ABSTRACT
Until well into the eighteenth century and, in some areas of Europe, up till the end of the nineteenth century, most families, especially in the countryside, possessed little more than a dozen household goods, the ones that were absolutely necessary: some simple stools, a plank table, some cooking utensils, perhaps two or three beds and mattresses, and a few blankets. The fact is borne out by an investigation organized in the German countryside at the end of the nineteenth century. In the survey we read:
The bed was a wooden plank with a straw mattress; there was a cupboard, a rough-hewn wooden table, a few stools, all of which a carpenter could make in a few hours. In my youth the first stoves were introduced; before, we only had an open fire with a kettle hanging above it. Around 1860/1870 my father bought such a stove…. In the old house…we had an oven, which my parents had purchased when they married, a pump, and a sofa. We ate and lived in the kitchen, with its wooden floors, its scrubbed table, its settee and cupboard, all made by Father… The few clothes we had were hung on pegs, maybe behind a curtain. Mostly, two children shared a bed.1
