Laundry tub

A tub was used for much more than just for washing clothes. Babies were cleaned in it as well. And if they were not bathed in it, they could use it to learn how to sit upright, with a small pillow placed inside for back support. For parties, people could fill the tub with big chunks of ice wrapped in burlap to keep beverages cool.

In the neighborhoods outside of Paramaribo, people used the tubs to wash cassava in. With the cassava they made gomma, which was used to starch clothing – especially the koto, the traditional clothing of Afro-Surinamese, and particularly Creole women.

You could buy a laundry tub like this one at a tinsmith. There were various tinsmiths in Paramaribo. There was Tul, for example, on Wanicastreet. He passed away, but his company was taken over by his family. Tul was also a coppersmith, as he also made the famous kopro beke (the more luxurious, copper laundry tub). On Saramacastreet, there was Brandon. His company and some of his works are still visible in Suriname, in the Open Air Museum in Nieuw Amsterdam.

Nowadays, the washboards and laundry tubs have disappeared from the streets in Suriname. From the 70’s onwards, plastic became a more common material for laundry tubs than metal. Later, most people owned a washing machine. Dried out corn cobs were still used, but only for scrubbing callus off of feet. The laundry tubs, washboards and blue soap have become museum pieces, for example in the Koto Museum in Paramaribo.