If you’ve ever dug through a relative’s attic, junk drawer, or old sewing box and found a pile of odd little wooden pegs with round heads and split legs, you’ve likely stumbled on one of the most common — and most forgotten — household tools of the 20th century: the classic wooden clothespin.
What Exactly Is It?
This style is often called a dolly peg or one-piece clothespin, and it’s the ancestor of the spring-loaded clothespins most people picture today. Key features:
- Carved from a single piece of wood — no metal parts, no springs
- A rounded “head” at the top (early designs were sometimes carved to loosely resemble a small figure, which is where the “dolly” nickname comes from)
- A split down the middle of the body, forming two prongs or “legs”
To use one, you’d push the split legs down over a clothesline, straddling the line so the wood’s natural tension held the fabric in place. Simple, cheap, and remarkably durable — some survive in usable condition for decades.
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