Old and Interesting

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

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In this photo of a 1790s English kitchen are two different brass containers for warming beer. If you want to try spotting them yourself before reading on, look on the wall to the right of the fir...

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A linen press often means a big old-fashioned cupboard where you keep household textiles, but it can also mean a screw press for keeping linen smooth and neatly folded. This kind of press was use...

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Once upon a time a metal washboard and bar of hard soap with a tub of hot water was a new-fangled way of tackling laundry, though today it's a common picture of "old-fashioned" laundering. What w...

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Old and Interesting's home page has been refreshed again. Click through to find more snippets for quick reading and new pictures.

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Letting you know about the new page on 18th and 19th century methods for laundering and starching muslin gowns, bonnets etc. In case this message doesn't take you to the right page, click the lin...

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I was intrigued to discover a medieval version of today's self-heating cans of soup, beans, and coffee. In a Welsh museum is an Anglo-Norman double pot, a smaller cooking pot inside a bigger one,...

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A tub of hot water, a washboard in a wooden frame with somewhere to rest the bar of laundry soap in pauses from scrubbing - this is a familiar image of how our great-grandmothers washed the laund...

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Baking bread or pizza in your own wood-fired stone or brick oven is a newly discovered pleasure for enthusiasts in the western world, but it's routine for people in some countries. If they don't ...

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Laundry starch: from medieval luxury to Victorian mass market - Starch has come a long way: from a sour brew boiling for days to a press-button spray. Manufactured starch that could be convenient...

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

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The Victorians used splendid brass clockwork jacks for spinning roasting joints of meat slowly round in front of a fire. These bottle jacks (named for their shape), or clock jacks, make fine anti...

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We have so many detergents, household cleansers, and steel wool. But what did people use to shift dirt from unpainted, uncarpeted floors before modern technology? How did they deal with burnt foo...

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This message is letting you know about the new home page at Old and Interesting. It now has shorter bits and pieces, including "What is it?" and "Did you know?". It will be refreshed every so oft...

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The home page has been refreshed, with new snippets of info and pictures, including an object to identify.

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Think about enamel kitchen utensils today, and you probably imagine something coated all over in enamel. That certainly wasn't the case in the early years. To begin with, cooking pots were lined ...

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If you’ve ever got up on a cold, dark morning and flipped a switch or struck a match, you’ll be glad you’re living after the mid-19th century. Once upon a time, anyone in a northern winter ...

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Just letting you know there are some new pictures and snippets of info on the home page - 19th century wicker baby walker, living clothesline instructions from 1840, and more.....

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Fine table linen was essential for fine medieval dining. In the late medieval period the best tablecloths were as white as possible, ornamented with allover woven patterns, embroidery, separately...

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Hot metal pressing irons are so common that we may forget how widespread wooden mangling boards once were. People who have heard of mangle boards may know they were traditional courtship gifts ca...

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Why discuss knitting tools on a website about housekeeping, chores, and traditional "women's work"? Today we see hand-knitting as a hobby, a creative craft practised in our leisure time, but it u...

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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 o...

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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-speaki...

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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 ce...

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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 suppl...

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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 ...

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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 ...

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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.....

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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...

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'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. Wri...

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