Few things are more at home in a bungalow than American art pottery. Its bright colors & luster bring cheer & light to a dark interior & add details that complement the simple lines of the more rustic Arts & Crafts furniture & Craftsman architectural details.
Anyone can collect art pottery. Mine was representative of the finest from the period, chipped & mended into affordability. There are plenty of imperfect pieces on the market & artfully arranged, you can emulate the most prestigious collection of any museum. (I won’t tell.)
Pottery can serve as an inspiration piece when you are starting from ground zero in decorating your home. Using the colors, the images, the shape, you can use them as a basis for choosing your furniture & your textiles.
LEARN HOW POTTERY CAN BE BEAUTIFUL IN YOUR BUNGALOW
American Art Pottery Secrets – Paul J. Katrich – 1 of 6(9:08)
Paul Katrich
Paul, himself a master potter, is passionate about historic pottery. This is the first of 6 videos in which he explains the origin & inspiration of Arts & Crafts pottery. He tells us about the aesthetic & technological developments that culminated in American A&C, then shows & tells us about the icons of the period.
I am not going to list every video in the full series. The parts are best viewed in order & when the first video is over, the second & those after will magically appear. You will experience some lovely examples of the American Movement!
THE IMPORTANCE OF WOMEN IN AMERICAN ART POTTERY
Women artists have been overlooked for centuries. By the end of the 19th Century, we began coming into our own. In addition to demanding to work, we were also clamoring for a place in the world. Recognition would come much later, but what we wanted was the opportunity to use our wits & talents to contribute to the human cause. For many women, gaining artistic skills meant that they had greater earning power & could feed their families.These videos tell of how the crafts, especially pottery allowed us to do this.
Overbeck Sisters’ Arts and Craft Pottery in Indiana – Fulfilling their creative potential (9:15)
Hoosier Woodcraft
Four sisters who believed that “borrowed art is bad art” & took inspiration from their own backyard.
This video is wonderful but plays so fast that the captions are difficult to read. I think they must have thought that it was too long & sped it up. I played it at 50% & enjoyed it very much!
Women, Art, and Social Change: The Newcomb Pottery Enterprise (1:32)
Gardiner Museum
An overview of the Smithsonian exhibition of ceramics. metalwork, textiles & images of the women at work.
Roger Ogden on Newcomb Pottery (2:31)
Craft in America
Roger Ogden, collector explains the femininity of New Orleans, the home of H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College (Tulane University’s former women’s college.)
Earth into Art — The Flowering of American Art Pottery (2:00)
Morse Museum
Lead by woman, America’s first success on the World’s art stage.
STAY IN THE BUNGALOW KNOW!!!
Sign up for our newsletter & receive our FREE E-book, 7 VITAL Things to Do Before You Hire a Contractor.
The desire for lighting is in our DNA. Our circadian rhythms, our bodies’ clocks, determine the patterns of our bodies, our minds & behavior over a 24 hour cycle & respond to light & dark. Light exposure generates signals from our brains, releasing hormones that keep us awake & perky during the day. Darkness activates sleep hormones.
Early man slept when it was dark & trotted about hunting & gathering when it was light. But, as civilization developed, his activities expanded & he wanted to be active after the sun went down. He wanted to be able to see inside his cave.
Almost 130,000 years ago he learned to control fire, which was also handy for warmth & for cooking. It took another 100,000 years for him to make the first lamps, which employed animal fat as fuel. It wasn’t until 4500 B.C. that he invented the oil lamp which uses liquid oil, contained in a vessel, with a textile wick that is dropped in it. The top of the wick is ignited, producing a flame as the oil is drawn up the floating wick.
Following that leap in technology, lamp evolution pretty much stagnated for thousands of years. The American colonists used lamps that weren’t that much different from those used in biblical times- smokey, faint lighting, giving off little more light than candles.
The kerosene lamp was developed in 1850 & was used until electricity took its place. This type of lamp is still sometimes used in emergencies when electricity fails & light is needed.
Of course when the Victorians came along, a lamp became a flower garden, though it was still the basic mechanism of wick & oil. By this time we had learned to mold glass & metal so every material was employed in a manner that obscured its basic nature & turned it into something else, to be displayed in a house of like objects, all competing for the title of the most ornate.
