Author: Rachel Maines

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 31

ISBN-13:

The humble pathholder is so commonplace in American kitchens that most of us notice it only in its absence. Reaching almost automatically for these textile accessories while cooking, we are more apt to give them our consideration when we are unable to find one than when they arc ready to hand. So taken for granted are potholders that cookbooks and kitchen guides seldom bother to mention them at all. While many needle workers are aware of potholders as exciting design options and rewarding craft projects, the potholder has been an artifact without apparent history or background, a tool so smoothly integrated with the substance of daily living that it has dropped almost entirely out of our awareness.It may come as a surprise 10 those who regard potholders as "deficit needs" worthy of consideration only when missing, that the familiar needlework and/or fabric potholder appears to be a relatively recent arrival on the household scene. Museum collections reveal no potholders more than two centuries old, and these are so thin and dysfunctional for cooking that they are more likely to have been used in the parlor or dining room than in the kitchen. The modem cook, confronted with innumerable historical examples of metal and ceramic cookware, balks stubbornly at the notion of handling these without potholders. The textile as tool for hand protection, however, is predated by a variety of devices that reflect the historical reluctance to use fabrics to handle hot objects before the Industrial Revolution reduced the cost of textiles relative to wages.