1929 Kitchen

So the Green Springs Garden event is over and all my roomboxes and miniatures are back home now.  As promised, here are the pictures of the 1929 kitchen, along with the history lesson:

The whole room

And the porch

So, this room really could have been 1930 just as well as it could be 1929, but I picked 1929 because of two time period indicators, and just to make it stick out in my kids minds (cuz remember I did this for the kids.  Yeah, right, for the kids!) about what a pivotal time period this was.

The first indicator is ELECTRICITY!  Homes now have it!  See that Monitor Top refrigerator on the porch?  Produced in 1927, these electric refrigerators were nick-named "Monitor Tops" after a Civil War ship named "Monitor" whose gun turret was cylindrical like the compressor on top of the fridge.  Refrigerators were expensive (many costing more than a Ford model-T car) until this GE Monitor top fridge came out.  And GE offered a payment plan so you would just pay an extra $10/month on your electric bill until the fridge was paid off.  Thus they became more common in the average man's household.

However, they were noisy and when/if a refrigerator had a leak (common among the lesser "knock off" brands) it was deadly.  The toxic refrigerants (sulfur dioxide, methylcholoride, ammonia gases) that were used inside refrigerators could kill everyone in the room if there was even a tiny leak. So, when possible, these refrigerators ended up on the back porch!

Washing in the corner

And there is a Maytag 1928 washing machine in the corner of the room! However, in researching I have found that some Maytag washers were electrical and some were gas powered.  I am pretending as though my miniature washer was one of the electrical models. I have also found that this washing machine was produced in 1927 and other websites indicate 1928.

So, the refrigerator and washing machine makes the year after 1928 and....

Can't see the knife in this photo because I accidentally forgot to put it on the table before I took my photo

...(second time period indicator!!!) the loaf and knife on the kitchen table makes it before 1930.  Although, really, the lady of this kitchen could just really like baking and slicing her own bread.  But sliced bread was invented (well, okay, technically the MACHINE for mass producing sliced bread was invented) in mid-1928.  Many bakeries did not trust sliced bread, believing it would get stale faster and because the loaves looked "sloppy" making them harder to sell. These concerns were addressed with packaging changes that included a pin thru the loaf ("just remove the pin to get however many slices you want" -- a selling feature that does not sound very appetizing) and wax paper wrapping (hard to see the loaf you are buying). So the "sliced bread" mania didn't really get rolling until 1930 when Wonder Bread created their own machine and started packaging and selling their sliced bread.

View of the cupboard

Sink still needs some brillo pads or something on that shelf -- I will continue to add to the scene through out the years...

So this kitchen is 1929 because they have the Monitor Top (but they don't trust it as it is relegated to the porch and they still get their milk delivered daily) and washing machine, but they still have to cut their bread as Wonder Bread hasn't convinced them that sliced bread is the best thing since...well, itself.