I am not going to say that I do not consider this lamp to be lovely. I’m always happy to see a rose, growing in a garden, or painted on a lamp, but, you have to agree that the materials, function & construction of this lamp are not immediately apparent, being buried under excessive ornamentation!
In 1879 Thomas Edison & Joseph Swan patented the carbon-thread incandescent (An incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe is an electric light with a wire filament that is heated until it glows.) lamp & over the next couple decades electricity technology evolved rapidly & took the lead in powering America.
THE LIGHTING OF THE ARTS & CRAFTS MOVEMENT
I think that my favorite William Morris quote is, “We shall not be happy unless we live like good animals, unless we enjoy the exercise of the ordinary functions of life: eating, sleeping, loving, walking, running, swimming, riding, sailing.”
Somehow he strips away all gee-gaws from life which is the basis of the Arts & Crafts Movement. I am amused by fact that the prehistoric, earthen lamp above, so resembles the lamps of the Movement. Personally, I find its humble simplicity beautiful.
I think the best way to talk about the lighting is to talk about the craftspeople of the Movement’s early years. But first, let’s talk about harmony.
Harmony is the visually satisfying effect of combining similar or related elements. In the decorative arts, this means that the lighting that you see in the Gamble House or other ultimate bungalow, in a museum might not be appropriate in your modest home.
Often, the key visual, size is the first aspect to consider. The Gamble House is a whopping 8,100 square feet. The rooms are proportionately sized & the lighting’s dimensions fit the room. While a modest house may have beautiful built-ins of unpainted woodwork, the Gamble House boasts cuts of wood, hand-picked by Charles Greene out of Burma teak, Douglas fir beams, white oak & Port Orford cedar, cut in elaborate designs. The beautiful stained glass of the lightening is duplicated throughout the house & most impressively, in the massive entry.
This is not meant in any way to denigrate your home. It is merely to state that the look & feel of your house are different from these bunga-mansions (as Jane Powell termed her magnificent house in Oakland) as their decorative elements look no more appropriate in a more simple home than would the crown jewels with your jeans. (And yes, I know that there are those out there who would wear such a combination & 1 in 1,000 of them would pull it off.) There are still some amazing options out there that would enhance your home rather than overwhelming it.
This little gem from Doc’s Architectural Salvation in Springfield, Tennessee. Complete with beautifully patterned slag glass, it is undisputedly Arts & Crafts & would harmonize with any architecture or decor in a bungalow.
In the same way, the light in your kitchen is not from a Frank Lloyd Wright designed house. A simple schoolhouse light is more appropriate & will set off the other design elements of your kitchen rather than overtaking them.
I’m a big believer in visual flow. Keeping within the period & style of your house will ensure that there won’t be so many focal points that your overall look will be difficult to determine. Ideally each item in the room will complement or complete the others & the focal points will be supported by all the other elements.
THIS IS JUST THE FIRST PART OF AN IN-DEPTH SERIES ON LIGHTING
These videos are mentioned in my post, BUNGALOW TOASTERS which I encourage you to read. It includes a video of this little gem, dubbed a “Sweetheart” toaster, being used.
At the risk of becoming very hungry, I encourage you to also watch the magic of the videos of folks as they lovingly use their old toasters. This is a variety of toasters & even a toaster collector with a sense of humor!
One of my favorites is of a full restoration of a poor toaster that looks like it was used hard by a family of 10 & then abandoned when they got an updated model. A talented man meticulously dismantles it, revives each tiny part & lovingly puts it back together again.
I also offer you my Pinterest page of old toasters. I have quite an array!
THE VIDEOS- Antique Toasters
Antique Toastmaster Toaster 1A5 Demo “Automatic Pop-Up Type Toaster” Bachelor Model 1 Single Slice (:50)
Laura’s Last Ditch Vintage Kitchenwares
Would you like your toast medium or well-done?
Toaster Collector (2:55)
Texas Country Reporter
He started with his mother’s toaster & 300 toasters later, he eats jam for breakfast every day.
