Lovers of Art Deco would love Ranfurly – a interesting town we visited on our travels in Central Otago recently. Ranfurly is known for it’s art deco buildings – built after a series of suspicious fires in the early 1930s. The fires remain a mystery and no one was ever charged for all the damage caused. The most attractive building, in my mind, is the Centennial Milk Bar which used to serve refreshments to passengers who alighted from the adjacent railway station.
Centennial Milk Bar, now an Art Deco Museum
These days it is an art deco museum, chock full of art deco crockery, furniture, and furniture. I’m sure our family used to have some of this crockery in the cupboards when we were growing up.
Lots of interesting crockery on display
There were racks of clothes from the period, and a rather glamorous flapper girl all decked out in her best dress and fox furs – dressed for a night out on the town, it seems.
All dressed up
And I loved the underwear casually laid out on the bed.
Lovely items in the cabinet
Of course, thee 30s weren’t all about glamorous dressing – house work still needed taking care of. I found this interesting loom, and a lovely old Singer sewing machine. I learnt to sew on a Singer treadle machine when I was growing up – sadly it’s long gone now. There was also quite a display of kitchen items in another room, including one of those mincers which were clamped onto the bench. I used to have one of those too, and now they are vintage!
Weaving loom and sewing machine
Lots of lovely art deco delights to admire, and the museum was ably staffed by very friendly and helpful volunteers.
6 comments:
Treadle Singer, hand mincer, hand bean slicer, tubs, hand wringer blue bags and more. Ranfurly is a great place to visit. As is all of Central Otago.
Yes, I think I have seen quite a few of those things in my grandparents home when I was growing up.
Fantastic display. The treadle is my favourite.
I love going through museums when we travel we have found some really nice places in the most unlikely places too some of the best for the period pieces have been in really small towns we have found - of course we tend to stick to small towns and country occasionally traveling to cities but not when we have the motor home out for that we love the wide open spaces.
Hmm, I recognize a lot of the items: that surely must make me vintage or pretty close to it.
What a gorgeous building! And some interesting treasures.
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