Everything Including the Kitchen Sink

Many of us spend a considerable amount of time in the kitchen, a space that can serve both a utilitarian and a social function. The Prints & Photographs Division collections provide great images of kitchen spaces that highlight prepared food, architectural elements, and the labor that goes into ensuring our nourishment.

The photograph below shows Mrs. Cooper at her farm near Radcliffe, Iowa, preparing to put some rolls in the oven. The photo was taken as part of a LOOK Magazine photograph assignment about the Cooper family’s life on their farm. Many jars filled with fruits and vegetables are visible on the kitchen table and countertops.

Photographer Carol M. Highsmith captured this eye-catching view of a kitchen cabinet featuring decades-old spice jars (charcoal seasoning salt, anyone?) in the historical Joseph D. Oliver House in South Bend, Indiana.

As usual, the Farm Security Administration / Office of War Information Collection is a fantastic source for scenes of home life in the United States during the Great Depression and World War II. The person in the photograph below appears to be preparing food on a table adjacent to kitchen shelving that is built into the end of a trailer, making ingenious use of space at a migrant camp in Harlingen, Texas.

The caption for this image indicates that Mrs. Heath and her daughter, Ann, are thrilled with the clean and spacious kitchen in their defense housing unit, having previously lived in a “single furnished room.”

While it is not clear how she feels about her kitchen in a new Farm Security Administration trailer camp, the woman in this photograph seems very pleased with the adorable cat she’s holding.

We see kitchens represented in graphic formats as well. This mid-19th century woodcut by Utagawa Yoshikazu depicts a foreign settlement house kitchen in Yokohama. The bustling scene shows people preparing, and waiting for, food in the foreground. Unrelated to the scene in the kitchen, we see a man getting a shave in an adjacent room.

This kitchen-themed color lithograph was used for educational purposes in the late 19th century. An accompanying manual listed objects for young students to identify in the image, including food items, dishes, and even the clock. Much has changed in the intervening years, but I’m sure you can identify many objects that we continue to use in our kitchens today!

Learn More:

• Explore more kitchen-related images from the collections.
• Read more about “Prang’s Aids for Object Teaching” in this Picture This blog post: Object Lessons: Learning with Prints.
• View more images from the Chadbourne collection of Japanese prints.