Date/Circa: 1890
Origin: England
Size: 61″ wide by 28″ deep
Catalogue no: A0307
Price: $275
Origin: England
Size: 61″ wide by 28″ deep
Catalogue no: A0307
Price: $275
It’s winter in Great Britain and there is no electricity [yet]. How do you dry your clothes?
You can use a “winter hedge row”, a tri-fold wooden frame that allows a few pieces of wet clothing to be hung by the fire. OR, if you are a laundress in an 1880’s English Manor House, you can use a large wooden rack, suspended from the ceiling. The rack can be lowered via a pulley system, loaded with freshly-cleaned and bleached laundry, then pulled up to the highest reaches of the room–as close to the ceiling as possible. This system permitted the warmest air to be useful and kept the clothing out of the way as it dried.
In the summer, laundry could be dried out-of-doors. In fact, a 1630s document recommended that hedges be cut smoothly and level across the top, precisely so that they could become a drying surface. This may have heralded the beginning of manicured hedges on estates.
These days, we keep a Maytag in the laundry room and move these beautifully made drying racks to the kitchen where they are perfect for displaying a wide assortment of kitchenware. Then again, they could hold bunches of flowers and herbs
These days, we keep a Maytag in the laundry room and move these beautifully made drying racks to the kitchen where they are perfect for displaying a wide assortment of kitchenware. Then again, they could hold bunches of flowers and herbs