Ode to the humble washhandje (little wash hand, aka washing mitt).
This is the setup in my bedroom, it shows an early 20th century washing set, lampetkan as we cloggies call it and it's how most people washed every day for centuries.
It's a bowl, ewer and containers for soap etc
The ewer would be filled with water and in the morning you'd pour the water in the bowl and wash yourself with it.
From experience I can tell you that starting your day in the winter by breaking the thin layer of ice on the water to then wash yourself with it is quite something!
Before you get worried, I've only used the washstand a few times for historical experimental reasons and when I lived in a house with no running water for a few days.
My farm now has a fancy bathroom with bath, shower and two sinks, two!
Flashy, I know!
Anyway, besides washing like this people also used bath houses, this dates back to Roman times but was still common as recent as the 1970s when more and more people got bathrooms in their homes.
These were near where I lived in Amsterdam, sadly they now have different functions.
Anyway, about the washing mitt.
Daily life of common people in the 1920s-40s is one of my specialities as a historian and I've been collecting stuff related to it for decades.
Here's a gem from my collection; an old dirty raggedy washing mitten;
I don't know how old it is, but it was handmade and used several tiny bits of leftover coloured material, so perhaps it was made during the war, in times of shortage.
After the war the market was flooded with cheap goods and making some things yourself was no longer needed.
But I will probably never know who made it or when, it may just have well been an annoying 1970s hippie teenager forced to make it at school!
But as it's one of those things that was a big part of Dutch daily life that was rarely saved or treasured, it's kind of rare, I love it.
The washing mitten is great, I was a bit surprised to find out they're not being used by everyone everywhere, they're very practical, not just by the wash basin but also in shower and bath.
As unmissable as the long handled brush!
Anyway, this ends my presentation on the humble 'washhandje'.
It had everything, war, half naked ladies, suffering and the blessed relief of being clean.
Conclusion; the washandje is swell.
Oh PS; here two lovely illustrations from "Health Stories, Book Two" (1933) in case you need some instructions:
The book even comes with some interesting life advice and tips;
The 1930s folks were obsessed with hygiene, it's like they just lived through a pandemic or something...
I had no idea about this, thanks Wikipedia, and hello Korea and Iran!
Of course our wash mitt is superior to the wash cloth, it even sounds better ;) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washing_m…
Just adding these lovely paintings to the thread;
The Child's Bath (or The Bath) from 1893 and Woman Bathing (La Toilette) from 1890–91 by American artist Mary Cassatt. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Cass…
These pictures were taken by Eadweard Muybridge in the 1870s-1880s.
I turned them into a gif :)
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A few days ago I complained about a Guardian article using a bad photo from a film in an article about Joan Clarke, a Bletchley Park code breaker, but... something much worse might have happened...
I don't think this photo they used is of Joan...
@TeaKayB pointed this out to me and I was stunned, surely not, that would be extraordinary sloppy.
So I looked into it, of course.
For starters the image they used is flipped, here's the full picture as it should look:
Time to look at another photo album in my collection, a tiny one this time with one picture on each page, showing us the adventures of some Dutch girl scouts in the early 1930s.
This Friday the game 'Manor Lord' is coming out, it's a medieval city builder that I've made a modest contribution to as a historical consultant and beta tester for.
I've been very excited about it for a long time and I'm not the only one, it's creating quite a buzz and has ended up on a lot of wishlists.
What I love about it most is that it tries to depict the middle ages in an accurate way, behind the scenes historians, experts & history addicts have been debating the tiniest details.
I think the result is one of the most historically accurate medieval games I've ever played.
#Manorlords
So let's have a sneak peek at it shall we?
First, here's an official video:
Before you start you set up your profile and design your own family crest, look familiar?
This bit alone is SUCH fun, you can fiddle and play with this editor for ages till you get exactly what you want and then you'll see it on the banners in the game!
SUCH FUN!
Sigh.
An account with half a million followers just tweeted that long debunked 'life in the 1500s' nonsense, 2.2 million people have seen it.
So here we go again...