The Kitchen Dresser.

When I was young, there was one of these dressers in so many homes. It was the centre go-to cupboard in the kitchen, and if the family was called upon to change address, it inevitably went with them. My Irish grandmother had one and it was painted “Irish green” and it went everywhere with them when they moved residences, which was quite often given the gypsy inclinations of that side of the family and the necessity of seeking employment in those years of depression and war.

I resurrected this one out of the back shed with the intention of “doing it up” as a servery and conversation piece for our outdoor dining experience on the back verandah, and I am now trying to remember what was kept in each compartment and drawer.

If I start at the top with the glass doors, I can recall crockery, cups/mugs and glasses being kept there. Dinner plates (just individual plates, NOT sets) of willow pattern or flowers etc, side-plates and breakfast bowls that doubled as soup bowls in the left side of the dresser, drinking glasses in the middle bottom (there was a dividing shelf there), with teacups and saucers on the top shelf. The more universal drinking cups sans saucers and drinking mugs (Nestle’s drinking chocolate before bed was a biggie!) in the right-side glass door of the dresser.

Behind the smaller doors on the middle/side of the dresser, was..on the right hand the bread cupboard ( it was lined with a thin enclose of metal to keep any rodents out), when the bread was delivered to the door in those days by “th’ baker”, who in reality was not a baker at all, just a delivery van driven by one of the many employed drivers of “Tip-Top Bakery” or another mass producer of the daily breads of those times. One could get, unsliced, square loaf, high-rise loaf and tank loaf bread, tissue wrapped around the middle for 10 pence a  loaf, delivered to the door by a cheerful chappie in his painted Buttercup or Tip-Top van…some later drivers were recruited from the unemployed hippie conglomerate who ameliorated the boredom of regular routes by smoking dope and then delivering the bread in a tripped-out state…but I digress..

This bread cupboard held not only bread, but also yeast buns and scones etc, if at any time there was a shortage of funds to even afford bread in the old days, I recall my mother saying that Gran’ would throw in a picture of St. Joseph (th’ provider) to encourage him to fulfill his saintly obligations..and I have to confess here and now that he never failed to deliver!

All I can recall of the right hand side cupboard was it was used as a kind of “overflow” to temporarily hold excess from other parts of the dresser..mostly food bits and pieces that didn’t demand immediate use, like tinned goods, potatoes, onions or packaged products.

The drawers in the centre of the cupboard contained, in the bottom drawer..they were constantly referred to as the ; “Top” or “Bottom” draw when instructed to go to for something.. The bottom drawer contained the cutlery. Bone-handled knives, forks and spoons in the days before the cheap Japanese, stainless steel sets could be bought for only a few shillings at the local Tommy Johnson’s 4 Square store. There were three compartments in the drawer for ; knives, forks and spoons of different use and size in each.

The top drawer was the utility drawer, where all the odds and sods of household detritus ended up…odd screws and nails, thumbtacks, hooks and eyes, cotton reels that were used for tomboy stitching, corks and stoppers, pieces of string that wound around everything else in the drawer and had to be constantly untangled..Lids of lost jars and un-nameable/ unrecognisable bits and pieces that floated into the drawer from the universe while we slept but were sure to be useful at some later date. “Look in the top drawer!” was the catch-cry from our mother when asked for some obscure necessity.

The bottom centre cupboard contained a large, square lidded tin with paper wrapping around it that had to be fingernail cut around the perimeter to lift the sealed lid to reveal the glowing contents of Arnott’s mixed family biscuits!…Full to the brim of all the favourites that we had come to know and delight in…”Scotch finger, nice, choc ripple, arrowroot etc…” This tin was only to be accessed by our mother…all other fingers were verboten on pain of “getting the brush!”. On the right side was the tinned food storage, and on the left side was the various wax-paper sealed with rubber band tins of fat and dripping from mutton or hogget, rarely lamb, never beef, roasts, that in times of plenty were used to deep-fry the fish we kids caught spearfishing down the beach in the summer, or conversely, in times of scant, were the filling for school lunch sandwiches of bread and dripping…but I have to say, it was tasty dripping!

But there you go, if ever there was an essential furniture piece that held in its embrace both necessity and social commentary, it has to be this almost sacred icon of working-class kitchen utility of both containment and contentment.