Antique Appliances We Have Known
I worked in a sandwich shop in college and to this day I want this setup in my own kitchen:
Come to find out, there used to be all kinds of refrigerator options on the market for residential use; having a prep fridge in your home now might be weird, but it didn’t used to be. This video from Laura Lisbon (watch all his videos about the domestic sphere) taught me that fridges used to be so, so cool. And functional. And meant to last forever.
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Here’s a photo from 2000 of a wall-mounted fridge that’s been in use since 1957.
Obviously I would go with one of the color options. And to be honest I’m not sure how sturdy this could be? Do any of you know math and can figure the odds of one of these bad boys falling off the wall?
The standing refrigerators on the mid-1900s were pretty great, too. I’m partial to the Food-A-Rama, by Kelvinator.
Small appliances were pretty great 100 years ago, too. Everyone says homemade mayonnaise is difficult to make. Where did the mechanical mayonnaise mixer go?
Lloyd Copeman was an inventor with at least dozens of patents to his name. His most remunerative invention was the flexible ice cube tray. He was also Linda Ronstadt’s grandfather.
The domestic inventions of the early 1900s were marketed almost exclusively via talking about how difficult women’s lives were. (Here is a book that supports my theory that appliances pushed U.S. women into the “workplace” — they had always worked for money, but before WWI they did it at home: cooking, baking, laundering, clothes-making; once everything got less time-consuming, homemakers could do more themselves but also got bored.)
I don’t think this was a good idea.
Do you have a favorite appliance of yore?
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That cigarette lighter tho... lol
When I was a toddler in 1960 I pulled the coffee percolator off the kitchen counter, pouring the boiling brew all over myself. My chest and glabrous belly were scalded and blistered. Needless to say, I am not a fan of percolators.
My favorite appliance? Good vacuum cleaners are a joy, especially the ones that show all the dog hairs and crumbs being sucked up. Cuisinarts were very exciting when they first came out in 1981. They were magical. My poor hippie baby never ate Gerbers. Only unseasoned freshly pulsed organic food for her!