MOTnews 59 (15/04/2005)

HERITAGE DAY AT THE MOT

You already know that the MOT has a real soft spot for baker's ovens. Our website has a whole chapter on their restoration, and in the inventory you will find more than 700 baker's ovens that are still in existence today.

For this reason, Heritage Day at the MOT will be totally dedicated to the oven.

On that date, Sunday, 17 April 2005, the new and practical on-line handbook for ovenbuilders will be launched.

Furthermore, you can follow a bread-making workshop at the Museum's baker's oven: you will mill the grain yourself in the water mill, knead your own dough and stoke up the wood-fired oven in order to bake your bread. Don't delay to sign up if you want to take part, because places are limited to 30 on that day.

However, those who miss the boat for the bread-making course need not despair, because the MOT has also arranged a comprehensive baker's oven tour. During a tour of the Museum's ovens, you will find out a great deal more about baker's ovens and their usage through a series of hands-on questions and answers.

In order to reserve your place for the bread-making workshop or the tour, please contact Petra Vandermeiren by telephone on 02 270 81 11 or by e-mail at info@mot.be

GRANDMOTHER'S RECIPES

Getting clean with plants!

In the MOT News, we've already talked about soap and how it is made (usually from animal fats). Now, here is a tip for making plant-based soapsuds.

Even in Prehistoric Times, people already used soapwort or Saponaria officinalis. This weed often occurs on very poor sandy soil, such as railway beddings and the like. You can also buy it at garden centres, where it is a popular rock plant.

You make suds by rubbing the plant in a little water. You can then use these plant-based suds to wash your hair, for example.

SAY WHAT?

In this MOT-news item we try to explain proverbs and sayings that have their roots in our technical history. Similar proverbs are found in different languages, but each language has it's own typical sayings. Therefore we do not translate this item in English.

KIDS news: something to tell your children this evening

Did you know that it is actually children who are to thank for the success of the zip fastener?

The zipper, as we now know it, took quite a time to become truly popular.

In the 1800s, the first ancestor of today's zipper appeared, operating on an ingenious "hook and eye" principle designed to do up shoes. This "Clasp Locker" did not meet with much success. Its successor appeared on the market in 1917, and was mostly used to do up galoshes.

At the start, the zipper was actually only used for boots and tobacco pouches. And it would take twenty more years before the fashion industry would be persuaded of the advantages of this new invention for clothing.

In the 1930s, an advertising campaign saw the light of day, singing the praises of the zipper for children's clothes. Above all, the campaign emphasised how the zipper helped children to become more independent: thanks to the zipper, they could dress themselves much more easily. From then on, there was no stopping the zipper, and in 1937 it made its first appearance in men's trousers. At the time, it was thought that this terrific new invention would prevent the embarrassment of an unbuttoned fly forever more. Of course we now know better, because many a man sometimes forgets to do up his zipper.

Today we can "zip up" a whole range of products such as jackets, trousers, bags, suitcases and shoes... with the result that many kilometres' worth of zip fastenings are manufactured every day.