I adore old appliances & the antique toaster may be at the top of my list. I come by it honestly, being the granddaughter of a West Virginia baker. My grandfather decided to enter the business because he figured that it would be economically stable. People would always eat bread. It was a correct decision that benefited our family for several generations.
When I was a child growing up in Arizona, there was bread on the table every meal, never bought off the shelf, always purchased from the family bakery that had a stand at our neighborhood grocery.
Then I went to school & discovered Wonder Bread, served in our cafeteria. I was astonished & confused. You could squish it up in a ball like Play-Doh! I was accustomed to bread with body. You had to work a little to eat it.
My mother was appalled at this version of bread. In no way did she consider it the best nor even think of it as real bread.
The specialty of my family’s bakery was salt rising bread. An Appalachian invention, I cannot but wonder if the recipe made its way from Sara Emmeline, my great-grandmother on the farm, to my grandmother, Gordie Elsie who left the farm as a young girl to become a woman of culture, to the bakery of her new husband. My cousin, whose father took over the bakery from my grandfather & who worked there for many years tells me that, “It was not a big seller unfortunately. Most of it was sold in the outlying small towns, mainly mining communities or communities with lots of old timers that come out of the West Virginia hollows on a Saturday morning to do their shopping in towns like Grant Town, or Fairview or Hundred. Fine folks with discerning tastes.”
Not to be found in Arizona, my mother dreamed of salt rising & was sent loaves of it by the family. This humble bread, born of poverty & necessity, became a luxury for my mother because of its scarcity. Yeastless, it was very dense & chewy, like the most well-known sourdough & like its San Francisco counterpart, made exquisite, crunchy toast. We argued over who would get the heels.
LET’S BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TALE OF THE ANTIQUE TOASTER
And jump around. I try to write chronologically, but cultural history is not always chronological. Different locations & classes changed their practices at differing times. I hope that you can follow along as I move from 1950 to 2000 B.C. to 1850 to 1910, then back to 1905, in my attempt to tell the tale of the antique toaster.
So here goes….
We have been eating grains since we were hunter/gathers. We learned to cook them, making gruel, which was easier to digest than the raw seeds, but rather messy. Then we discovered that baking grains into bread was a great deal handier. It grew mold more slowly. You could tote it around & it was tidy. You could eat it with your hands.
Bread is mostly sugars & starches making it the perfect candidate for caramelizing. Our affinity for crunch is hardwired into our species, as is our love of fat, so it’s not surprising that avocado toast is the food darling of the decade.
So, the obvious next next step was toasting the bread which made it even easier to digest. You could melt stuff on it. It was warm & comforting & it packed a nice caramelized crunch.
THE TOASTER AS PART OF OUR CHANGING CULTURE
When we’re talking about bungalow toasters (That’s kinda what we do here, you know. We talk about bungalows.) we’re talking about pre-electricity for most of the original homeowners.
The earliest toasters, from the 1800’s, were forks made of iron with long handles so that you could stand back from the flames of the open fire. By the 1850’s, they began making the holders in a lighter metal & featured a mesh grill so that you could see the bread browning as it toasted.
With the decline of domestic help, as woman left working as maids to labor in the factories, appliances designed to ease the workload of the lady of the house became a necessity. Fortunately, the domestic technology was developing that could support this cultural change. For a more in-depth understanding of this glimpse into LIFE & TIMES, read this article.
In 1905, the first filament, Nichrome, a non-magnetic alloy of nickel & chromium was discovered that could repeatedly generate heat to toast bread.
G.E. patented the first electric toaster, the D-12, for use in the home in 1909. It has four heating elements with the wire wrapped around forms made of heat-resistant mica. It sat on a porcelain base to insulate the table under it. As an option, you could get the base with a floral design. The toast was held in place by an exposed wire frame. Of course, it toasted only one side of the bread, giving you ample opportunity to burn your fingers!
However, electricity was not common in homes until the 1920’s. By 1925, only half the homes in America had electrical power & these were in larger metropolitan communities. It wasn’t until 1936, with FDR’s Rural Electrification Act, that millions of Americans, living outside of cities had access to electricity.
