LAUNDRY AND HOUSEKEEPING
Introduction | Doll Furniture | Cooking Accessories | Laundry & Housekeeping | Doll Toys | Doll Displays | Bibliography
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LAUNDRY & HOUSEKEEPING
All hail the invention of the automatic washer and dryer! They did more for liberating women than even the advent of modern gas and electric stoves and running water!
Before the invention of these wonders, washing of clothing was done using wooden washtubs, scrub boards, and wringers. Drying of clothing was done outside on clotheslines or in special rooms or anterooms designed for the purpose. All of these items were available scaled to child-size.
Early machines at the turn of the 19th century were turned manually with a lever. Herz and Ehrlich made doll washing machines and labeled them as follows in an 1899 catalog: “Doll-house washing machines, with which one can really wash doll laundry practically, so that they are very suitable for awakening the interest of little girls in household activities”.
The prominent German toy company Markin produced washing machines meant to be used on the stovetop. It consisted of a perforated drum that could be turned by a lever inside a closed vessel.
In the 1920s and the 1930s children’s wringer washers were produced. Electric washing machines followed soon after real ones appeared in the home kitchens. [Stille, 178] I remember having one in the house I lived in up till I was 6. Although it washed the clothes automatically, it had a wringer through which all the clothes must be wrung out via hand operated lever.
Of course there was a vast array of laundry related items available for the child housekeeper including ironing boards; flatirons (an eventually real working electric irons); small laundry mangles, drying racks, wash tubs, laundry baskets etc. [Stille, 178]
All hail the invention of the automatic washer and dryer! They did more for liberating women than even the advent of modern gas and electric stoves and running water!
Before the invention of these wonders, washing of clothing was done using wooden washtubs, scrub boards, and wringers. Drying of clothing was done outside on clotheslines or in special rooms or anterooms designed for the purpose. All of these items were available scaled to child-size.
Early machines at the turn of the 19th century were turned manually with a lever. Herz and Ehrlich made doll washing machines and labeled them as follows in an 1899 catalog: “Doll-house washing machines, with which one can really wash doll laundry practically, so that they are very suitable for awakening the interest of little girls in household activities”.
The prominent German toy company Markin produced washing machines meant to be used on the stovetop. It consisted of a perforated drum that could be turned by a lever inside a closed vessel.
In the 1920s and the 1930s children’s wringer washers were produced. Electric washing machines followed soon after real ones appeared in the home kitchens. [Stille, 178] I remember having one in the house I lived in up till I was 6. Although it washed the clothes automatically, it had a wringer through which all the clothes must be wrung out via hand operated lever.
Of course there was a vast array of laundry related items available for the child housekeeper including ironing boards; flatirons (an eventually real working electric irons); small laundry mangles, drying racks, wash tubs, laundry baskets etc. [Stille, 178]