Window Blinds

Most people would never really stop to think, I wonder who invented window blinds. After all, why should they? In fact window blinds have been with us from before recorded history and be one of the oldest functional commodities after some bright spark invented clothing.
One of the oldest recorded mentions of window blinds would date back to Egyptian times where desert dwellers wet cotton fabrics and hung them at the openings of their tents to create shade and to also cool the air. We should claim that this was the first invention known for air conditioning as well as window blinds!

The Egyptians were a clever lot as they also wove bamboo sticks together to create bamboo shades. At the same time or earlier the Chinese were doing the same and are still doing it today, many thousand of years later. An old invention that is so perfect in simple design that it has hardly been altered for thousands of years!

If you asked someone who made venetian window blinds you would either get the old joke about poking you in the eye or that they came from the united states after the second world war, remember all those detective movies in downtown Chicago looking through the slats of venetian window blinds .It is true that in the 50’s metal Venetian window blinds really took off in the UK (people actually took out hire purchase agreements to be able to purchase their 2” metal Venetian window blinds).

In actual fact wooden Venetian window blinds were with us long before metal Venetian window blinds and long before that it was the Japanese that invented Venetian window blinds in the royal courts where they made them for privacy of the royal household and made them from the finest bamboos.
In Europe, those metal Venetian window blinds were pioneered by a chap called Faber in Denmark, who used to travel around the area on his bicycle selling his Venetian window blinds. His company is now owned by Velux, one of the most successful Danish companies manufacturing roof windows and window blinds.

Do you remember those westerns with the sheriff’s office or the telegraph office? I know that almost for certain that will conjure up the image of plain Holland cotton roller window blinds that someone flicks the bottom tassels and the window blinds clatters up the window or the sheriff rushes in through the door and the roller window blinds on the window clatter against the glass.

Why are window blinds more popular in colder, darker northern Europe countries than in the sunnier climates of the south? You would think it would be the other way round and yet the Scandinavians absolutely adore their roller window blinds and in Scotland window blinds are even more popular than in England, they always have been.
Well the simple reason is that in the hotter sunnier climes of for example Spain the widows are smaller (to control heat) and they use outsides shutters to control the heat before it enters the building. The windows are open more to allow air to circulate and window blinds would get in the way. In the north we have larger closed windows and window blinds insulate as well as shade and provide the perfect solution to our interior requirements.

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