(Let’s do the Time Warp Again!) However, the Hare House, which was built in 1910, was lit by gas & most likely had a wood burning stove so Grace did not use the D-12 to make Alfred’s toast. One option was to use a cast iron skillet. She might have also used a tin contraption that sat on her wood burning stove. This flimsy piece of vented metal held the pieces of bread that you cut from the loaf & offered your fingers no protection against its heat. Tin rusts very easily when exposed to moisture so I can’t imagine that these lasted very long. I had one in my collection for my dreamed of restoration of the Hare House kitchen. I considered trying it out but it was too awful!
In 1913, the Coleman Electric Stove Company made a toaster that automatically turned the bread, saving fingers.
In 1914, Lloyd & Hazel Copeman, of the Copeman Electric Stove Company, were issued five patents for ways to “turn the toast” in their “automatic” toasters.
In 1919, the year that my mother was born, Charles Strite, a Minnesota mechanic invented the pop-up toaster, the Toastmaster, with both springs & a timer, for restaurant use. He later improved his design & sold it to the general public. You could even twist a little peg to set the toaster for the degree of toasting! Check out my toast videos to hear the timer loudly clicking away at differing speeds, depending on how dark you wanted your toast to be.
Around this time, manufacturers began adding a case to the units as a safety feature. With this newfangled toaster, Mom no longer had to be asphyxiated in the kitchen by smoke from burning toast, when she was preparing supper for the family.
A commonly voiced cliché in our baker family was, “The best thing since sliced bread!” In 1928, a bread slicing machine was invented & by 1930, The Continental Baking Company, which made that bread that fascinated me so as a child, Wonder Bread, began selling sliced bread which greatly increased the popularity of toasters. At the same time, assembly line production & easy credit made it possible for ordinary Americans to purchase many of these new consumer goods. A toaster on every table!
WON’T YOU BE MY SWEETHEART OF AN ANTIQUE TOASTER
A favorite toaster has been dubbed the “Sweetheart” because of its heart shape face, pendant “earrings” & its delicate, ornate casing. This Landers Frary & Clark toaster (Universal Model E9410, patented in 1929) was designed to attract the American housewife & was promoted as being an appealing addition to her kitchen decor. One of my readers remembers it fondly from his grandmother’s house, where, no, the children were allowed to watch, but not allowed to touch it.
Rather than march all the various styles of toasters across the page, I think I’d rather invite you to my Pinterest page where you can just gorge on pictures of them & also other small appliances. As one of my readers commented, “This is where the good stuff is!”
To see a variety of antique toasters in action, visit my YouTube playlist, ANTIQUE TOASTERS.
STAY IN THE BUNGALOW KNOW!!!
Sign up for our newsletter & receive our FREE E-book, 7 VITAL Things to Do Before You Hire a Contractor.
Our bungalows are products of old technology. All the wood in our framing, our siding, our shingles, treasured built-ins, a main feature of the character of our homes, our wainscoting was milled by machines, likely powered by steam or coal or sweat. The oldest electric mill that I can find in my research, was in Elk River, Idaho, back in 1912.
THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
The Arts & Crafts Movement of the 19th Century was born as a reaction to the more mechanized world of the Industrial Revolution. This revolution increased production capacity by 1,000 fold in every industry. Instead of the artisan’s handcrafting of a beautiful chair, a factory churned out hundreds of chairs & fitted them with fancy gee-gaws. This had a major impact on people’s daily lives. Instead of working in a craft studio, or on the family farm, people swarmed to the cities where they went to work in a factory tending huge, whirring machines & earned the where-with-all to purchase these items- at least some of them did. Thanks to Charles Dickens we know that many remained ill-fed, unhoused & impoverished, orphaned & barefoot while some thrived, amassing great fortunes.
The grandfather of the Arts & Crafts Movement, John Ruskin had much to say on the matter. His statement, “Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness,” eloquently summarized the philosophy of the Movement.
(Looking at these images of children slaving to help feed their families makes me very weary. Oh, yeah. If they had families)
THE ENERGY THAT SUPPORTED CONSTRUCTION PRIOR TO ELECTRICITY
The key driver of the Industrial Revolution was the harnessing of energy. With this ability to control power, our old growth forests could be razed & milled. The logs could be turned into lumber for homes, furniture & indeed, into the factory buildings that held the mills, some of these being thousands of square feet in size.
