Press, Cloth

Description

(a) Cloth press with heavy maple/beech frame (mostly maple, beech fillers in oversize mortises for top rail), iron screw (3 1/4" diameter), nut, mounting plate, and knock-out bar. Horizontal components double, through mortised into uprights. Tenons extend proud of uprights outer faces and are pinned with removable pins for dismantling. Painted gray. (b) Handle for turning press screw of maple. Cut to a rough octagon and then turned between centers to round at ends. Stained dark, probably from use. (c) Between-centers turned beech handle for turning cloth press screw. Stained dark, probably from use. (d) Maple spacer recycled from some other use since spacer has two mortises cut into it. (e,f,g) Pine spacers. Used to distribute pressure from the press screw uniformly over the pressing boards. (h) Pine pressing board with bread board ends attached with tongue and groove joints. (i-u) Pressing board with nailed on bb ends: (i) of tulip poplar; (j,k) of poplar; (l,m) of pine; (n,o) of poplar; (p) of pine and poplar; (q,r) of poplar; (s) of pine; (t) of poplar; (u) of pine and poplar.

Notes

There is no activity that echoes the communal nature of Shaker life like doing laundry. Large laundry buildings, fitted out with institutional washing machines, extractors, mangles, ironing stoves, and clothes driers made the work of doing the washing and ironing for families of up to 100 members much easier. The clothes press from the North Family laundry is one such piece of equipment. The press with a three-and-one-half inch diameter iron screw could be made to exert tremendous pressure on linens and other cloth that had been smoothed and folded between the pile of pine pressing boards. A photograph (NOC #7466) taken around 1900 by James H. West, a Hoosick Falls, NY, photographer, shows North Family Elder Daniel Offord operating the press. The press can be seen in a 1938 HABS photograph: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ny0539.photos.115447p/