Thrills and SPILLS

It was Victorian recycling. Rolled up old letters, envelops, rolled pieces of shaved wood. You would keep them on your fireplace mantel to light your candles, your oil lamps, your pipes from the fireplace, because your fire was always lit, or banked with embers beneath for easy starting, especially when the maid came to light that coal fire at four in the morning.

They are spills. And this image is a photo of my spill vase. I bought it for display when I do events and because I could afford this one. It isn’t Victorian, but it could have been with its shepherdess figurine. But just to let you know, mine is from the 1950s. Yes, that’s how long they’ve been using them. And why not? The Victorians were big on useful things that were kept in very decorative containers. I guess they liked to dust. And if you had a parlour maid, all the better. She could do the dusting.

There were lots of things on desks, too. Your inkwell, of course, and your dipping pens. Also your blotters for your writing desk, that big piece of (usually) green paper so you could easily blot your letters so they could dry quickly for the post.

There were also rolling blotters, or rocking blotters to get the job done quickly right down on your letter writing.

And then there were pen wipes to clean your pen nibs (that metal part that you write with). If you didn’t clean them after you were done, the ink would dry and clog the very thin cut in the nib that holds the ink through capillary action. So a pen wipe was most important. There were all sorts of fanciful designs, from layers of felt shaped like butterflies, to more fanciful (and costly) brass figurines with a brush or felt atop them. It seems they thought of everything.

And by the way, just for extra authenticity, my spills are made up of photo copies of letters written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. If the Victorians can go that extra mile, so can I!