The care of linen garments – their washing and pressing – followed a distinctive procedure. The linen was lye-washed, or “bucked” it was placed in a wooden bucking tub, made of planed boards. Ashes tied in a piece of cloth were laid over the linen and hot water was poured onto them. The cloth was left to steep in the lye thus produced until the following day, when it was taken down to the stream or to a dug-out waterhole also used for washing. There the linen was beaten in the water with a washing bat, then carried home to dry.

Pressing the linen, or mangling was done while the fabric was still slightly damp: in fine weather outside in the yard, on a workbench, in bad weather in the kitchen, on the table or on top of a chest. The implements used were the mangle board and its wooden roller. The linen was wound around the roller, and the woman, placing her left palm on the end of the board, pushed the mangle board firmly over it. She repeated the movement until the cloth was completely smooth. According to those who continued to practice the method, mangling sturdy linen garments was more practical – simpler and quicker – than ironing them. Much the same was true of the traditional lye-washing of linen.

The mangle board also had a number of secondary uses. It served as a board for cutting kneaded dough, meat and tobacco, was used for threshing beans, and even for beating down the row of straw sheaves laid along the ridge of a thatched roof. Once it was no longer fit even for such purposes, it was thrown into the attic or consigned to the fire.

Imre Szentmihályi, The Göcsej Museum’s Collection of Mangle Boards (1960)