Home and Housekeeping Package

Take home some of our Costumed Interpreters' must-haves for any 1830s household:

• 2 village-made wooden spoons, handcrafted in our new Cabinetmaking Shop
• 2 cotton pillow covers, handwoven by OSV textile craftsmen
• 1 broom, handmade by OSV costumed historians
• 1 maple sugar cone produced from OSV's very own maple sap
• 1 set of vintage sugar snippers
• A copy of The American Frugal Housewife, Twelfth Edition by Mrs. Child, a key text for the interpretation of the Village's households and one that will be familiar (at least by name) to frequent Village visitors.

These wooden cooking spoons, made by Chris Nassise, are made of maple wood (larger spoon) and beech (smaller spoon). Hand-carved spoons like these would most likely have been made by men, as needed, as a leisure time activity rather than for sale. Chris split the wood from fresh timber (logs) and hew the rough shape with an axe. The spoons were then carved with a straight knife and a hook knife to shape the bowl. The finished spoons are burnished with a smooth river stone and polished with a mixture of beeswax and food safe flaxseed oil. Hand wash with soap and water.

The cotton fabric of these pillow covers was hand-woven at Old Sturbridge Village from a pattern found in a hand-written weaving draught in the Village Collection. The draught was donated by the family of mother and daughter weavers, Patience and Peace Kirby, who wove on thier farm in Dartmouth, MA from 1798 to 1826. The Kirby family called this design "Great and Fine Huckerback." It is part of a group of fabrics known in the early 19th-centery as diaper cloth. Diaper cloth was usually uncoloured, woven in linen or linen and cotton, and characterized by a raised texture. The looser threads in the raised areas of the design made the fabric very absorbent. Diaper cloth was traditionally used to make towels, tablecloths, and napkins.

Maple sugar loaves where made by taking maple syrup and further reducing it by slow simmer, boiling to evaporate more moisture out of it. We do this in the Village over the open hearths in small batches until small sugar crystals start to form. When crystalization begins it is then poured into redware molds, left to sit overnight and unmolded the following day. A gallon of maple syrup yields approxamitly 5 to 6 lbs of sugar. Sugar has a much better shelf life than syrup since in the 1830's canning had not been perfected and there where no airtight containers.The maple sugar was used as a sweeter in the same fashion white or brown cane sugar was used by grating it or pounding it. 

This item must be picked up at Old Sturbridge Village.