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Most of the photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs, 20 to 200 megabytes in size) from the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) Many were digitized by LOC contractors using a Sinar studio back. They are adjusted by your webmaster for contrast and color in Photoshop before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here.
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Today's Top 5
Get Milk: 1922
Submitted by Dave on Mon, 05/14/2012 - 7:52pm.
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September 6, 1922. Washington, D.C. "Miss Elizabeth U. Hoffman." Last spied here four years ago, Miss H. is still stuck in this institutional-looking kitchen. National Photo Company Collection glass negative. View full size.
Scary!
Submitted by Jazznocracy on Tue, 05/15/2012 - 5:00pm.
There sits Miss Hoffman, blissfully unaware of the GIGANTIC thumbprints all over her wall!
Hair-Nets!
Submitted by Sugapea on Tue, 05/15/2012 - 2:56pm.
This lady is wearing a 'Hair-Net'. Wouldn't want any stray hairs to disrupt a gourmet experiment. Or perhaps, Hair-Nets were very popular at the time. One previous Shorpy photo showed a drug store with a big sale on hair nets - nets actually made of human hair!
Faking It
Submitted by CarolMcC on Tue, 05/15/2012 - 2:23pm.
I don't believe she is really cooking anything, just posing for the photo. Reason? No apron. At that time, no one cooked without an apron, particularly in a "dress" outfit such as hers. The labor involved with laundry was a primary reason, didn't want to get your clothes dirty before you had to.
It terrifies me just to look at that pressure cooker. No real safety measures on them in those days. I had an aunt who was almost killed by one and bore the scars to prove it. Not unusual occurance from those beasts.
[No question that it's posed. The process of setting up the camera and lights and exposing a large glass plate didn't lend itself to candid photography. - tterrace]
Fire?
Submitted by Dbell on Tue, 05/15/2012 - 12:22pm.
CCl4? Are you sure?
All the carbon-tet extinguishers I recall from the 50's-early 60's were the Bunn coffee carafe-style bottles meant to be thrown at the fire and shattered. This looks more like a pressurized dry powder model.
DaveB
She'll be brewing up a batch
Submitted by Don Struke on Mon, 05/14/2012 - 10:48pm.
Looks like broken-up pieces of (stale?) bread in the bowl, to which she'll be adding that milk and whatever else she'll need to make one of her legendary Betsy You Bread Puddings.
In case of fire
Submitted by LorenzoB on Mon, 05/14/2012 - 9:59pm.
Take a deep breath, and use the carbon tetrachloride fire extinguisher. It's effective, but poisonous.
The Clock.
Submitted by Vintagetvs on Mon, 05/14/2012 - 9:19pm.
Either it's stopped or the Photographer is quick, it shows the same time in both pictures, 11:37 a.m.
23 minutes till Lunch.
Letting the bread sleep in?
Submitted by jepkid on Mon, 05/14/2012 - 8:40pm.
What is that over the sink, a bread box with a window shade?
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Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.
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Today's Top 5