Housewares History

Housewares History: Whitmor

By Vicki Matranga, Design Programs Coordinator Organizing Homes, Organizing a Business Today’s homes need many products to keep track of shoes, clothes, and toys. While shopping for storage supplies, you were probably thinking about how to squeeze your stuff into a space that could use a few more inches of shelving. The organizing business keeps on growing, as we pack our…

Housewares History: Working Under Pressure in the Kitchen

By Vicki Matranga, Design Programs Coordinator Today’s busy families operate under a lot of pressure to keep after-school activities, homework and chores on schedule. Moms may feel they are battling clock and calendar as they rush to get dinner on the table, while worrying that food-on-the-go or a microwaved meal-in-a-bag can’t provide the nutrition or satisfaction of a…

Housewares History: Dishpan Hands No More – Kitchen Sink Tales

Can you guess what this is? How was this item used every day? Chain mail for personal protection or something in a kitchen? It’s a pot scrubber! Back in the “good old days” when cast-iron cookware heated on a wood-fueled cook stove, burnt-on crusts were scoured with such a “dishcloth” made of iron loops. Tough on the hands, such scrubbers were used with salt, sand, lemon…

The Metal Ware Company: Generations of Innovation

By Vicki Matranga, Design Programs Coordinator Where did key items in the history of kitchen products originate? Look to the rolling landscape of Wisconsin for many chapters of this continuing story. The Metal Ware Company celebrated several anniversaries recently. In 2010, the company marked the 90th year of its founding in Two Rivers, Wis. In 2011, it noted the 30th…

Armaly Brands: From the Bahamas to Brillo

By Vicki Matranga, Design Programs Coordinator More than 100 Years of Innovations in Cleaning In the early 1900s, W.J. Armaly found opportunity in locally available resources. Living in the Bahamas, he began harvesting and processing natural ocean sponges and shipping them around the world. Two generations of family management and more than 100 years later, Armaly Brands…

tag Marks 35th Anniversary of Design Success

By Vicki Matranga, Design Programs Coordinator In 1976, a young NYU graduate with a degree in biochemistry met two French women who manufactured candles in Bordeaux. At the time, Norman Glassberg (pictured on the right) had already hung up his lab coat for good and was searching for a new business opportunity. Previously he had been one of the partners of a group that…

Housewares History: Mixing it up!

By Vicki Matranga, Design Programs Coordinator Multi-tasking in the kitchen with Sunbeam What kitchen appliance created such a stir in American homes that nearly 70 years after its premier it merited its own U.S. postage stamp as an icon of household convenience? You probably had one in a kitchen during your lifetime—the Sunbeam Mixmaster. In 1929 when the Mixmaster…

Housewares History: Ever Think of Coffee Drinking as Romantic? Savor a Sip of 1930s Glamour

By Vicki Matranga, Design Programs Coordinator This elegant chrome-plated Maxwelton Braes Sunbeam COFFEEMASTER set, with brewer/server, table stove, circular tray, creamer and sugar, is a classic of Depression-era streamlined design. It was promoted by the Chicago Flexible Shaft Company in the late 1930s as one of the company’s glamorous tableside cooking appliances. The…

Antique or Modern? A Look at Kitchen Evolution

By Vicki Matranga, Design Programs Coordinator In the late 1800s, home economists and social reformers focused their attention on the functionality of the American kitchen and improving the efficiency of domestic labor. Kitchen furnishings were spare, with an assortment of simple work tables, cupboards and wall shelves. By 1900, the pace of change sped up. Industrialization…