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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Butter tubs can be beautiful

carved butter tub norway — Norwegian butter tub with lid acting as butter stamp or mould. Made from wooden staves with the two longest fitting into the lid. Photo by Rolf Steinar Bergli.

Wooden tubs with fine carving inside the lid were traditional containers for a few pounds of butter in parts of Norway and other Scandinavian countries. Some were beautifully finished on the outside too, and could be used to take butter to festive gatherings and serve it attractively.

Because the interior carving gave the top of the butter an attractive design, these were called butter moulds by the treen (woodware) expert Edward Pinto. Obviously they did shape and mould the butter, but English-speaking antiques experts today tend to call them butter tubs.

Decoration on the outside was carved or painted or burnt, or all three. Tubs were constructed in the traditional cooper’s way. Made in the same way as barrels or buckets, with upright staves braced by bands around them, these tubs had two pieces of wood longer than the rest. They slotted into the lid and had a hole for the pin that fixed top and bottom together. Loose joins were sealed with rushes.

Size, shape, date

norwegian butter tub — Norwegian butter carrier, classic shape, burnt pokerwork design on lid. Photo by Rolf Steinar Bergli

Other tubs have a neater finish than the first one pictured here, with wood curving smoothly round the whole surface, using techniques like Swedish svepask. They all tend to follow the classic form: round, on three little legs, a characteristic handle on top integrated with the side fastenings. They are often about 20cm (8in) high and wide. Pinto says a typical container holds 4 to 6 pounds (2-3 kilos) of butter, though some might carry more.

None of the tubs illustrated here is dated but I guess they are 19th century. I’ve seen one from 1837 and the overall style fits in with these. This extra special one is from the 1830s.

Containers of this type were also used for carrying stews, porridge and other semi-liquid food. I’d like to know if carving inside the lid is a decisive clue to their purpose. Or was one container used for both purposes? This would break with the usual rule that dairy utensils are kept separate and scrupulously clean to avoid souring the butter.

Wooden porringers

swedish painted wood tub — Wooden tub or porringer, from Småland, Sweden. Painted decoration.

The Swedish container in the black and white picture is called a porringer (cooked food container) in a book by Charles Holme, who travelled to many parts of Europe to study, photograph, and write about “Peasant Art” – what we would call folk art now. It’s hard to know how much information he gathered about the everyday use of the items he studied. He was an art journal editor whose main interest was design.

As far as I can tell without knowing the language, the Norwegian name smøramber for these is closer to butter tub than to butter mould. Smør means butter. Amber doesn’t seem to be a common word in Norwegian. Interestingly, in medieval England an amber was a “vessel with one handle”, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and also a measure of liquid and dry weight. And while we’re looking at words, the dictionary says a porringer is a “a small bowl or basin, typically with a handle, used for soup, stews, or similar dishes.”

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals: Colour photos by Rolf Steinar Bergli here and here. More picture info here

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Games tables

games and cards table 18th century — Table from around 1750 has a backgammon board under a chess/checkers/draughts board, and nine men's morris at the other end. Probably German. Photo by Thomas Quine

This table is a fine example of the 18th century fashion for specialised furniture designed to suit particular interests and hobbies. It’s beautifully crafted by a skilled cabinet-maker for a client with plenty of money. Look at the inlay work in the games boards, the edgings, the pairs of dice – and all over. Set in the walnut surface are maple, plum, mahogany and other woods, expertly cut and fitted together.

The later 1700s saw more and more furniture created exclusively for people’s leisure activities. Clever metamorphic step-chairs for private libraries, and card tables for the drawing-room are two examples I’ve already written about. Ladies’ (needle)work tables were surprisingly often combined with chess boards, and are sometimes as elaborate and decorative as the games table shown here. Stylish, ingenious pieces of furniture suited the mood of the times.

