For Tina, on Show and Tell Friday -- Slop Jars and Pots de Chambre

My mother, Tina, was the consummate home-maker.

She was no meek housewife; my parents' marriage was a true partnership and a true love story. They were firmly in charge of things -- together. We always knew that as much as they loved us kids, we came in second to their romance, and we were okay with that.

A few blurry pictures, from the 1940s. Dad was in the Navy,
Mom might have been expecting my oldest brother in some of these:

Theirs is still is a love story, but the partnership has been dissolved
by the insidious inroads of Alzheimer's Disease.

On Sunday, our family will gather at Van Saun Park in Paramus, New Jersey, to participate in the Memory Walk, the primary fundraiser for the Alzheimer's Association. We are walking as "Tina's Team." With so many families affected by AD, let's pray that through funding and dedication, the people who work so hard to solve this puzzle will be successful.

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I'm showing and telling again this Friday, like last -- only this time it's a few things of my mother's, not a ginormous Craigslist mirror.

Warning: Click and enlarge photos at your peril. I recently brought these pieces home to That Old House from my parents' beach house, and I have not yet cleaned them. There's some major dust and schmutz going on here.

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A question for those of you with children: What kind of wastebaskets are in your bathrooms? Plastic? Steel? Wicker? Something unbreakable? Something sane?

Do you know what were in our family's bathrooms when I was growing up?
Late 19th century slop jars, with lids. Ironstone or porcelain. Including this one:

This was the wastebasket in the small 1950s bathroom I used as a child, on a tiled floor, right next to a cast iron tub. There were four children using that bathroom. We were very careful climbing out of the tub.

Mom taught us to lift the lid slowly, and set it back by first

putting one side down and then gently lowering the rest of the lid.
It was excellent training for sneaking into the cookie jar silently.

At some point, the original lid was broken, but I thank my lucky stars that it was not I who broke it!
In fact, I think it was my mother.

There is a stamp on the bottom:

It reads: Warwick Semi Porcelain. The Warwick China Company

of Wheeling, West Virginia, used that stamp between 1893 and 1898.

Slop jars are big. This one measures almost 12 inches tall. They were fixtures in houses before indoor plumbing, serving as the waste buckets for bedrooms. You used the chamber pot overnight in chilly weather, you washed up with a bowl and pitcher in the morning, and the "waste" from both was dumped into the slop jar.

If you were lucky, a chambermaid came and dumped the waste
from both operations into the slop jar, and whisked it away to be emptied and cleaned.

If you were not lucky, you were the chambermaid.

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Speaking of chamber pots, or pots de chambre which sounds so much snazzier,
or thunder pots -- not so snazzy -- they were also fixtures in pre-plumbing households.
These pots are much smaller than the slop jars, and have one handle instead of two.

This example (you just knew I'd have one, didn't you?) is less than 6 inches tall.
Even with a lid, it would fit discreetly under an old bed. Yes, it was my Mom's.

Chamber pots were a fixture in the bedrooms at my childhood house.

Lidded, so that dust wouldn't collect in them; Mama was a meticulous housekeeper!

Some chamber pots were made with lids, some without.

Most lids did not survive; these necessaries got some pretty rough use in the old days!

So, sometimes you make do with a lid from another collection,
and if it has beautiful old crazing, so much the better.

Sometimes my mother would tell the more squeamish of visitors that the chamber pots were ladies' spittoons. They are not ladies' spittoons, which oddly enough do exist but are smaller than chamber pots and don't have handles.

Honestly, I find the thought of a ladies' spittoon more unappealing than a chamber pot!

Slop jars have gotten quite expensive in antiques shops, especially the printed ones.
I bought a plain white one in Virginia years ago, but got a "buy" because it has a crack.
Hey, it's not as if I'm going to use it!

This chamber pot has a major old repair; at one time, the handle broke off.

(Did people back then eat burritos?)

It's mended with what looks like the old type of brown glue made from horse's hooves.

Chamber pots (from which we get the term "potty") are still not very expensive.
Golly, wonder why?

This chamber pot has a stamp on its backside: Vashti E.P.P.Co. That means it was made before 1910 by the East Palestine Pottery Company in Ohio, and the shape of the pot is the "Vashti" shape. Another good ol' American product for good ol' American bottoms!

My brothers thought it hilariously funny to put lemon-lime soda in a chamber pot.
And leave it for someone to find.
This is why there were no chamber pots in their room.

I have other old toilet accessories from my mother, but they'll wait for another post. I'm late enough today as it is! Don't forget to visit Cindy at My Romantic Home for her Show and Tell Friday blog party. Click here! -- Cass

P.S. Reality check! Does anyone else's dog bring half the fallen leaves in on his coat? I do vacuum . . . but you wouldn't know it after Mr. Dion's been outside!