in New York by Frenchman Lannuier c1817. Photo by Peter Roan

Ornamentation varied. Later card tables tended to have more elaborate flourishes than the relatively restrained pre-1800 designs. A semi-circular or demi-lune Georgian flip-top table might have simple tapered legs. Inlaid surface patterns were likely to be discreet geometric designs. Whether the top folded into a rectangle or semi-circle, a typical card table was about 30 inches high and 36 inches across: a good size for four people to chat as well as play. Some tables were made with recessed holders for coins or tokens. (See big picture below.)

In Victorian times social card playing was by no means only for the grandest section of society. A card table was almost essential for households aspiring to a middle-class way of life. An 1856 book* advising British people how to set up house on annual budgets of £100 upward assumed there would be a card table in the drawing room, even if it was only mahogany veneer on a softwood frame, with a simple round or square top.

By this time a particular style of simple oval or round table was known as a ‘loo table’. Loo, or lanterloo, was a popular game in the Victorian era, though its origins are older. Sometimes these tables had a tilting top (not folding in half), perhaps with inlaid veneer decoration, and so they could be kept upright by a wall.

18th century American card table — Card table, top open, Queen Anne legs, in the Robert Hooper House, built in Massachusetts c1754. Photo by Jonathan Dresner

There were always a few people who kept away from card playing for religious or moral reasons – but not always the ones you would expect. In George Eliot’s Middlemarch there’s a clergyman who plays cards well enough to pad out his modest income with regular winnings, though he attracts disapproval from some of his neighbours.

*JH Walsh, A Manual of Domestic Economy: suited to families spending from £100 to £1000, London 1856

More on American card tables influenced by cabinet-makers like Sheraton in Philadelphia Empire Furniture by Allison Boor

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: first mahogany table, Hooper table, pair of tables. More picture info here

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Foot warmers: hot coals, hot water

Foot warmer Winton Mecca — This dual-purpose foot warmer and hot water bottle was first sold in 1910. Royal Winton brand, "Mecca" design, made by Grimwades, England. Photo by HomeThingsPast.

Ceramic hot water bottles were common in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As well as filling hot water containers to warm your bed, you could buy earthenware bottles to use as foot warmers or hand warmers too. Earlier foot warmers used to hold hot coals, or glowing wood, not warm water. In the same way, traditional bed warmers filled with embers were once more usual than hot water bottles.

If you were travelling in cold weather you would hope to have a foot warmer of some kind in your unheated carriage, sleigh, or train compartment. In the 17th and 18th centuries a pierced metal carrier for hot coals was a common solution for anyone who could afford one. They went on being used in the 19th century, while other styles of foot warmer came along too.

The simplest were punched tin in a wooden frame with an earthenware or iron pot inside. Brass was more stylish, and silver warmers were used by the wealthy, although you couldn’t actually rest your feet on them. Poor people travelling by wagon or sled could carry pre-heated stones or bricks with them, or even baked potatoes and flatirons, as described in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books.

tin brass foot warmers — American foot warmers. Brass, top left. Others pierced tin and wood. Sketch from an early 19th century book.

In the US these warmers were called foot stoves and were taken to church on winter Sundays to keep feet warm during long services. It seems the name and style was inspired by the Dutch style of foot warmer, called a stoof or stove, discussed below.

In bitter winter weather women carried to meeting little foot-stoves – metal boxes which stood on legs and were filled with hot coals at home, and a second time during the morning from the hearthstone of a neighbouring farm-house or a noon-house. These foot-warmers helped to make endurable to the goodwives the icy chill of the meeting-house; and round their mother’s foot-stove the shivering little children sat on their low crickets, warming their half-frozen fingers.
Alice Morse Earle, Sabbath in Puritan New England, 1891

As rail travel took off, foot warmers moved onto trains. First class rail services in cool climates often supplied foot warmers. These might be metal or earthenware containers for hot water, metal holders with hot brick slugs or even chemicals inside. Some later trains were designed with built-in “foot warmers”: areas of the floor with heated piping running underneath, for example. Early cars followed the same pattern. Before the days of fully heated vehicles foot warmers were included in the design.

