The Ranch has one rather compact interior kitchen and a generous outdoor open fire area used for cooking and socialising we call Stonehenge. The interior kitchen doesn't have a special name. This interior version is a humble space with an often dysfunctional dual electric cooker, some makeshift shelves (though lovingly made), a wood burning stove, a sink, some metal shelving for pots, pans and dishes, an old school large chest freezer and smaller Soviet fridge with a small freezer compartment c. 1970s. Both latter white goods were donated gratefully to the Ranch. Also, a rather large collection of utensils hang above the electric cooker (flippers, dippers, clippers, ladles and scoopers of various sizes) plus a good collection of cooking tools (mortar & pestle, 2nd hand rice cooker, a citrus juicer etc.) We are actually rather proud of such a collection in our rural kitchen and thank the global Ranchers from over the years for the donations and purchases to taste recipes of home.
The Ranch then is a public space during the Ranch Residency sessions and is also shared with relatives who we depend on for early preparations. Everyone understandably rearranges this kitchen to suit their needs, perhaps out of their own habit of where things are stored in their own kitchens, fit an arrangement of reach and or an intuitive interpretation of storing goods, a memory of a home or just feels better.
During the Ranch season 2025, A.B. rearranged the kitchen several times while beautifully cleaning it. I think someone said it was a soothing exercise to help acclimatize. A sorted kitchen is like a clean workshop. A good sweep, a sort and tidy and one is ready for the next project while
anticipating what’s for lunch. Many things though suddenly had a place to live.
Much other activity also happens in the kitchen: gossip and clandestine chats, toasts and dancing, listening to the radio, hiding biscuits, investigating the array of teas.
19 people used this kitchen during the 2025 session cooking, washing up, sorting pots & pans, cooking tools, searching for nibbles, having a nosy, revving up the wood burning stove for cherry cobbler - adjusted the kitchen regularly- in the most sublime of ways.
Nineteen was our largest group ever to gather at the Ranch.
The broom was a small example of moving parts during this session. We had three brooms in fact at the start of the session. The long handle and the short handle with pale went missing. The oldest- a straw broom was still there. The former 2 are simple utilitarian brooms, plastic, mass produced, purchased at the local shop in the village. They both went missing. No amount of whatsAPP messages received a response on the whereabouts of either. Was it chopped up and put in the dahl I pondered?
I searched frantically. As relatives arrived to help clean and spend some time in this landscape, bringing an array of delicious dishes to share as a meal, the frustration began to echo as the setting for the meal needed preparation –
‘How can a household function legally without a broom?’
It was very emotional. Hunger and domestic maintenance vying for attention.
After much frustration and expressions of futility in the human condition I promptly drove to the local village shop to secure a broom. The broom display contained one long handled broom with a fault- a bend in the handle - as there was no other - without discount.
It’s a broom.
A requirement for any well kept household.
Take it or leave it.
In driving back to the ranch after purchasing this single broom I witnessed 2 street sweepers sweeping the road in gentle long rhythms. One near the just mentioned shops, and another a few car lengths along with what seemed to be large twig brooms with extra long handles. It is a tidy village which looks after its public spaces and takes pride in its cleanliness.
Brooms are an important element of the household and urban maintenance.
The array of utilitarian brooms available is of course endless with or without faults as long as they are not lost.
I then went down a shallow rabbit hole researching brooms. Please see the images above, with a specific mention of the Mauritian brooms sent by D.S. to add to this collection (1) with more research to follow.
Having managed a visit the new V&A Storehouse in East London, I came across the Frankfurt kitchen, the spatial arrangement was of course scientifically clear, drawers and bits to extend for storing and preparing in this much admired arrangement now feeling more like an archivists dream rather than the ultra-domestic culinary stage set. Quite the opposite of the humble Ranch kitchen.
It’s the food that counts at the Ranch, the wobbly mass produced Soviet chairs, the patched floor, the expandable table for prep, and the said radio.
Where was the broom cupboard? Is a broom as essential to the Frankfurt kitchen (2) as it is for the Ranch?
And recently listening to an MA Architecture History presentation by Claudia Vargas Franco entitled ‘Invisiblized Domesticities: 2 Willow Road and the Embodiment of Housework’ (3), again I found myself pondering on the invisible/lost/bewildered brooms.
Where am I going with this?
I’d like to find these brooms.
A few days before leaving the Ranch in the fall, I did a walk around to all the structures and projects as I do to check up before leaving especially during the closing down winter visit. The sauna window needed to be covered as the glass pane was broken. Inside was a screen I made last year for J&R who stayed in the sauna during the 2024 session, and lo and behold the long-handled broom - innocently propped up in the corner behind the outer door. Such an innocent gesture. The broom leaning in such an ordinary way and in such a habitual place. There had been an urgent request to reuse the sauna this past summer, but we hadn’t counted on the neighbor’s cows being on rotation and hindering safe access. A.S. had used the broom to clean the sauna, and left it there as well as the WhatsApp group.
Such a circumstance and coincidental moment overlapping loss.
The other broom and pale appeared during this final trip of 2025 as well - suddenly on the porch. Honestly-
things move and return with such a mischievous air as if the small devils of myth and lore of western Lithuania migrate to our edge of the northeastern woods for bemusement at our mere mortals’ expense.
Just because it’s fun.
Hmm. But then more recently I was told the local story is that firing up the sauna, chases the devils away.
Upon my return to London, I came across the brooms of Joseph Beuys, Silberbesen und Besen ohne Haare (Silver Broom and Broom without Bristles) I believe dated 1972 1st May while at an exhibition of sculpture and drawings at Thaddaeus Ropac entitled ‘Bathtub for a Heroine’. An entirely different context admittedly but suddenly this humble broom was no longer carried just an utilitarian role but it had also become political, environmental and continuously transformative.
These said brooms were not physically found (either) in the exhibition, but represented as a photograph. Two in fact, one 'standard' and one with bristles replaced with felt. A pair.
During the winter trip I took this said long handled re-found broom for my maintenance walks. As the snow began to fall along with the temperatures, it became the snow sweeper, drawings device, uncovering, revealing and plain old being my walking stick as the snow began to drift over the dips and troughs of the ground. (4)
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(1) Thank you to Diya Seepaul for some references and careful feedback. Hugely helpful and there is much more to add, revise/transform on this subject. Glad I was reminded to tone down some of the emotion. Thank you too for the book recomendations:
Johnson-Schlee, S. (2022). Living Rooms. Peninsula Press.
Rebecca May Johnson (2023). Small Fires. Pushkin Press.
With further references of brooms from a traditional Mauritian household:
Balye Koko is for outside. This one is made from coconut leaves.
Balye Fatak is for inside. It’s made from the fatak plant.
(2) Well covered in other texts.
(3) https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/events/2025/nov/setting-table-conversations-across-architectural-history-ma-symposium (accessed 15 Nov 2025, online, while at the Ranch) Look forward to reading the full text. (Her research, often titled "Invisibilized Domesticities: 2 Willow Road and the Embodiment of Housework," was presented at the UCL Bartlett School of Architecture symposium. The work explores the often-overlooked history of domestic labor and the gendered, hidden maintenance that kept the iconic Modernist home running. [1]
(4) See Instagram post @LTRanchSpace c. Jan 2026