On the Assayag's drying terrace, the washing hung from steel wires fixed to the concrete beams. Steel wire stretches over time, in the sun and under the weight of wet washing: it has to be tightened again without being untied. That is the job of this small device, still hanging from its hook although the wire has given way.
The tensioner is made of a strip of flat iron bent into a loop. Its two ends, joined, form an eye by which it hung from the hook sealed into the beam. Between the two sides of the loop turns a drum: the end of the washing line was passed through it, then the drum was turned by its square end, with a key; the wire wound in and the line tightened.
The lock is the clever part. The other end of the drum carries a four-lobed head, set in a round hole wider than itself and cut with a notch. The pull of the wire pushes the drum towards the notch; the nearest lobe drops into it and stops the rotation. The line was therefore tightened a quarter turn at a time, and the heavier the washing, the better the lock held. To slacken it, the drum was pushed back against the pull.
The object cannot be dated by itself: this kind of tensioner was used for decades, for fences as well as washing lines. The hook sealed into the concrete and the rust speak of long service; its exact age remains to be established. The story of the laundries and the terrace is told in the article “The communal laundry rooms of the eighth floor”; this album is part of the inventory The Art Deco detail, family “Equipment”.