Dutch foot stoves

foot warmers, Dutch stoves, in van Brekelenkam paintings — Mid-17th century paintings with women using foot warmers of the fire pot in wooden box kind. All by Dutch artist van Brekelenkam.

The Dutch used to be known for a certain kind of foot warmer found alongside other household furniture: a pierced box with an earthenware or metal pot holding glowing coals inside. They called it a stoof (stove) and you can see it in countless paintings from the 17th century on, like this one by Cornelis de Man c1670.

Dutch foot stoves warmers — Typically Dutch foot warmer (top) without its inner pot. Also a foot-warming "stove" from Northern Germany with stone top. Photos by Johan and Nyks

These foot stoves were also common in northern Germany. A stone slab was an alternative to the wooden top with holes. Similar foot-warming “boxes” were known in other countries too: see this French chaufferette. In Britain open fires were the most popular way of warming yourself indoors and foot warmers were not much used in the home, but some craftspeople had an earthenware pot of coals for heating their workshop, and this might be placed under a footstool.

Foot warmers are visible in the paintings, but they could be completely hidden under a long skirt or cloak. They were used more by women than men. Did men’s boots keep them warmer?

More on the Mecca foot warmer and other ceramic foot warmers

After the first plain cream queensware “Mecca” warmer in 1910 (“finest English Ivory Queens Ware”), they were made in various other “Royal Winton” decorative finishes and several different sizes.

Grimwades Ltd., Stoke-on-Trent, one of the best-known firms manufacturing an exhaustive range of popularly priced, useful and ornamental earthenware and china, and famous for their hygienic wares for the kitchen and pantry….An unique feature of the exhibit is the Mecca bed-bottle or foot-warmer in a variety of choice decorations. What nicer present for an invalid friend or wounded soldier!
1915 Guardian report on the British Industries Fair

ceramic foot warmers — British earthenware foot or bed warmers. Photo by Steve Parker

A more common shape of earthenware foot warmer, popular in the UK, was made by many different manufacturers (see photo left). Doulton’s were lent to passengers on an English railway.

Pictures

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: wooden “stove” with holes, stone-top foot warmer, earthenware warmers. Also see this post on making your own tin foot warmer. More picture info here
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Creamware & queensware

Wedgwood creamware plate — Creamware plate from a Wedgwood service. Photo by Maia C

Chinese porcelain seemed fine, white and desirable to 18th century Europe, and it inspired skilled potters there to develop their own versions of porcelain. Others worked on more affordable earthenware, trying various clay and flint blends in the search for pale, creamy colours. This new creamware was developed during the mid-1700s.

One of the most successful versions of creamware came from the well-known English potter Josiah Wedgwood who managed to make paler earthenware than anyone else in the 1760s. Part of his success depended on clay from south-west England. Also important were his design expertise and the clear glaze.

After Queen Charlotte ordered a cream table service from Wedgwood he “branded” his cream pottery by calling it Queen’s ware, and didn’t use the name creamware himself. So Queen’s ware, or queensware, is a kind of creamware, but not all creamware is queensware.

creamware teapot — Creamware teapot made c1770 in Yorkshire or Staffordshire. Photo by Leeds Museums

Although there were other potteries making creamware, and other people also made crucial discoveries, Wedgwood got the acclaim for being the first to make a high quality pale cream earthenware. He described it as “quite new in appearance, covered with rich and brilliant glaze, bearing sudden alterations of heat and cold, manufactured with ease…and consequently cheap.”

Competition amongst potters to produce whiter ceramics continued. In the mid-1770s one of Wedgwood’s rivals got ahead with a pale “china glaze”. He soon came back into the lead with a “pearl white”, now known as pearlware.

Creamware lent itself to decoration with transfer printing. This is not only cheaper than hand painting; it also allows for a very detailed surface design with elaborate drawing and lettering. Other decorative effects on creamware included piercing and embossing.