Georgian games table — Mahogany games table with inlaid chess board. View from side and above showing sliding, reversible top and backgammon layout beneath. English, c1795

Games boards can be seen occasionally on earlier furniture, like the amazing 16th century “Eglantine” table covered with fine marquetry at Hardwick Hall, England. (Detail pictured below.) But the 18th century brought something new. The table to the right is not as fine as the one in the main picture, but it is probably more typical:

The top is inlaid as a chessboard on the under side, and is made to slide in grooves and to be reversible when required. The top when removed discloses two compartments fitted for backgammon. This game is one of considerable antiquity in England, and was generally referred to as “the tables”. Although now relegated to country vicarages and the homes of the smaller squirearchy, it was a fashionable amusement during the eighteenth century, and one at which considerable sums were won and lost by the “bucks” of the Georgian period and the days of the Regency.
Herbert Cecsinsky, English Furniture of the Eighteenth Century, 1909

Porcelain, and more table details

The bigger porcelain box on the table at the top of the page is for game tokens or counters, and was made by Meissen, probably between 1750 and 1780. The little green one is a Meissen snuff box made c1745. Inside the lid (sorry, not visible) is a scene of people playing tric-trac, a kind of backgammon. The glass beakers with playing card decoration are the oldest things in sight; they come from early 1700s Saxony.

16th century table — Chess and backgammon boards inlaid in 16th century Hardwick Hall table. Photo by Damian Entwistle

The German table, in the Deutsches Historisches Museum, is approx. 35 by 29 inches, and 29 inches high. The English Georgian table is 28 and a half inches high. The top is only 20 by 22 inches when the side flaps are down. When up, they rest on hinged supports, and make the table’s full length 39 inches.

Photos

Photographers credited in captions. Links to originals here: Games table, Hardwick Hall table. 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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Box beds, bunk beds – upstairs, downstairs

Lit clos double etage — "Box beds with an upstairs - Let's go, girls, sleepy time." Caption on postcard, about 100 years old.

I’ve written about box beds before, and about the Breton tradition of fine, substantial, and wonderfully carved box beds (lits clos or enclosed beds). At the time I didn’t know about another, more recent, tradition from about 100 years ago: pictures of comic scenes staged around Britanny’s most famous furniture. The double-decker beds (double lit clos, lit à l’étage etc.) are doubly amusing with the right humorous caption. There are straightforward photographs too, showing off traditional Breton folk costumes as well as the beds.

The postcards probably appealed to city slickers from Paris taking the sea air in Brittany, as well as to tourists from further afield. Brittany’s cultural heritage is quite distinct from the rest of France, so a cute picture of the carved box beds plus wooden clogs (sabots) and local characters in Breton dress could be just the thing to send to the folks back home. There seems to be a hint of “Aren’t these rustic hicks funny?” but it’s hard to be sure how it would have seemed at the time. In any case, the photographs give a good impression of the amazing furniture.

Every box bed had its combination bench-chest (banc-coffre or banc-tossel) to help with climbing in. (And with storing linen.) To get up and down, some postcard characters perched a stool precariously on the chest, some asked for a ladder, and others used a convenient shoulder.

Double box beds — Postcard caption says: Call to order. "Hey, up there. Could you be a bit quieter?"

Within Brittany, there were regional differences in the design of lits clos. Some were completely enclosed with full doors, except perhaps for decorative pierced carving to let air circulate. Other beds were only partly surrounded by wooden panelling, and had a curtained opening. Fixed panels and sliding doors could match perfectly. The space behind the bench-chest might be empty, or covered with a simple plank. Side panels were generally plain, hidden by other furniture close by.

As well as elaborate carving on flat surfaces, many beds featured ornamental balusters. A balustrade ran all the way along the top of some beds.

To see more souvenir box bed photographs – plus comedy – try these links:

Here’s a great collection (4 pages) of early 20th century box bed pictures (some mildly risqué in a French style).
More old postcards here; you have to search with “lit clos” and register to see them bigger.
This site only has one picture of a rather downmarket bed (is that a chamber-pot under the bench?) but, if you can read French, note that it leads to a curious poem about an elderly matriarch holding court in her imposing lit clos.

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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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