DASHING AWAY WITH THE SMOOTHING IRON: A social history of the art of the laundry with Valerie Krips

This talk takes us behind the scenes in the Victorian laundry, with a backward glance to the earlier smoothing stones of the Chinese and the Vikings.  What role did ironing play in the management of great houses?  What was and is the social importance of fine linen and draperies?  And what has any of this to do with Beatrix Potter’s Mrs Tiggy-Winkle?

Dr Valerie Krips is Associate Professor Emerita of the English Department of the University of Pittsburgh, and Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne.  She has been a consultant to the Jorvik Viking Centre in York, Castle Howard in Yorkshire, and Shugborough in Staffordshire.  The author of The Presence of the Past: Memory, History and Childhood in Postwar Britain, she is completing a book on cultural memory.