American creamware transfer print jug — Creamware pitcher c1800 with transfer-printed "Apotheosis of George Washington". Photo by Cliff

Creamware was popular for a wide range of household pottery appearing in the Georgian dining-room and on the tea-table. It brought a finer kind of tableware to middle-class families, and wasn’t only for the rich. It was also used for commemorative items, like the pitcher, or jug, in the photo. English-made for the American market, this was one of many similar exports leaving from Liverpool.

America’s own creamware production started with John Bartlam in 1770s South Carolina. By the 1790s Philadelphia was a centre for manufacturing this kind of tableware. Many of the potters described their products as queensware, or like queensware.

Wedgwood-style creamware continued to be popular until the mid-19th century. By this time the names creamware and queensware were applied to a wider range of pottery. Some of it was not at all fashionable, and was much coarser or browner than the cream ceramics produced by the innovative 18th century manufacturers.

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: Wedgwood plate, teapot, American pitcher. More picture info here

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Tiled stoves, winter warmth

tiled stoves oven bench 19th century — A tiled stove with its "oven bench" in a Swiss museum house (photo by Yola Simon) and an 1861 painting of a living room/stove room in the Black Forest region of Germany.

Tiled stoves were a wonderful way of heating homes in Northern Europe. I’ve often wondered why the British never used them. The settlers in North America hardly used them either, even in regions with bitter cold winters. At first they seem to have followed the British idea of having a fire to warm yourself by, rather than trying to keep a whole room warm. In English-speaking countries the open hearth reigned supreme long after other nations had taken to stoves, although there were some iron stoves in the early USA and colonial New England…. but I’ll write about them another day. This is more about ceramic glazed tile stoves, sometimes known by their German name of Kachelofen.

Stoves warm rooms more efficiently and cleanly than open fires. Heat doesn’t escape up the chimney, it’s safer and easier to keep them going overnight, and you don’t have to chop down so many trees to fuel them. (The Green movement has rediscovered wood-burning stoves.)

What explanations could there be for the traditional British resistance to stoves for heating? Some I’ve considered are discussed in Priscilla Brewer’s From Fireplace to Cookstove: Technology and the Domestic Ideal in America – essential reading if you’re interested in the history of heating and cooking stoves in the US. Can you think of any apart from these three?

ceramic tiled heating stoves — Two Swedish stoves for the corner of a room, the plain one in a farm cottage, the floral one in a bigger house. The white stove on the right is in Lithuania. Swedish photos by HomeThingsPast. Lithuanian photo by Alma Pater

Milder winters than the rest of northern Continental Europe
Distaste for the “unhealthy” idea of an enclosed warm room with “no” fresh air, no open chimney
Feeling that open fires are part of the British way of life – supported by Lawrence Wright in the 1960s in Home Fires Burning

The stoves pictured here are not from mansions. There certainly are many fine stoves in palaces and grand houses, but these are the kind you can see in simple or middling houses.

Green seems to be a popular tile colour for rustic German stove rooms, with their characteristic benches and drying racks. In Sweden there are lots of tall, white stoves. If anyone knows more about regional styles of ceramic stove I’d love to hear from you.

A stove-room for the stove?

17th century stove room — This picture had the title "stove with bedroom" in 1659, in an educational book teaching Latin and English names for the things labelled with numbers. More on this in the text.

A stove used to mean a heated room, and not the thing heating it. In the 15th century the idea of keeping a living room warm, with heat radiating out through glazed tiles or iron panels, started to spread in German-speaking parts of Europe. There was still an open fire in the kitchen for cooking. This could be connected to an enclosed oven-box in the next room to create a warm space called the “stove” (German “Stube“). There might be enough heat to warm an adjacent bedroom too. It was a big step forward in comfort for people living in ordinary homes. A French traveller reported:

For the cold …. [German people] have stoves that heat in such a way that they are warm in their rooms, and in winter craftsmen do their work and keep their wives and children there and it takes very little wood to heat them.
Gilles le Bouvier, Livre de la description des pays, mid-15th century

Stove and furnishings 17th century — The stove-room, bedroom and their furnishings described in a 1659 school book.

In many countries the heating “box” is still called an oven (German Ofen), but English speakers have got used to calling it a stove, and have forgotten that stove used to mean a room. In the 17th century illustration above the oven is in the back right corner, numbered 5. Here’s a list of the things pictured: from the 1659 English edition of Comenius‘ school book Orbis Pictus, with the original punctuation.

