2025-06-11 01:10![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
darkoshi
darkoshiI have a memory from the 1980s of a certain semi-public restroom (like in restaurants, but this was a building with a big meeting room where one of my aunt's clubs had meetings and events) in Germany. The building itself was probably built in the preceding decades.
The soap dispenser was metal with a small crank-handle that you would turn. Inside must have been a block of bar soap. Turning the crank would grate off flakes of soap into your other waiting hand. I think the soap was pink.
The hand towel was a long length of fabric which presumably was rolled up at the top and bottom inside the device it was dispensed from. You would only see a section of the fabric at a time. To get a fresh part of the towel you would either pull on the fabric, or perhaps turn a knob on the side; I don't recall exactly. This would cause the fabric to unroll from the top and get rolled up into the bottom of the unit.
The towel was mostly white like the one in this photo, but I think it had colored stripes on both vertical edges instead of in the center.
This video shows the inside of a similar device:
Continuous Cloth Roll Towel Machine
The soap device was like this one:
GRUNELLA® -Seifenmühle
Soap for cranking
That wasn't the only restroom I encountered those devices in; they were common back then in many places. Similar devices can still be bought nowadays, and for your own bathroom too, from what I see.
The soap dispenser was metal with a small crank-handle that you would turn. Inside must have been a block of bar soap. Turning the crank would grate off flakes of soap into your other waiting hand. I think the soap was pink.
The hand towel was a long length of fabric which presumably was rolled up at the top and bottom inside the device it was dispensed from. You would only see a section of the fabric at a time. To get a fresh part of the towel you would either pull on the fabric, or perhaps turn a knob on the side; I don't recall exactly. This would cause the fabric to unroll from the top and get rolled up into the bottom of the unit.
The towel was mostly white like the one in this photo, but I think it had colored stripes on both vertical edges instead of in the center.
This video shows the inside of a similar device:
Continuous Cloth Roll Towel Machine
The soap device was like this one:
GRUNELLA® -Seifenmühle
Soap for cranking
That wasn't the only restroom I encountered those devices in; they were common back then in many places. Similar devices can still be bought nowadays, and for your own bathroom too, from what I see.
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