Clanax Plastic clothes pegs 24 pieces / 56 mm

The first shaped, wooden pegs originated in England. They were made from a single piece of flexible wood, usually willow, by members of a Christian sect called the Quakers. They were known for their very simple lifestyle, whose daily routine included the crafting of durable wooden furniture and practical household items such as a clothes hanger or a laundry pin.

Quakers differed from other Christians by their charismatic, almost frenetic spiritual expression, for which they were persecuted in their own country. In 1774, therefore, they left England and settled in America, where the pin was used unchanged until 1832, when its first patent was registered with a wooden screw. Although it didn't work well in practice because the screw swelled and lost its functionality due to moisture, it took another twenty-one years before the prolific Vermont inventor David M. Smith patented a two-piece type with a metal spring.

By 1887, the US Patent Office issued 146 more certificates for variously modified pins, the design of which was improved to the form we know today by Solon E. Moore.

Moore's version had the advantage that it was easy to mass produce and held the line well in the wind. The first "pin factory" was established in Vermont, and the small household helper began to be sold in large quantities all over the world.

But bad times came after World War I, when goods from Europe flooded the market and American housewives began to prefer cheaper Swedish pins and then even cheaper imports from China.

The domestic pin industry collapsed and the national "pin manufactory" was forced to switch to the production of plastic goods. Thus, the last American laundry pin rolled off the production line in 2009 to much media attention and patriot pity.

Over the course of a hundred and fifty years, the humble wooden peg has undergone many changes, often for cosmetic reasons only. It has seen the rise and fall, survived the plastic boom and the advent of clothes dryers. But thanks to his usefulness, he has survived and is patiently waiting. Its time may come back and bury the myth of the 1950s that electrical appliances can give us back our freedom. Perhaps there will come a time when drying laundry in the sun and fresh air will once again be commonplace, and clotheslines will no longer be considered aesthetically offensive.