The Stove 1. is beautified with an Arched-Roof 2. & wainscotted walls, 3 It is enlighted with Windows; It is heated with an Oven.

Its Utensils are, Benches, Stools, 7, Tables, 8, with Tressels, 9, Footstools, 10. and Cushions, 11.

There are also Tapestry hanged. 12. for soft lodging, in a sleeping-room, 13. there is a Bed 14. spread on a Bed-stead, 15. upon a Straw-pad, 16. with Sheets, 17. and Cover lids, 18. The Bolster 19. is under ones head. The Bed is covered with a Canopy 20. A Chamber-Pot 21 is for making water in.

Kachelofen stove Alsace — Another green tiled stove, this one from Alsace. Photo by Christina

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: Swiss stove, Lithuanian stove, Alsatian stove. More picture info here
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18th century American kitchen

This model of an 18th century kitchen in New England should appeal to people who like historic kitchens, and to people who like doll’s houses. There are lots of “authentic” things in it, and care was taken with historical details. The room is interesting and charming even though it may not be 100% realistic, but see what you think before reading my opinion.

Fireplace and mantelpiece

The fine fireplace has plenty of period detail: an oven set into the soot-stained brickwork (behind the doll-woman), andirons to hold the logs in the fireplace, a chimney crane to the left for hanging cooking pots over the fire. But where are the cooking pots? One brass pan with a long handle for open hearth cooking, but no kettle, no griddle, no spit – not much to make meals for what looks like a reasonably prosperous household. And setting the table so close to the fire – too hot, too dirty, too inconvenient in real life, but it’s the right kind of table and contributes to the overall scene.

early American kitchen — Fireplace area in the Early American Kitchen. Knoxville Museum of Art

On and around the mantelpiece are ornaments and domestic bits and pieces. The sailing ship is accompanied by Toby jugs and candlesticks: probably pewter like the tankard, plates and other things in the room. The gun and powder horn are nearby. A bed warmer hangs by the fire, as they did, ready to be filled with embers while also looking fine. Hard to imagine the family would hang a twig besom alongside, nearly hiding the brass heirloom. Even though a broom would have been used for sweeping away ash round the hearth, it surely belongs to some inferior corner. Anyway, it’s good to see this one here, reminding us what 18th century Americans used.

Furniture

A dresser displays plates, pitchers, and another Toby jug. The seats are not upholstered, but two have traditional draught protection with their high backs and sidepieces: a shape that inspired the more comfortable wing chairs gradually coming into use. With their longlasting design, the stools could have come from Elizabethan England or been made brand new by a local carpenter. A candlestand adds portable, adjustable lighting for close craftwork in a room that is already equipped with candles on walls and mantelshelf. The spinning wheel for flax would have been in frequent use in many households, making linen thread for weaving cloth. The miniature furniture here was made by professional cabinetmakers. Originally it would have been pine or maple.

Doorway

Hanging near the door is a pierced tin lantern, ready for anyone going out into the dark. The glass balls in netting remind me of fisherman’s floats and, the museum suggests, echo the “witch balls” that people hung in doorways or windows for protection against dark forces entering the house. What are the strings of little dark things hanging next to the broom? Probably food being preserved by drying – apples, perhaps? What do you think?

Windows

1700s American kitchen — Spinning wheel for flax in New England kitchen. Knoxville Museum of Art

I admit to knowing nothing about how New Englanders used indoor plants in the 18th century, but I can’t help wondering if the pretty curtains and flowers are typical of hard-working kitchens of that era. Even though this room is the kind of kitchen that doubled up as a family living room, to me the window area seems more like pretty parlour than kitchen.

Date

Is it possible to date this kitchen? My guess is that Mrs. Thorne, the woman who masterminded this and many other wonderful model rooms, probably had a date in the late 1770s or 1780s in mind. The clothing suits this period well enough, as do the furnishings, and the model ship has a (post-independence) US flag. Without the flag, it could be somewhat earlier, perhaps.

