6533b7dafe1ef96bd126d9c7

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Dobra rada złota warta, czyli porady dla śląskiej gospodyni (na materiale z XIX i pierwszej połowy XX wieku)

subject

description

The presented book is a popular science study devoted to the old texts of advice and recipes. The publication contains 622 tips. They were excerpted from three types of printed matter written in Polish, including calendars (22 titles), periodicals published from the mid-19th century, addressed to the inhabitants of Silesia, and several monographs. The publication is a kind of set of information about how households functioned in the past. Its intended purpose is to familiarize readers of various age groups with selected elements of everyday culture in the 19th and the 1st half of the 20th century. The book opens with introductory notes, which contain terminological findings and outline the history of publishing texts that provide advice. The substantive and research values of advice (these texts tell a lot about the historical, economic, social and cultural realities of the time) are also mentioned. This is followed by six chapters with numerous examples of advice. In the first and second chapters, devoted to Silesian cuisine, the issues of preserving food (dairy products, meat and cold cuts, etc.) and stocking up for the winter (vegetables and fruit) are discussed. The third chapter contains tips to help the Silesians of old to clean the house, also with the use of natural cleaning agents. The next chapter deals with fighting vermin (rodents, insects) that destroyed supplies stored in homes and other utility rooms and made life difficult for residents. Finally, the last two chapters contain a lot of advice on methods of treatment applied in the past when access to doctors and medical care was limited, as well as beauty care (from maintaining personal hygiene on a daily basis to various beauty treatments based on self-made cosmetics). The book is enriched with illustrative material in the form of photographs (from old calendars and ones made by the author in 12 museums and similar institutions in Silesia). The various contents in this publication may be of interest to various groups of readers: both enthusiasts of Silesian culture and ordinary people for whom it will be a sentimental journey into the past, to the memories of their family home. The book also has an educational value; it can help to familiarize with and disseminate the cultural heritage of Silesia.