settings
Treasure Island vocabulary
1 furniture, household items
help & settings
[x]
-
oilcloth
-
synonyms: enameled cloth ???
tags: [garniture]
► definition
Definition:close-woven cotton duck or linen cloth with a coating of boiled linseed oil to make it waterproof. Historically, pre-Mackintosh, oilcloth was one of very few flexible, waterproof materials that were widely available. Leather was expensive—very expensive in large pieces—and required regular maintenance if often wetted. Oilcloth was used as an outer waterproof layer for luggage, both wooden trunks and flexible satchels, for carriages and for weatherproof clothing.[...]The most familiar recent use was for brightly printed kitchen tablecloths. Dull-colored oilcloth was used for bedrolls, sou'westers, and tents. By the late 1950s, oilcloth became a synonym for vinyl (polyvinyl chloride) bonded to either a flanneled cloth or a printed vinyl with a synthetic non-woven backing.
photo: By Lori L. Stalteri - https://www.flickr.com/photos/llstalteri/6341122428/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58113566
► uses
Uses:
“You’re the very man I wanted to see,” I said, as I sat down beside him at the oilcloth covered table;
Humours of Irish Life: E. OE. Somerville and Martin Ross. Trinket's Colt
---
He got up and submissively followed her to the schoolroom. They sat down to a table covered with an oilcloth cut in slits by penknives.
Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina
---
He finally became worried about the state of his animals and he threw an oilcloth over his head and went to Petra Coteses house.
Gabriel García Márquez. One Hundred Years of Solitude, p.345 (1970)
help with search