Even with “real” historic kitchens, we aren’t necessarily seeing things exactly as they were. In this carefully-staged one, the period seems pretty consistent, but we’re probably looking at everything through a lens that makes the room more attractive than the original reality.

More

If you like to ID old kitchen items, try the things in a 16th century English kitchen, 1920s ranch kitchen, or a German kitchen around 1930. Also see this list of what was in a Scottish farm kitchen (and house) in 1789.

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: First picture, second picture, third picture. More picture info here.

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Using a dough box or kneading trough

Dough box or bin — Classic dough box sloping sides, and legs that have been turned on a lathe. Photo by Nicholas Ford

If you’ve ever made bread, how much flour did your recipe call for? One pound? One kilo? Just enough for one or two tasty loaves? You need to get into a different mindset to understand a dough box. (Also called dough bin, dough trough, kneading trough or tray, with or without a lid and/or legs.)

Baking used to be an important weekly task in many households. Bread was a staple food in Europe and North America. People depended on having plenty of it: not just medieval peasants with scant resources, but 19th century middle-class families too. These might be big families, active, with farmhands or servants to feed as well.

A family of ten needed “three pecks” of flour for a week’s bread, according to Eliza Acton‘s advice around 1850. Three pecks is roughly 27 litres or 7 US gallons, so we’re thinking big sacks of flour for many households. The flour was tipped into a dough box or trough to start bread-making. It held the flour more tidily than a bowl. If the trough was on legs it didn’t need to sit on a table, and could be moved to a part of the room where the temperature was right.

Warmth

Kneading trough — Danish woman c1929 kneading dough in a wooden trough.

The flour had to be warmed in winter if it had come in from a cold barn or cellar, and a dough box was a good place for that. Once the yeast was added the mixture had to stay quite warm for the dough to rise into a nice “sponge”, which would make light bread. You could knead the dough thoroughly in a box-shaped trough without spilling much flour.

The box’s position (near the fire?) was important. The lid was good for keeping in the warmth, and it protected the dough from mice, ash, or other horrors: especially useful if the dough was left to rise a long time. Overnight was not unusual. Slow rising generally improved flavour and texture, and did not require temperatures near to blood heat.

The lid offered a surface for shaping the risen dough into loaves and then leaving them to rise again after being handled. Some lids had tray sides to make carrying the bread to the oven simpler. A kneading trough with no lid was covered with a cloth. A lidded box could be used for storing bread.

Why not bake every day or two?

There are many other jobs to do.
Getting an old brick or stone oven hot enough to bake bread took time, a couple of hours or more. You used valuable fuel, and had to rake hot ashes out before putting the loaves in with a peel.
In New England and Europe some people used a shared bakehouse, and had their turn once a week.

To make Bread … Put half a bushel of good flour into a trough, or kneading tub; mix with it between four and five quarts of warm water, and a pint and a half of good yeast, put it into the flour, and stir it well with your hands till it becomes tough. Let it rise about an hour and twenty minutes, or less if it rises fast; then, before it falls, add four quarts more of warm water, and half a pound of salt; work it well, and cover it with a cloth. Put the fire then into the oven; and by the time it is warm enough, the dough will be ready. Make the loaves about five pounds each; sweep out the oven very clean and quick, and put in the bread: shut it up close, and two hours and a half will bake it.
The Domestic Encyclopedia, Willich & Cooper, Philadelphia, 1821

In Making Authentic Pennsylvania Dutch Furniture John Shea says:

In practically all the colonies, dough tables and bins were essential items of kitchen equipment. Without them, how could the colonists’ “daily bread” have been produced? Usually, these items were made of pine, poplar or similar softwoods. Some of the most handsome models were made of walnut.
One interesting point about the design and construction of Pennsylvania dough tables and bins is that you rarely see two of them that were designed exactly the same.

He says a typical dough box from that part of the world has curved handles spanning the lid. Slanting sides are the norm, and the box shape doesn’t vary much, but if the box has legs their designs can be quite different. A photograph of an exceptional 18th century box shows fine painted floral decoration, with a German folk art look.

