The Tingle Factor Box

Is It For Doctors To Dry Bandages? Antique Pea Sheller

Imagine, you are living in the 1940s. You are lucky to have a small yard in which you can grow fruit and vegetables to feed the family, and with the children always so hungry it is great to have 'free' food always available! You grow all sorts of things, but you particularly love the pea and bean plants. So easy to grow, they produce lots of food and some of the peas and beans can even be dried when they are shelled and put aside to use later! Of course, you would probably hate them if you had to shell them all by hand, but you are lucky to have a pea sheller your mother gave you for a wedding present.

So They're Like Blowing Really Hard? Fireplace Bellows

Imagine, you are a housewife living in the late 1800s. You work hard around the house to make sure things are clean, the children are looked after and that food is ready at mealtimes. You really aren't very good with the oven though. You have a wood fired stove, just like everybody else, but it doesn't seem to burn hot enough most of the time for cooking. You would love to buy one of those fireplace bellows to help make the fire burn really hot, but you just don't have the money. Perhaps for your birthday!

Are They Bug Eggs? Pin Cushion

Imagine, you are a mother living in the late 1800s. You have so much work to do around the house, looking after the children, washing, mending, cooking, cleaning, that it is important to have things sorted neatly and easy to find. It is easy to waste time looking for a pot, or a knife or a pin or a needle if you don't keep them in just the right place. That is why you are making this pin cushion. You had a lovely one, but it has become worn and you decided it needed to be replaced before your pins and needles fell out of it and went missing!

When I took this pin cushion to show the children, they were really very funny. They assumed it would be something exotic and fancy, some sort of brooch, or perhaps even something which, when 'soaked in water, turned into something else'. I think they were almost disappointed to discover it was something as mundane as a pin cushion! They were intrigued to see the 'bug eggs' which were falling out of the cushion though. They assumed the little brown grains must be some sort of bug egg, because they resembled the eggs of moths found in old cereal, and were stunned to realise that it was actually sawdust - the stuffing of choice in the late 1800s.

Today, pins and needles are cheap and easy to purchase, and when we lose them we simply buy a new packet. Our only concern about losing a pin or needle is whether we might later find it when we sit down, or have bare feet. In times gone by though, pins and needles, particularly metal ones, were very expensive and hard to even find! It was important that, if you had pins and needles, you had some way of keeping them safe and from going rusty. In the 1300s containers started to be made to look after them and to enable people to carry them around. These containers were often made of wood, ivory or silver, and were as much a display of wealth as a way to keep pins safe!

In the 1700s, people started to use pin-pillows to look after their pins and needles. These 'pillows' were usually made of expensive fabrics like satin, velvet or linen and before too long, they pillow itself became part of a more elaborate sculptural piece. Often a base of silver, porcelain or wood would be created and then the pillow would fit inside. These pin-pillows were more decorative than functional, and sometimes the pins themselves were part of the decoration, making the quills on hedgehogs, or themselves decorated. Later, pin cushions began to take on a more functional role, and some even had little clamps which could be used to hold fabric in place against a table. The pin cushion I showed the children probably dates to the 1800s and, though beautiful, is very simple. It was clearly made as a functional pin cusion, not as an elaborate decorative piece, though it is beautifully decorated with beads and very carefully made. Roy will have a go at recreating the design at some stage.

So, Is It Part Of A Set? - Jolly Nigger Money Bank

Note: I mean no offence by the terms Black or Nigger. I am simply seeking to place the object in its historical context. It is my understanding that black is currently an accepted terminology, while 'jolly nigger' is simply the wording used to market and sell the money bank and thus the correct term to describe the bank itself. 

Imagine, you are a child living in the late 1800s. Your family is not poor, but you father thinks it is important for you to understand that money doesn't just grow on trees. Recently he gave you a money bank, in the shape of a 'Jolly Nigger', to save your coins in. Usually, when you have a spare penny you go to the shops and buy some lollies, but Father tells you that if you give your money to the bank to look after, one day you might have enough for a pretty new dolly, or even a new dress!

They're So Fine - Depression Quilt Patches

Imagine, it is the 1930s and you are a mother. Times are really hard, your family seem to be living on the chokos from the vine over the outdoor dunny and you don't have a lot of money. You have to mend and make do with everything you can. Old shirts, worn out sheets, skirts with holes in them, even the sacks you buy flour in can all be cut down and sewn into all sorts of things, a dolly for your daughters birthday, a new shirt for your son, a quilt for the bed. You have been working on putting little patches leftover from other projects together into squares. You think it will make a nice quilt, mainly in shades of blue.

