Our staircase was built over two centuries ago, and still does its job!
Do you have no fear of splinters‽ Cause I know those stairs would give me a splinter just by looking at them wrong
Hah! I don't know if it's because of how old the wood is, but it's not very splintery, it has a smooth fossilised feel even though it's so uneven.
Yeah, I'm sure anything that would have splintered off already has by now with how worn it looks. It shouldn't be an issue now unless a chunk breaks off.
Mmm, delicious non OSHA-compliance. No handrails, no problem!
I'm fascinated with those joints. Are they nailed at all, or is it just held together by gravity, friction and the exterior walls?
No nails, gravity and large wooden stakes / dowels. It's amazing to me that people made this by hand, and by the looks of it it was some exquisite craftsmanship, but it's still functional hundreds of years later, unlike most things created today.
Ah, the old style of woodwork. People have almost forgotten it now - really, anyone uninterested in history has, although the traditions lasted longer than you'd think - but nails were once expensive. Scraping things to fit and using wood's natural flexibility can get you a good way, and the fact it shrinks and hardens after being cut down can also be used to great effect. Although, in this case the fact the female part is a full log makes me somewhat doubtful greenwood techniques were used, aside from maybe to make the dowels.
They would have made this thing entirely without power tools as well (so it's no wonder they skipped the nice finish). Two centuries ago they probably were using modern hand saws and the like, although certain archaic tools like the drawknife could have been in their kit as well.
Looks dangerous as fuck but pretty cool!
I've been using the same coffee cup almost every day for the last 50+ years.
Yup, I'm old.
I use my great grandfather's bottle opener. It's magnetic and sticks to my fridge, and it's over 100 years old. Works great!
I have a cheap plastic hair brush my mum bought me over 40 years ago when I was about 6 or 7, she said it cost a dollar and surprised I still use it daily.
There is nothing wrong with it, so it lives on.
I have a 100 year old porcelain doll. Her name is Agnes, she has real human hair and is definitely cursed. Does that count?
Other than that, I have a pre-WW2 windup clock that still works perfectly. It's a solid steel brick.
I use a nice handmade wooden desk every day. No idea how old it is but my mom bought it at an antique store in the 70's, so it could be 80+ years old. And it's still in fantastic shape!
Edit: I heard back from my mom and she said it's (supposedly) from the late nineteenth century, so it's way older than I thought!
I have a refrigerator from around 1988 or 1989 that still works perfectly. Around 1999, it stopped working, so we bought a new one. We didn't throw away the old fridge because we used it to store plates and cutlery, but we were sure that it was completely broken. Then, last year, a technician saw it and told us that only a component needed to be replaced for it to work again. Lo and behold, the damn thing was revived, and after a two-decade slumber it worked again as if no time had passed.
I have a ninja turtle cereal bowl from when I was a kid that I still use. It's from 1988.
My wallet is the last piece of leather I will ever own.
3 piece safety razor from the 1950s. And soon a watch from 1950 too. Its a wind up watch.
I put a little string of fake pearls on my daughter about every day, and they were mine and my sisters' when I was a toddler, so they're about 30. I don't know how they've survived so many toddlers cause they'd break with any real pulling. She loves them though and is very careful with them. She also uses tiny baby sized silverware from my mom's babyhood(early 70s) It's cute and funny to watch her use miniature stuff that's just her size
I think that's the oldest thing other than furniture (we use my great grandfather's bedroom suite)
I'm in my 40s now, so I guess my body.
Most of it is a decade old at best ^^
sauce: https://book.bionumbers.org/how-quickly-do-different-cells-in-the-body-replace-themselves/
A manual coffee grinder from about 1910.
I figure I need it because if the electric’s broke I’ll need coffee to fix it.
I still use a first gen iPod.
I don't use it daily, more like several times per week - a wooden cutting board I made in school about 44 years ago.
I have a Grundig radio my grandparents bought in the fifties. It's completely restored and I had the aux changed to a mini jack, so I can play stuff on it over Bluetooth.
Can it still receive regular radio too?
Yup absolutely. FM and AM, thats why I had it restored.
Leuk, there's something cool about being able to listen to an ad for crypto on a device made when cheques were the new rage.
My house is from 1884 so that’s used pretty often.
I’ve moved continents so I haven’t brought too many older items with me generally speaking
Holy shit, same. It's either 1884 or 1887, i'm not sure.
My violin was made in 1614, but to be honest I use my practice violin daily and use that as my concert violin, and tune and play it weekly.
How paranoid are you about dropping it or falling while holding it? That's literally what I think every time I hear about instruments like this.
That would be among the few things left over from the age of knights and the black death (or the end of that period, anyway), and even modern instruments can be unbelievably valuable.
Not particularly. The wood sat in the harbor nearest to Brefchia to age for two years before Magini ever even touched it. It's pretty sturdy all things considered. The violin held up better than the original bow and wooden case. We fumigated all of them because they had become infected with bow mites. The original case and bow are in the attic, mostly she currently lives in a crushed velvet lined climate controlled case. Not playing her would do more damage than breaking her out and keeping her in tune.
Lol, it looks like that particular dude died in a plague outbreak.
Are all the previous owners known? I can only imagine the stories such an object might tell us if it could speak (as well as sing).
Not exactly. There's a break in the chain of ownership, when it came to the new world in the late 1700s. We're not entirely certain how my great great great grandfather came into possession of it, but we believe that he either won it in a game of poker, or he possibly stole it during the commotion of the last quarter century of the 1700s.
Thanks for the info on Magini. I just knew he made my violin, or more likely one of his apprentices. And that he and another dude in Florence ~~are~~ were simultaneously credited for inventing the thing independently of each other.
Edit: there's a fuckton more info on the guy than I could find back in 1993 when I looked into him
Glad to help!
or he possibly stole it during the commotion of the last quarter century of the 1700s.
commie
I see the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, lol.
That right there is one of the stories I'd love to know the details of.
You lucky bastard!
The old, big chest we store stuff in under the stairs is from 1883
'Stuff'.
No questions please.
Yeah, stuff. You know - stray boxes of Lego, some shoes, keys nobody knows what opens any longer..
I think there might be some pillows in there? Probably spiders.
My house is from the 1950s and my truck from 2007. I also have a shemagh scarf I bought when I was about 13 - so around 20 years ago. I’ve got a Leatherman that’s about the same age, too. Then there are two military surplus jackets from Austria - one from 1996 and the other from the 1980s - though I haven’t owned them that long.
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