Summary

Alternative Name(s): Clothes Airer, Hand Towels, Tea Towel, Tea-towel

Toy wooden towel rack. Came with several towels hung over it - two small blue ones and a third, more like a tea towel (one of a matching pair of towels, HT 53341).

Part of a dolls' house, built around 1920 by Neil McArthur for his much younger half-sister Elizabeth (Beth) Twycross, born in 1917. Neil made the doll's house out of found materials including cigar boxes; he also made many of the furnishings in the doll's house. Some of the contents of the doll's house may date back to the 1860s, played with by ancestor Charlotte Twycross; most date to either the 1920s or the 1940s-50s. In the early 1950s the donor was given the spruced-up doll's house as a birthday present by her parents. In later years her own daughter later added items, although she wasn't allowed to play due to its fragility.

Physical Description

Folding toy wooden towel rack or clothes airer, comprising two panels of the same size, hinged at centre with narrow strips of purple and white cloth. The uprights have rounded tops, and slots in one face into which the three horizontal rails are inserted, at equal spacing. Originally hung on the towel rack were two pale blue towels, possibly made of off-cuttings from full-sized towels, with the rough looping typical of towel material.

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