Project update: in which we get to travel back in time

No mystery object this week, I'm afraid. They'll be back soon! Instead, we thought we thought we'd give you an update on some of the other things we're working on.

As well as writing this blog for you, we've been busy preparing some permanent resources which will eventually appear on the Geffrye's website.

The Geffrye is a museum of English homes, but not everything in its collection is English. We're putting together an interactive map of the world which will show you where objects in the Geffrye collection started their lives, so you can explore the world at home for yourself.

We've tried to do a little of this on the blog already, which is why we've been asking you where things are from and asking you to look for international objects in your own home.

This week, we've been finalising our designs for the map and collecting together some photographs of the objects. Early one morning the Geffrye's curators kindly let us into the galleries to take some of our own...

For a few brief minutes we got to pretend that we had travelled to English homes of the past! (With a digital camera, of course.)

Our permanent resources should be complete and on the website for you to enjoy in early May!

Mystery Object No. 2 - the Solution

This week we asked you to guess what people in the 1700s would have used this object for:



Rushlight and candle holder, 1700-1800 (c) Geffrye Museum, London

Thankyou to everyone who guessed - those who went for anything along the lines of candle holder were closest, and 'space flute' was the furthest out!

It’s actually called a rushlight holder: the part which looks a bit like a pincer holds a strip of a plant called a ‘rush’ (shown in the picture) which had been dipped in fat (usually the drips from cooking meat) and was then lit like a candle wick.

This one can hold candles too, but rushlights were cheaper and easier to make. Most people in the 1700s would have had to use tallow candles, which were expensive, messy and didn’t smell very good. Rushlights were not very bright, but at least they didn’t make as much mess or smoke as candles.

Light from a rush would last about 20 minutes, but if you wanted a bit more you could light both ends. This meant that the rush wouldn’t last as long. This is where the saying ‘burning the candle at both ends’ comes from!

Rumour has it if you had a visitor you didn’t like very much, you could light both ends so the light would burn out sooner and they would have to leave – sneaky!

You can see this object on display in the Geffrye Museum of the Home, or find more information about it online.