However, even prior to the coal powered steam engine was the invention of the line shaft which allowed many machines to be operated from one energy source, be it steam, water, wind or even animal.
AN OSHA NIGHTMARE
A line shaft is a power-driven rotating shaft for power transmission that distributed power from a large central power source to individual pieces of machinery throughout a workshop or an industrial complex. The central power source could be a water wheel, windmill, animal power or a steam engine. Originally, most had probably been powered by steam but in later years they were powered by a huge electric motor. In many cases, the individual machines were still set up for and connected to the line shaft system, so rather than replacing the machines, they just updated the power supplier.
These machines were an OSHA nightmare. Loud and dangerous with no safety features, they exemplified Industrial Age technology during which time thousands of people left their farms & surged into cities to work in the factories & loose fingers, limbs & lives to these behemoths.
These machines factored largely in the building of our bungalows. I do not believe that construction prior to electricity would have existed on any scale without the use of line shaft.
LINE SHAFT CONSTRUCTION
Here’s how it was constructed:
On the floor, or on the ceiling, was the power source, attached to the main shaft which it propelled by a belt attached to a pulley.
Hanging from the wood ceiling beams was the counter (or intermediate) shaft , a long, thick heavy, (often hundreds of pounds) metal rod. This shaft was attached to the high ceiling beams by heavy metal hangers.
Attached to this counter shaft were round metal pulleys, ranging in size from around 6″ in diameter to 36.” Long belts made of leather or fabric (usually leather) ran across these pulleys, to pulleys on the individual machines giving each individual machine its power. This was all suspended over a great expanse, as high as 15 feet it the air.
There were no safety features, nor procedures. The belts, spinning rapidly, could pull a worker by a limb, by a garment or by the hair into the machine, spinning him round & round before throwing him into the air & into yet another belt, a machine, or onto the hard concrete floor.
THE LINE SHAFT & YOUR BUNGALOW
When you next admire the beautiful features of your house, consider the part that line shafts & the hard-working people who operated them played. Observe a moment of silence in honor of those who toiled for so little in this cacophony, losing limbs & lives to mill the materials that make your house so beautiful.
When I see an old house being destroyed, I am saddened by the lost of beauty, but my heart breaks for those who toiled to create them, logging in the harsh conditions of the forest, or risking their lives to build our houses.
This is why I urge you all to take a stand for our built heritage. It’s more than just the houses.
STAY IN THE BUNGALOW KNOW!!!
Sign up for our newsletter & receive our FREE E-book, 7 VITAL Things to Do Before You Hire a Contractor.
These videos show & tell the story of bungalow character defining features, the architectural bits & pieces that separate a bungalow from other houses. They are the features that you expect to see on a bungalow that has been well-cared for, or authentically restored. They are a good guide in planning & performing your own restoration.
The term bungalow refers to the general shape of a building, not its style. In fact, one of the best things about them is that they were built in a variety of styles. This is why you can drive down the street of a bungalow neighborhood & each house is charmingly unique, inspired by a different style from Swiss Chalet to Victorian to Japanesque to Tudor.
I chose this format of conveying this information because it allows you to walk around & through a bungalow, rather than seeing bits of it out of context. I have chosen these particular ones because they contain great information that will help you know a bungalow when you see one, & will hopefully answer the question, “Is my house a bungalow?”
Enjoy the videos!
THE VIDEOS- Bungalow Character Defining Features
“Building with History” – Arts and Crafts Era Bungalow House (6:02)
Brent Hull
Brent trots us through a brief look at the history of the Arts & Crafts Movement, but spends most of his time discussing bungalow defining features. He shows us some bee-you-ti-ful examples of bungalows.
Building & Brews: Arts and Crafts Era (1:08)
Brent Hull
A fascinating, in depth look at the Arts & Crafts Movement.
How this house took over the US (8:20)
Vox
The marketing of the bungalow. An amusing story of how the style made a lotta $$$ for a lotta folks.
