What is that ring at the bottom of the coffee pot?
So let's first understand that this is from Finland, some 80 years ago. (Yes, even before I was born...) It is my mother's coffee pot. They loved their coffee...
In our early home, we had no modern appliances. However, we had a piping hot wood-burning stove! It was a real treasure to have. It warmed up the kitchen, the food and the water. Yes, we did have hot water—a very limited supply! On the stove below, you see the faucet and the lid of the container on the right? That's where the water was heated. I don't remember that we used it a lot, though.
Actually, this is not exactly the stove I remember we had, but it is similar and will help explain the ring on the coffee pot. You see those "burners" on top of the stove? They all had a number of rings (see picture further down) that could be removed, one at a time, to expose the fire below, according to the size of the cooking implement, thus to speed up the cooking time. So that ring on the coffee pot made the pot rest on the rings while the bottom of the pot was exposed to the fire. Ingenious, right?
When I was old enough, like 20... I was allowed to "operate" the stove and remove the rings, one at a time, to make the opening correspond to the size of the bottom of the pot. There were some kind of grippers to do it with, but it was a serious job, for those rings were hot, baby, hot!
The picture of the stove shows an oven, as well. I think we had one also, but it was never used, for my mother preferred this kind where you burn the wood inside to heat the bricks of the oven, and intuitively my mother seemed to know just when the oven was hot enough—there seemed to be some sort of a sprinkling test—at which point she removed the glowing embers, placed them in the wood burning stove and put on the coffee pot.
I think my mother was a magician... All the deliciousness that came out of the oven... ahh, can't even describe it!
(No, she is not my mother, but looks a lot like her. Especially the apron. She always wore an apron.)
