Valdemar Magaard, Danish
Hoping To Win Gold in the Pairs Speed Laundering Event, the Danish Team Brought in a Couple of Wringers, 1907-08
Oil on canvas
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Info, or links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here (Google translated). He currently has no Wikipedia page.
/// Laundry day, and there’s no time to snooze.
Grueling work gave these women the blues.
Their skin’s now red and chapped,
all their stamina sapped
while they trod cobblestones in wood shoes.
/// Doing laundry those days wasn’t fun.
It took hours before you were done.
Pumping water took muscle,
so did wringing. Then hustle
back to hang it to dry in the sun.
/// No one then had a washing machine.
It took scrubbing to get your sheets clean.
All your soap was homemade
and you weekly displayed
dirty laundry, by everyone seen.
Gudrun, (in the green dress), wasn’t posh.
Soapy water, upon her, would slosh.
She had troubles to spare.
Oddly, she didn’t care,
knowing “all will come out in the wash.”
/// The pink scarf Gudrun wore on her head
had been white until after she wed.
Husband Aksel had thrown
her clothes in with his own.
Scarf was washed with new long johns (bright red.)
/// Since the cost of a wringer is steep,
and the debts owed by Gudrun are deep,
twist the cloth with a friend,
(just as good, in the end).
Turns out, just as they say, “torque is cheap.”
/// Wringing large sheets required an assist;
someone else with strong arms and tough wrist.
But each woman here wrings
her own intimate things.
She got her knickers into a twist.