Kneading dough in troughs — Swedish dough trough in a kitchen 1889 (detail from Andreas Zorn painting). 15th century German baker. 2500-year old terracotta woman (Greek?) from Munich Museum of Antiquities.

And…

Some French dough bins have ornate carving and are polished on the outside.
Some Eastern European “kneading troughs” were bucket-shaped and used with a paddle.
No soap was used for cleaning a dough box for fear of tainting the flavour.

Thank you, and photo credit

Thank you to Rebecca who asked a question here that got me to write this piece.

I always link to any photographer who’s licensed their work for reuse, and thanks go to Nicholas Ford for his great image of a dough box. (I wish I knew its date – antique or repro.) Other pictures are from Wikimedia: Danish woman, Swedish girl, German baker, terracotta woman (photo by Matthias Kabel).
More picture info here
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Early American candlestands: light at the right height

Threaded candle stand screw type — Threaded screw candlestand allowed someone working at the desk to raise candles that had burned down. The drawer is a nice base for stability as well as storage. In the parsonage at Mission Mill in Salem, Oregon, photographed by Glen Bedsoe

When you’re working by candlelight you want as much light on your sewing or reading as possible, but you don’t want to waste candlewax or tallow. It helps if you can raise or lower the light to suit the task, or to allow for the candle getting shorter.

Candlestands colonial screw tripod table type — Early 20th C candlestands inspired by early American designs. On the left, a model for a recreated early American room (photo Knoxville Museum of Art). On the right, a woodworking design for a so-called Puritan candle stand, a "copy of a genuine antique", to be made of maple with brass tubing to hold the candles.

Colonial Americans and their descendants left behind them a kind of threaded candlestand with a special charm. It’s thought of as a distinctively American design: twin candle holders on a wooden bar which moves up or down on a central stem. Floor-standing candlestands like this, with a small tabletop, are desirable antiques, while 20th and 21st century craftspeople have gone on making both full-height and “desktop” versions. For a classic example in maple wood look at this 18th century one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Grandmother’s front room had bow-backed chairs with flag seats, and tables supported by curiously-carved and twisted legs, a candle stand that screwed up and down like a piano stool, a handsome mirror, and the buffet was resplendent in its appointments.
Memories of a Massachusetts room c1800 in Reminiscences of a Nonagenarian by Sarah Emery, 1879

shoemaker candle stand — Candle stand in shoemaker's workshop at Colonial Williamsburg (a living history exhibit). Photo by Jeff Kubina.

What are they called?

Now for the name problem. Is there a name that summons up an image of a tripod-legged table with a pair of candle holders on an arm that screws up and down? Or even a name for the top part with or without legs? Here are some that I’ve seen used:

Candlestand or Candle Stand – the name used by the Met, but they use it for plain tables too. Light, portable tables, aka candlestands, were made in quantity in the 1800s as bedside or parlor tables suitable for holding a candlestick. Candlestand can also mean a very ornamental tall stand.

Shoemaker’s or Cobbler’s Candlestand – Adjusting the level of the candle was certainly important for shoe makers and other craftspeople, but they didn’t stick just to the threaded twin-candle type. The photo left shows a very simple candle holder with some scope for height adjustment, while the shoemaker’s shop at Williamsburg also has a more elaborate kind with the “light-focusing” globes associated with lacemaking.

Shaker Candlestand – Is it right to call screw-threaded candle holders “Shaker”? They weren’t just made by Shakers, and the Shakers themselves also made tables with a single hole and shaft for a candle holder, as well as plain small tables to place a candlestick on.

In the evening, after the dishes were washed and cleared off the table and the table set back, the candle stand would be moved out from its proper corner and the whole family gathered around it; some of the men reading a newspaper or a book or the women sewing or knitting, or spinning flax or tow. If there was not room around the stand for all, one or more would hang a candle on the back of a chair.
Memories of a Virginia farm in the 1820s by John Janney

Adjustable candle stand 18th century — A different way of adjusting candle height and position with this holder from Upper Saddle River, NJ, believed to date from c1735. (Bergen County Historical Society report 1920)

English candlestands

What ancestors or relatives did these candlestands have in Europe? I turned to Pinto’s Treen and other wooden bygones for clues. He describes a variety of adjustable one- or two-candle holders and stands: to go on the floor, on a table, or hanging on a wall. The type that sounds most like the taller early American kind discussed here is an 18th century “threaded wood stem or pillar, on which were mounted one or two threaded candle brackets, adjustable in height by turning them on the stem”. “Ratchet adjustment” or “friction rise and fall” were alternative mechanisms. He shows an early single candle friction type, floor-standing with a small square tabletop incorporated in the design. There’s also a short 18th century boxwood candle holder with threaded shaft holding an arm with a candle at each end.

