Throwback Thursday’s
The Milk Maid
Walking into
a gift shop here in The Netherlands is always a delight. And if you’re lucky,
you will see pretty Delft blue Milk Maids all lined up, holding their milk
pails high and proud. A milk maid is a woman who is employed to milk the cows
in a dairy. Before the invention of milk machines, cows were milked by hand.
They would milk the cows, clean the udders, clean the buckets and strain the
milk. In some homes milk maids would be employed instead of having other help
do the work. The milk maid was also usually responsible for making other dairy
products such as cream, butter and cheese.
One of my
favorite paintings hangs proudly at the beautiful Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Johannes Vermeer’s painting “The Milkmaid” captures a beautiful moment of a
kitchen maid pouring milk into a Dutch oven. I love the blue colors that are
shown in her apron and cloth on the table, the expression of her face, the
light pouring into the room and the little Delft tiles along the wall behind
her.
I was going
to post a picture of me as a child dressed as a Milk Maid for Halloween, but I
can’t seem to find it. I’ll keep looking. Too funny and what a coincidence.
Found it!!! 1968 ~ Me dressed as a Milk Maid for Halloween
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