Chats on Cottage and Farmhouse FurnitureHayden, Arthur
History
Chats on Cottage and Farmhouse Furniture
Hayden, Arthur
Country furniture -- England; Furniture -- England; Textile fabrics -- England
Another interesting cottage treasure is the cake-baker. This was a
kind of thick frying-pan having a lid, which protected the dough from
the heat when it was held over the smouldering ashes. The tops of
these are often incised with quaint patterns, the impress of which
appears on the cake.
Kettle-trivets are sometimes found in cottages, possibly relics from
better houses or having belonged to the more prosperous farmer.
They are not wholly of iron, being partly of brass. The specimen
illustrated (p. 291) is of late eighteenth-century days.
=The Warming-pan.=--There is an especial charm in the old brass
warming-pan of the farmhouse and the treasured highly-polished
ornament of many a proud cottager to-day. Many modern-made
warming-pans from Holland and elsewhere have found their way into
the possession of unsuspecting collectors. But fine old English
warming-pans are interesting, and summon up memories of careful
housewives and well-aired lavender-smelling sheets in ancient
old-world inns. On fine examples inscriptions may be found, and the
incised work of the pattern on the brass covers is often individual
in character.
Of the examples illustrated (p. 307) one has an incised inscription
around the edge, "The Lord only is my portion." The other has a
dotted geometrical pattern with a star-like design of conventional
floral incised work.
It is unfortunate that the diligence of the housewife has often
obliterated much of the fine work of some of these designs. The
warming-pan offers in itself a complete field for the collector. He
can compare the work of seventeenth-century Dutch examples, with
their quaint religious inscriptions and their finely embossed and
engraved ornamentation, with English specimens of the same date.
That the warming-pan was in use in Elizabethan days is proved by
references in Shakespeare. It has a long history, from Sir John
Falstaff, when Bardolph was bidden to put his face between the
sheets and do the office of a warming-pan, to Mr. Pickwick--to quote
Sergeant Buzfuz, "Don't trouble yourself about the warming-pan--the
warming-pan! Why, gentlemen, who does trouble himself about a
warming-pan?"
=Sussex Firebacks.=--The fireback was usually part of the cottager's
belongings, though perhaps only one would figure in his house, where
possibly his only hearth was in his living-room.
These were cast and forged in various parts of the country, and large
numbers appear to have been made in Sussex, which is, or rather
was, the greatest hunting-ground for good specimens of cottagers'
ironwork. Some highly interesting specimens of these are to be herein
illustrated.
The records of the Sussex iron industry go back to a very early date,
and the town of Lewes, in the thirteenth century, raised taxes by
charging a toll on every cartload of iron admitted. Under Edward
III. the Sussex ironworks provided three thousand horseshoes and
twenty-nine thousand nails for the English army in its campaign in
Scotland. The local rhyme--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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