Under the Gables

It's a bit late to talk about winter soups but we have more than another month before spring arrives. The picture shows a bowl of pot...

Women at Yarn Alive, started by an American Christian missionary, confer over an afghan that is in the works. The Wall Street Journal has a...

Home Economics Class--on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1951. Today, for the most part, only private Christian schools have home...

In the Old House by Childe Hassam, 1914 Jessamyn West, the 20th-century author of The Friendly Persuasion and many other novels, snap...

My great-grandmother, who baked fabulous bread, and my grandmother, who made a dessert for every dinner. Anna at Pleasant View Schoolhouse p...

Here are more quotes from Caroline Miller's Lamb in His Bosom that give an idea of the work of women in non-slaveowning families of sout...

Here are some quotes from Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller that give an idea of the work of women of non-slaveholding farming families ...

The Wall Street Journal reports that beading and embroidery were prominent in this year's Fashion Week . If you would like to see how t...

Pennyroyal (mentha pulegium), which was used as an ant and flea repellant I devoured in a day Conrad Richter's The Fields , sequel to Th...

Detail of an early 19th century quilt from Pennsylvania Here are quotes from The Trees by Conrad Richter that describe various domestic act...

Karin Larsson at the Linen Closet, by Carl Larsson, 1906. The artist's wife is carefully inspecting her linens. I like the large size of...

At the end of July I spent a weekend with my widowed sister-in-law and her family in southern West Virginia--and it is only recently that my...

Mending, Edmund Tarbell, 1910 Three years before the International Exposition of Modern Art—the famous “Armory Show”—in Chicago, which intro...

After back-to-back posts on bad sons and bad fathers, I think a switch in topic is definitely called for, so I turn to scientific research. ...

Pictures of my daughter at age 16 months having a ball running through the laundry.

My favorite laundry painting: Wash Day, A Back Yard Reminiscence of Brooklyn by William Merritt Chase, 1886. Artists have been captivated by...

Are the local aesthetic police afraid of this? It turns out that in some localities, hanging out the laundry in the backyard is forbidden by...