Serendipity

There are still lovely moments on the internet - this morning I found one.

There I was in Sydney, Australia reading an American knitting site (knitty.com) and found a link to an Irish knitting blog so away I went to look.

The blog is A simple Yarn written by Cheryl Marling, an American living in Dublin, it's a good read and I will be back to spend more time there, but the thing that caught my eye this morning was MY granny's sewing box...yep, alive and well and living in Dublin!

Cheryl's box was found dumped in a skip and she describes it as a writing desk, not sure of the measurements of it so although it looks the same, it could be larger than mine.

This is Cheryl's: (apologies Cheryl, I hope you don't mind that I'm using this photo from your blog, but I really wanted to show the two boxes together)



and this is my granny's:



Granny left it to my mother and now it's come to me - the inside of the box is still in the original, very used, worn out state - I've often thought about restoring it but didn't want to touch the fine worn blue silk, so have just left it.

I was always told it was a sewing box, I really think it would be too small to use as a writing desk as Cheryl describes.

Now the strange part is that my great grandmother, Margaret Reilly, was Irish and came to Australia about 1847 from County Cavan. She was about seventeen years old when she arrived here - we've been unable to find out very much about her and she died when my grandmother was only three years old.

I've often wondered about the worn out condition of the box as Granny really took good care of the other things I've inherited so now I'm wondering if this originally belonged to *her* mother -

Would a poor young Irish girl have brought a box like this with her from Ireland?

I guess now I will always wonder, but never know

Our Bomb

Sion's comment on my HMAS Brisbane post reminded me that I also had bits and pieces my father had made from army shell casings, mostly cut down shells for containers and ashtrays, and he had made a few little things out of bullets, like this - it looks like a miniature shoe horn.



Most of the shells are stamped with a date in the 1950's - well after WW2 - so I don't know where he would have acquired the shells.

And then we have.....

THE BOMB



Back when my son was in primary school, he came home one afternoon and I asked the usual parental question " what did you do today darling "
and he gave the usual child answer " nothing "
then he thought a moment and added " we got evacuated while the bomb squad came "

It seems that the little boy down the street from us had taken his grandfathers WW2 hand grenade to school for show and tell - no one knew if it was live, so when it was plonked on the teachers desk, naturally she freaked out a little.

Next day my son wanted to know if he could take "our bomb" but we decided the school had probably had enough excitement for that week.

As you can see, our bomb is not live, the top unscrews.


And coming to the modern armament era, we were given these from a currently serving officer on an Australian navy ship (he swore us never to reveal the names under the official secrets act)....but someone tell me....how the hell do you get these off the ship in your kitbag!!

HMAS Brisbane 1913

HMAS Brisbane 1913, originally uploaded by gramarye.

My grandfather made this, he was a foundryman on Cockatoo Island shipyards, Sydney.
The centre is a threepence with the head of King George V inlaid in a cut out halfpenny reading Commonwealth of Australia 1913, then that was inlaid in what looks to be a round disc (not sure which metal) and a brass star pattern.
The writing around the disc reads
"HMAS Brisbane, keel laid January 25th 1913"

Grandpa had his own little hobby foundry in our backyard and I have a lot of brass work that he made.

another trivet

I found another trivet hiding away, the joys of clutter, you continually make interesting discoveries without leaving home

trivets

Next for Chloe I'm showing my trivets made by my grandfather, William Spalding.

William came to Australia from Scotland in 1884, aged 18, with his parents and siblings. The family settled in Balmain, Sydney and William became a foundryman at Cockatoo Docks.
He enjoyed his work so much that he set up a small back yard foundry at home and made many pieces of ornamental castings including these trivets.

On the handle of this one you can see the scotch thistle symbol of his homeland.





this next is still in daily use under my electric jug, it's a nice feeling to be able to use something made by an ancestor and have a sense of family continuity.



These next two were obviously cast from the same mould and show the Mason's symbols, as far as I know William was not a freemason, but did belong to a lodge, I don't know the full history of freemasonry and lodge connections, but from the little I've read, I think they were all tied in - more research needed.




OK Chloe, what's next in the collection? this is fun!

flat irons

I'm easily led astray so when I read Chloe's post I wanted to play too.

Chloe has started a Flickr group for antique irons and trivets

so I firstly had to dig out my granny's irons for some photographs:

I'd puzzled over the name on two of them, the iron had eroded and it was difficult to read, but the symbol under the name was the same as the one on Chloe's iron, so these two of mine are clearly Salter irons as well. In addition to the Salter name and symbol is Silvesters Patent.

I really need to do some research on these.




The one at the back is a flat iron and at the front is a polishing iron, it has a rounded base.
After pressing stiffly-starched collars and shirt fronts, one polished them by dampening the surface very slightly and rubbing the hot polishing iron backwards and forwards over the work at great speed.



this next is another polishing iron





this shows all three of my flat irons together, the one at the back has no brand and the iron on the right is also corroded and hard to read - again, I think some research will turn up the correct brand.



Lastly is this little one, it was given to me to play with when I was a child, I don't know if it was originally a child's toy, or maybe for a young girl to use to learn domestic skills - can't say it did much to improve mine! and I was certainly never allowed to heat it on the stove, which, given my record with hot things, was probably for the best



additonal:
have just been looking at the Powerhouse Museum site (Sydney) and found my Salter iron - it's called a 'sad iron'and is circa 1890-1900's
http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=262885&search=iron

...and I'm not sure now about my 'goffing' iron (that was what my mum called it) I've found a 'goffering' iron that looks nothing like mine - still looking

found a little clipping on irons from The Australian Home Beautiful 1965 (it pays to be a hoarder!)
what I had been calling a goffing iron is really a polishing iron - after pressing stiffly-starched collars and shirt fronts, one polished them by dampening the surface very slightly and rubbing the hot polishing iron backwards and forwards over the work at great speed.

The flat irons were heated on top of a stove.
For best results they had to be rubbed over bathbrick, then over sacking impregnated with paraffin wax, and finally dusted. Heat was lost fairly quickly, so changes were frequent.

I looked up bathbrick and it seems to be a powdered brick similar to pumice - it's used today by bookbinders when working with gold leaf, they put it on the cutting pad to prevent the gold leaf sticking to the pad.

Goffering tongs were scissor shaped with round 'blades' - after a frilled garment had been ironed, the tongs were used to produce a fluted effect to the fullness of the frill.

And in the days before irons? in Scotland the laundry was beaten flat and smooth with an implement rather like a rolling pin with one handle, called a 'beetle'

who would want to be a washerwoman?