A Multifunctional Museum Object – The Hot Water Bottle

Some devices print, copy, and scan; others mix, cook, and bake. Multifunctional tools exist for all kinds of tasks, whether in the kitchen or the office. But long before electrification or digitalisation, people were already making use of objects that served more than one purpose. At the Heimatmuseum Davos, the region's local history museum, for example, a pewter hot water bottle featuring a Ludelloch is on display.

A what? A Ludelloch is a hole in the bottle designed for warming a baby bottle. Apparently, the hot water bottle displayed in Davos—dating from the second half of the 19th century and filled with warm water—originally came equipped with such a bottle.

Whether the baby bottle currently shown in the museum is the original one remains uncertain. The glass bottle bears the brand name “Schweppes”—a soft drink hardly intended for infants. It is therefore presumed that the original bottle was replaced at some point.