One thought on “Women in the kitchen, 1920s & 1930s”
That middle photo is very likely a mid-50s kitchen, in Great Britain, especially with the clothing style, and the steel kitchen cabinets, or “fitted kitchen” shown here! But the real giveaway is that tankless water heater.
After WWII, and after the Lend-Lease association between the US and the UK ended (rather abruptly, as I understand it), the UK was practically bankrupt, but still needed to pay their obligations off to other countries they still owed. Primarily to the US. Their rationing stayed in place for nine more years in terms of food especially, as well as developing technology, and so on. Food rationing finally ended with bacon and meat in early July in 1954! Clothes rationing remained in place about the same length of time. And technology in terms of things like small and large electrical appliances, cameras, and so forth, went towards exports to pay off their debts.
The device on the wall is a tankless water heater, which were used in UK for heating up water in kitchens and baths, as they did not find the standing water heaters like we use here to be efficient enough to supply all their millions of homes, both new to replace the thousands of bombed out homes from the war, the new ones built to house all the young veterans and their families, and retrofitting the old ones that either didn’t have any at all, or needed updating.
The “fitted” kitchen shown here is also a postwar invention, as Great Britain didn’t update their homes for much of any kind of kitchen technology like what we had at the time, before 1939 which is when they entered the War, as Hitler invaded Poland. Also, the state of their home technology has been compared to being into about 20 years before ours. Practically nobody had fridges, or even ice boxes before the War, and nobody had freezers at all. Washing machines were practically unheard of, st least not like we had here, until the mid-50s either. The amount of steel needed to supply war materiel was not enough to supply all of that, much less make kitchen cabinets until long after the War, and their self-imposed export requirements were satisfied. British citizens could see examples of what their manufacturers were producing, but not to purchase for themselves for years. It must have been torturous to be able to “see but not touch” for such a very long time!
MATTHEW'S ISLAND 
That middle photo is very likely a mid-50s kitchen, in Great Britain, especially with the clothing style, and the steel kitchen cabinets, or “fitted kitchen” shown here! But the real giveaway is that tankless water heater.
After WWII, and after the Lend-Lease association between the US and the UK ended (rather abruptly, as I understand it), the UK was practically bankrupt, but still needed to pay their obligations off to other countries they still owed. Primarily to the US. Their rationing stayed in place for nine more years in terms of food especially, as well as developing technology, and so on. Food rationing finally ended with bacon and meat in early July in 1954! Clothes rationing remained in place about the same length of time. And technology in terms of things like small and large electrical appliances, cameras, and so forth, went towards exports to pay off their debts.
The device on the wall is a tankless water heater, which were used in UK for heating up water in kitchens and baths, as they did not find the standing water heaters like we use here to be efficient enough to supply all their millions of homes, both new to replace the thousands of bombed out homes from the war, the new ones built to house all the young veterans and their families, and retrofitting the old ones that either didn’t have any at all, or needed updating.
The “fitted” kitchen shown here is also a postwar invention, as Great Britain didn’t update their homes for much of any kind of kitchen technology like what we had at the time, before 1939 which is when they entered the War, as Hitler invaded Poland. Also, the state of their home technology has been compared to being into about 20 years before ours. Practically nobody had fridges, or even ice boxes before the War, and nobody had freezers at all. Washing machines were practically unheard of, st least not like we had here, until the mid-50s either. The amount of steel needed to supply war materiel was not enough to supply all of that, much less make kitchen cabinets until long after the War, and their self-imposed export requirements were satisfied. British citizens could see examples of what their manufacturers were producing, but not to purchase for themselves for years. It must have been torturous to be able to “see but not touch” for such a very long time!