A 1950’s Enfield Box Company Laundry Box, who specialised in high-end laundry boxes for dry cleaners and served Buckingham Palace.
This one is wonderfully branded with the Craigmillar Laundry Logo, somewhat Wes Anderson-esq.
The Craigmillar Steam Laundry was founded in the early 1880's. It is described in 'A Descriptive Account of Edinburgh - Illustrated', published around 1893, as "the largest, best arranged, and most perfectly equipped establishment of this kind in Scotland". The laundry used state of the art equipment including steam driven washing machines and hydro-extractors, a type of spin drier. In addition to the cleaning, ironing and finishing of clothes the laundry dealt with a whole range of materials including carpets and curtains. All finished goods were despatched in the company's horse drawn vans. In the late nineteenth century the laundry employed roughly 130 people.
