I blogged before about how people wore night caps well into the nineteenth century, until central heating became more available. Wealthy homes might have a fireplace in every room, but imagine how much work it must have been to clean out, lay, and maintain multiple fires in multiple grates. And fireplaces were pretty inefficient—blazing hot close up, but inadequate for warming much of a room even a few feet away.

Often this contraption was used. Ever see one?

They were called “pole screens,” and they shielded a person’s face from the heat of the fire. According to David Durant’s Where Queen Elizabeth Slept and What the Butler Saw, the screen could be raised or lowered on the pole, and protected one’s delicate (or heavily made-up) complexion. You didn’t want your waxy makeup melting, or your patches sliding off.

In the painting below, there’s a fire screen on the left, and a room screen in the background, right–these served a very real purpose, too. They protected people from drafts.