As mentioned above, there’s some similarity with lacemakers’ candlestands, which Pinto says were used not only for lace but for other “close work” too. Usually, in England at least, these were “crude”, “three-legged” like milking stools, with holes for the “flashes” or water-filled globes and for a single “spring controlled rise and fall candle holder”.

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: main picture, scale model candle stand, Williamsburg candle stand. More picture info here
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Rocking cradles – wood or wicker

Wooden cradle 1600s — Oak hooded cradle, English, 1683, carved initials, alongside 16th and 17th century oak furniture. Photo by HomeThingsPast

Cradle designs have changed, but are parents’ concerns any different? 200 years ago people were writing about the well-known dilemma: how much can I let my baby sleep in the day without stopping it from sleeping well at night?

It only remains…to say something of the cradle…I believe there is no doubt but the custom of laying children down awake, and rocking them in a cradle in the day time, or…in the evening when they are to go into their night’s sleep, as it is called, may [make] them sometimes more wakeful in the night… From: A Treatise on the … Management of Infants, 1784*

wicker rocking cradle with hood — Wicker cradle on oak rockers used by first baby born to settlers in America, probably. Dutch origins, c1620?*. Photo by Sarah Houghton

Two of the cradles pictured on this page are 300-400 years old, but they look much the same as cradles from only 100 years ago. For centuries, babies in Western Europe and North America were put into small baskets or boxes raised slightly off the floor, on rockers, with or without a hood. Rocking cradles like these have gone out of fashion, and we have different customs now.

Rockers, hoods, drapes, handles, straps

Babies could be strapped in, either with strips of cloth tied right round the whole thing, threaded through holes, or attached to wooden knobs or basketry handles. The child was protected from draughts and damp floors, especially in a hooded cradle. Wicker cradles often had fabric drapes over the hood for extra warmth and daytime darkness.

Child rocking baby in wicker cradle — Hand- rocking in: A Little Girl Rocking a Cradle, c1655, Nicholas Maes (detail)

A small cradle can be rocked by an older sibling or a busy adult with a foot to spare for rocking while her hands are busy with other tasks. It can be lifted to another place using handles or convenient bits of wood-carving. Overall, the baby was fairly safe but questions remain. Was it left alone? What about mice in a world without chemical pest control? Would a busy carer tie the baby in and neglect it?

I had made it an invariable rule always to dress and undress my infant, never suffered it to be placed in a cradle, nor to be fed out of my presence. A basket of an oblong shape with four handles (with a pillow and a small bolster) was her bed by day: at night she slept with me. I had too often heard of the neglect which servants show to young children, and I resolved never to expose an infant of mine either to their ignorance or inattention. From: Mrs. Robinson’s Memoirs, looking back at the 1770s*

Wooden rocking cradle — Simple wooden cradle from the Scottish Western Isles. Holes for cord ties. Photo by HomeThingsPast

Materials and styles varied regionally, though the basics stayed the same. Planks of wood from big trees were available inmuch of Britain and Scandinavia. Numerous paintings of Dutch domestic life confirm that wicker cradles were common in the Netherlands. Cradles were ornamented with colourful folk art in areas with strong traditions of painting on wooden furniture.