Chicago Bungalows: The History and Top Facts (7:35)
The Bloom Group-Keller Williams
The history & details of the adorable style.
If you want to read more about these dear houses, visit my article here.
STAY IN THE BUNGALOW KNOW!!!
Sign up for our newsletter & receive our FREE E-book, 7 VITAL Things to Do Before You Hire a Contractor.
Few things are more at home in a bungalow than American art pottery. Its bright colors & luster bring cheer & light to a dark interior & add details that complement the simple lines of the more rustic Arts & Crafts furniture & Craftsman architectural details.
The desire for lighting is in our DNA. Our circadian rhythms, our bodies’ clocks, determine the patterns of our bodies, our minds & behavior over a 24 hour cycle & respond to light & dark. Light exposure generates signals from our brains, releasing hormones that keep us awake & perky during the day. Darkness activates sleep hormones.
The kerosene lamp was developed in 1850 & was used until electricity took its place. This type of lamp is still sometimes used in emergencies when electricity fails & light is needed.
There’s nothing more beautiful than the fixtures you see in the 
This is not meant in any way to denigrate your home. It is merely to state that the look & feel of your house are different from these bunga-mansions (as Jane Powell termed her magnificent house in Oakland) as their decorative elements look no more appropriate in a more simple home than would the crown jewels with your jeans. (And yes, I know that there are those out there who would wear such a combination & 1 in 1,000 of them would pull it off.) There are still some amazing options out there that would enhance your home rather than overwhelming it.
Part 2, 
These videos are mentioned in my post, 
I adore old appliances & the antique toaster may be at the top of my list. I come by it honestly, being the granddaughter of a West Virginia baker. My grandfather decided to enter the business because he figured that it would be economically stable. People would always eat bread. It was a correct decision that benefited our family for several generations.
The specialty of my family’s bakery was salt rising bread. An Appalachian invention, I cannot but wonder if the recipe made its way from Sara Emmeline, my great-grandmother on the farm, to my grandmother, Gordie Elsie who left the farm as a young girl to become a woman of culture, to the bakery of her new husband. My cousin, whose father took over the bakery from my grandfather & who worked there for many years tells me that, “It was not a big seller unfortunately. Most of it was sold in the outlying small towns, mainly mining communities or communities with lots of old timers that come out of the West Virginia hollows on a Saturday morning to do their shopping in towns like Grant Town, or Fairview or Hundred. Fine folks with discerning tastes.”
We have been eating grains since we were hunter/gathers. We learned to cook them, making gruel, which was easier to digest than the raw seeds, but rather messy. Then we discovered that baking grains into bread was a great deal handier. It grew mold more slowly. You could tote it around & it was tidy. You could eat it with your hands.
When we’re talking about bungalow toasters (That’s kinda what we do here, you know. We talk about bungalows.) we’re talking about pre-electricity for most of the original homeowners.
In 1905, the first filament, Nichrome, a non-magnetic alloy of nickel & chromium was discovered that could repeatedly generate heat to toast bread.
(Let’s do the Time Warp Again!) However, the 
In 1919, the year that my mother was born, Charles Strite, a Minnesota mechanic invented the pop-up toaster, the Toastmaster, with both springs & a timer, for restaurant use. He later improved his design & sold it to the general public. You could even twist a little peg to set the toaster for the degree of toasting! Check out my 
Our bungalows are products of old technology. All the wood in our framing, our siding, our shingles, treasured built-ins, a main feature of the character of our homes, our wainscoting was milled by machines, likely powered by steam or coal or sweat. The oldest electric mill that I can find in my research, was in Elk River, Idaho, back in 1912.
The key driver of the Industrial Revolution was the harnessing of energy. With this ability to control power, our
When you next admire the beautiful features of your house, consider the part that line shafts & the hard-working people who operated them played. Observe a moment of silence in honor of those who toiled for so little in this cacophony, losing limbs & lives to mill the materials that make your house so beautiful.
These videos show & tell the story of bungalow character defining features, the architectural bits & pieces that separate a bungalow from other houses. They are the features that you expect to see on a bungalow that has been well-cared for, or authentically restored. They are a good guide in planning & performing your own restoration.