They Are So Huge! Keys

Imagine, you are living in the early 1800s. You are from a well off family and enjoy lots of luxuries, including beautiful furnishings and china. Of course, having beautiful things means that you have to look after them too - you don't want to loose them to a thief. Luckily, you have very solid locks on the doors, so they would have trouble getting in. You are just glad it isn't your job to carry the keys - they're huge and weigh so much!

When I took these keys to show the children, they were absolutely enthralled by them. They thought they were simply toys, because they had never seen such big, ornate keys before. To them, keys are small and lightweight, easily carried in a pocket or handbag. These keys were like nothing they had seen before, because not only are they massive, they are very heavy. They were also surprised to see that each key is different and would have fitted a different lock. The effort involved in making such intricate, ornate keys was also surprising to them - each of the keys appears to have been handmade. Of course, the thing which impressed them most about the keys was that they made perfect 'castle' or 'dungeon' keys to play with!

The history of keys is, of course, irrevokably tied with the history of locks and since people first had nice things which they wanted to keep safe, they have needed locks and keys. The history of keys and locks dates back thousands of years, right back to the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. The oldest existing lock is about 4000 years old, was Egyptian and was probably quite common at the time it was made. It used a wooden bolt as the lock securing the door, and then had a series of holes in the wood which would be filled by wooden pegs to stop the lock being opened.In fact, it was this which was the forerunner of our modern locks! The pegs fell into the holes automatically, like the tumblers in modern locks, and they had to be lifted back out again to allow the lock to be opened. At first a handshaped hole in the door allowed the lock to be opened (so the hand was the first 'key') but later long, thin, wooden 'keys were used. The Greeks used locks to keep Temples and sacred places safe, and women carried large angular 'keys' over one shoulder. In fact, it was apparently the Greeks who invented the keyhole as we know it, though the Romans are the ones who refined it. At this time, particularly in Rome, having keys was quite a status symbol because it showed you had things which were worth protecting.The Romans also improved on Egyptian locks by adding 'wards' which the key had to get past before the tumblers could be removed. Apparently the portable lock (padlocks) were also invented by the Romans, though they were also independantly invented in China.

Throughout history, locks continued to be improved, and although by Medieval time locks were a little more complicated, the main innovation in lock and key history was to make them beautiful. They made exquisitely embellished locks and beautifully decorated keys which were not only secure, but also attractive. These early locks were still quite easy to 'pick' for a determined thief. In the late 1700s and early 1800s though these locks were improved upon. In 1778 Robert Barron created a lock which had two sets of tumblers which had to be raised to exactly the right height to allow the door to be opened. In 1818 Jeremiah Chubb further improved on this by adding a spring which would catch and hold the tumbers if they were lifted to the wrong position by a thief. This not only made the lock more secure, only able to be opened by the correct key, but it also made it possible to tell if a lock had been tampered with.

 

It's So Cute - Childrens Picnic Set

Imagine, it is a beautiful day in the mid 1900s. Your Mummy and Daddy have promised to take you on a picnic this week, and you hope they remember – it is such a perfect day to be outdoors. You love picnicking, so much that Mummy found a little picnic set, just the right size for you to use with your dolls and your friends. Perhaps if Mummy and Daddy don’t take you picnicking today you could ask Mummy for some sandwiches to enjoy with your dolly.

So they used the icky bits too? Mrs Beetons Cookbook

Imagine, you are a housewife living in the late 1800s. You have to prepare a splendid meal because your husbands parents will be joining you for dinner, and you know your mother in law thinks you can't look after him well enough. Thank-goodness for Mrs Beeton! Your mother taught you to cook, but Mrs Beeton has given you so many splendid recipes, and you are sure you can find something in her book to impress even your mother in law!

So You Needed One Of These? Match Striker

Imagine, you are living in the late 1800s. It is getting dark and you need to light a lamp for your room. You are very pleased that you purchased a new match striker which took your fancy recently, as your little girl knocked the old one off the shelf earlier today and it broke. You can strike your matches against just about anything, but they are so dangerous. You need somewhere to keep them safe from igniting accidentally. The new match striker is perfect - you'll just need to move it to a higher shelf!

Thats Sweet - Bird Feeder

Imagine, you are living Britain in the 1890s. It is winter and very cold. There is a thick layer of snow on the ground and the trees are all bare. Worst of all, it seems that every day you see another bird which has succumbed to the cold and the lack of food. Well, at least you can do a little for the birds, putting out these dishes of food and several little dove cotes for them to rest inside. You just hope that it is enough!