Natural rocking

The last word goes to the 18th century “expert” quoted earlier:

Painted cradle — Cradle from Swedish farmhouse. Painted and carved traditional folk art decoration. Photo by Wolfgang Sauber

I cannot help thinking, there is something so truly natural, as well as pleasant, in the wavy motion of a cradle, and so like what children have been used to before they are born, ….that, always wishing to follow nature as I do, I cannot, on the whole, but give an opinion rather in favour of the cradle. From: …Management of Infants, 1784*

Notes

* Michael Underwood, A treatise on the diseases of children, with directions for the management of infants from the birth; especially such as are brought up by hand, London 1784
* Memoirs of the late Mrs. Robinson, written by herself. With some posthumous pieces. Edited by her daughter, M. E. Robinson, London 1801
* More about the American wicker cradle picture here.

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here:
Dutch-American wicker cradle, Swedish cradle.
More picture info here
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Tea caddies

18th century tea caddy — Tea caddy, c1780s, copper with enamel surface decoration, pink peonies in famille rose colours, made in China for Western buyers. Photo by VeronikaB

Tea first arrived in Europe in 1610, when Dutch traders brought some back from Asia to the Netherlands. It reached England in the 1640s and soon became a fashionable drink in London, but it was not something you made at home. If you wanted to drink it in private you had to order a cup from one of the smart coffee-houses where all the new beverages – coffee, chocolate, and tea – were served.

To begin with tea was kept in porcelain jars that had travelled with it from China. Storage for tea became more and more varied once people were able to buy the leaves to brew at home. They had to be wealthy. Tea was so expensive that it was protected from pilfering. One pound (450g) could cost more than a skilled workman’s weekly wage. By 1700 well-to-do households had lockable wooden tea chests holding canisters full of the precious leaves. The lady of the house kept the key, and servants had no access.

A few tea canisters – not yet called caddies – travelled across the Atlantic with early Dutch and British migrants to North America. Matching pairs of canisters were popular for keeping a choice of teas to hand – usually green tea and black tea. Later tea chests sometimes had a third canister and/or a mixing bowl for creating your own blend.

wooden caddy with 2 canisters and bowl — Varnished caddy box with two wooden caddies and glass mixing bowl inside, 19th century. Photo by Leeds Museums

Silver, fruitwood, and other caddies

English silversmiths soon started to make very fine caddies along with beautiful teapots, trays, caddy spoons, and other silver teaware reflecting the owners’ wealth and status. Antique silver and silver-gilt tea caddies attract high bids at auction today, with prices in tens of thousands of dollars for the best of them.

The earliest silver caddies in America were made in the first part of the 18th century – not long before a historic interruption to the growth of tea-drinking in that part of the world. Tea taxes imposed by the British government led to the Boston Tea Party, and, not surprisingly, all this discouraged American craftsmen from making caddies and other tea paraphernalia.

Today’s tea caddies belong in the kitchen, but earlier ones were for public display. A tea table was brought to the drawing room and set beside the lady of the house. A fine tea service with caddy was laid out for her, and she would take charge of preparing the luxurious beverage. In the 19th century she might have a special three-legged teapoy table or pedestal chest with her caddies stored under a flip-up lid.

pear shaped tea caddy — Lockable pear tea caddy, Georgian. The grain shows it was turned from one piece of wood, except for the stem. Photo by HomeThingsPast

Caddy designs proliferated, and most had a well-crafted lock and key. Some were chinoiserie influenced by Asian decorative arts. Furniture designers like Chippendale contributed chests and caddies in Georgian cabinet-maker style. As well as ceramic and silver caddies there were containers made from tortoiseshell, copper, painted papier-maché, glass, and exotic woods lined with foil. Ornamentation might include ivory, mother-of-pearl, enamel, or Regency penwork. Caddies covered in rolled paper filigree work were popular from about 1770 to 1815, some of them professionally finished and some bought ready for ladies to decorate at home.

One enduringly popular type of wooden caddy is carved in the shape of a fruit – often an apple or pear – and these are very sought-after today, fetching high prices, especially the earlier ones. They may be made of the fruitwood appropriate for their shape – like a pear caddy made of pearwood. They were inspired by Chinese containers in the shape of an egg plant or aubergine: a good luck fruit.

The tea caddy got its current name around 1800, from a Chinese and Malay measure of weight (cati) that was slightly more than a pound.

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here:
enamelled floral caddy, wooden caddy box. More picture info here

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