Southern Folk Artist & Antiques Dealer/Collector: "New Orleans wash day & red beans and rice"

Monday, August 4, 2014

"New Orleans wash day & red beans and rice"

"New Orleans wash day & red beans and rice" by Andrew LaMar Hopkins

In honor of New Orleans Mondays red beans and rice I give you a post about my latest masterpiece titled "New Orleans wash day & red beans and rice" I'm exited as I write this blog post from my Paris apt. Today in Paris it is overcast and rainy I decided to stay home and do internet work as I'm tired of walking and running around Paris over the last week I have been here. "New Orleans wash day & red beans and rice" number 7 in my series of Creole Kitchens. Depicts a New Orleans Creole kitchen of about 1840. By this time the 18th century Creole armoire with inlay decoration and Louisiana cabriole leg table to the right of the door were out of fashion in the main house and would have been used in the Service wing of a Louisiana house or kitchen. Traditionally made on Mondays with red beans, vegetables (bell pepper, onion and celery), spices (thyme, cayenne pepper, and bay leaf) and pork bones as left over from Sunday dinner, cooked together slowly in a pot and served over rice. Meats such as ham, sausage (most commonly Andouille), and Tasso ham are also frequently used in the dish. The dish is customary - ham was traditionally a Sunday meal and Monday was washday.

A pot of beans could sit on the stove and simmer while the women were busy scrubbing clothes. Washing once a week on Monday or "washday" became the established norm in New Orleans. In the center of the painting a washerwoman washes the households cloths. Washing clothes and household linen in the 19th century was hard labor. Washing cloths in the Antebellum period was done with a wood washboard and bar of hard soap with a tub of hot water. In front of the laundress on the flagstone floor we see washing bats or a board to scrub on using sticks for pounding and stirring have been used for centuries, sometimes for smoothing dry cloth too and beating dirt out. We see a dolly usually had three or four legs on a long handle, giving three times the effect of a single pole used for agitating water in a tub when washing clothes.And a cypress washing bench. Some cloths had to be boiled as we see in the cast iron kettle to the left of the fireplace. Other laundry had to be hand washed by adding hot or cold water. After the laundry was hanged and dried it had to be ironed.

To the right of the painting a Creole lady irons whit linens in a cypress table. Plain metal irons were heated by a fire or on a stove. At home, ironing traditional fabrics without the benefit of electricity was a hot, arduous job. Irons had to be kept immaculately clean, sand-papered and polished. They must be kept away from burning fuel, and be regularly but lightly greased to avoid rusting. Beeswax prevented irons sticking to starched cloth. Constant care was needed over temperature. Experience would help decide when the iron was hot enough, but not so hot that it would scorch the cloth. A well-known test was spitting on the hot metal. The walls of the Creole Kitchen are painted green. Green was the most expensive paint in the 18th and first half of the 19th century because it was made out of arsenic & vertigris scraped from copper. You need a lot of vertigris dust to make paint. The arsenic was a bug & insect repellent for kitchens.

As well as the wire mousetrap under the 18th century Louisiana cabriole leg table to the right of the door opening. On each side of the early Louisiana armoire are olive jars imported from the South of France with olive oil. Once in Louisiana olive jars served as Louisiana's first refrigerators for food storage. The olive jar to the right of the armoire is buried in the ground. The dampness of the ground would soak into the unglazed exterior of the jar. The interior of the jar was glazed so moisture did not penetrate the jar but kept the inside at a cool temperature. Sometimes ice imported from Canada sipped down the Mississippi river in sawdust was also used inside of the olive jars but ice was very costly in the Antebellum South. A man enjoys the fruits of labor of the red beans and rice at a cypress table over spirits. of the Over the fireplace we have a copy of the French Master artist Ingres: Le Christ bénissant, 1834.

A creole woman washing in a wooden wish tub.

An 1864 sketch from the American Civil War shows two soldiers hard at work, with equipment old and new. One is using a bat on a washing bench, an almost-forgotten method that was hardly used by the next generation in the USA. The other soldier's tub and washboard

Watercolor of a woman with a bundle of laundry

Dolly tubs used with a dolly stick (aka peggy or maiden) in the UK and parts of northern Europe. These were tall tubs, also called possing- or maidening-tubs, in which large items were stirred and beaten with dollies or a plunger on a long handle.

To the right of the painting a Creole lady irons whit linens in a cypress table.

18th century painting showing a woman ironing

By this time the 18th century Louisiana cabriole leg table to the right of the door were out of fashion in the main house and would have been used in the Service wing of a Louisiana house or kitchen.