Clean New World

"To get the whole world out of bed
And washed, and dressed, and warmed, and fed,
To work, and back to bed again,

 Believe me, Saul, costs worlds of pain."

 - excerpted from The Everlasting Mercy by John Masefield 

But some are oblivious to such eternal truths, according to the advertisement (above) for United Laundry of Vienna: "The Viennese are pampered."

In her book Clean New World (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press: 2001), historian Maud Lavin finds connections between the people who do the cleaning (still women, mostly) and the graphic designers of advertising and packaging for cleaning products.  Both groups are relatively less powerful, the value of their work is underrated and, one of the coping skills they use to make their situation less stressful is humor.

Images:

1. Bal Clay - Der Winer ist verwohnt, 1954, Museum of Applied Culture, Vienna.

2. Ernst Ludwig Frank - Olso, c. 1925, Museum of Applied Culture, Vienna.

3. Cecil Charles Aldin - Colman Starch, 1900, Bemrose & Sons, London.
4.  hans Nuemann - King's Soap, 1924, Museum of Applied Culture, Vienna.