Section 5 - Domestic Life, the House in the 18th and 19th Centuries

Step into the next room and take a good look, right next to the entrance, at the reconstruction of this late 19th century craft workshop. Whose could it be?Here’s a hint: according to an old Italian proverb, his child walks around wearing tattered shoes.Of course: it belongs to a shoemaker or, in Toiranese dialect, 'scarparin'.  At the end of the 19th century, shoes were made of leather. The shoemaker's tool kit therefore only contained specific tools for crafting this material.But that’s enough about trades. Now let’s go and have a peek into the private lives of the residents of a house in Toirano in the past. Observe the reconstruction of the kitchen, faithful to a 1742 notarial inventory of Toirano:  tinned copper pots, earthenware and majolica crockery from Albisola and Savona, the marble mortar with pestle for making pesto, and all those small utensils used for daily food preparation and preservation. The other faithfully reconstructed room is the bedroom. Note the 19th century furniture such as the iron bed and the chest containing handmade linen, which brides would bring in dowry to their husbands! Not to mention the ever-present chamber pots, clues to a past before the phrase “all mod cons” was invented.Finally, the last display case contains hunting equipment. You might be wondering what it is doing here, in a domestic setting. Hunting, however, was an activity practised by men from a very young age. As children, they would learn to use slingshots and build simple traps for play; later, they would progress to using rifles. Cartridges, too, were often made at home. While modern sensibilities have changed the way we view hunting, in the past wild animals provided an important supplement to a diet that was largely based on agricultural products.