In VerMeer’s “Milk Maid” what is that thing on the floor behind her? It could be a simple boot scraper, or a step stool, but it seems to have some sort of gear or “works” inside of it. The patterns of holes in the top also seems to be purposeful.
Anybody know what it is?
It’s a foot warmer.
Give me a minute to google up some more information.
Probably used as a hand warmer. Nicer for the cows.
It has a ceramic bowl for hot coals inside it.
Okay, here are two articles that discuss the foot warmer, adding historical context and interpretive speculation.
1:
2 (this one doesn’t want to generate a preview for some reason):
https://albertis-window.com/2009/09/vermeers-milkmaid-2/
Also, here’s an ebay page selling an antique Dutch foot warmer pretty similar to the one in the painting.
I noticed the pot too.
You probably wouldn’t keep hot coals inside the box, since it’s obviously made of wood.
As improbable as it might seem, I think it’s a chamber pot. Take the pot out of the box, tinkle in it, and put it back in so it’s out of the way.
How is that thing going to warm your feet? Do you take your shoes off and stand on it? Use it as an ottoman?
I don’t see any chair in the picture, so how are you going to sit and put your feet up on it? Is it going to burn your socks if you do?
It’s definitely not a chamber pot. It would be unlikely to have one in the kitchen. They were found in bedrooms primarily, other rooms sometimes, but not usually in the kitchen. Also, it’s too small, and too low. They were designed for squatting over, and a receptacle inside that box would require a very low squat and present a very small target.
A foot warmer like that would have a small container of coals. If you’re standing, you put up one foot, with the other on the floor; more likely you’re sitting and you rest both feet on it. You would have been wearing leather shoes with soft soles, more like slippers, rather than the thick hard soles we’re used to now, so the warmth would have been effectively transferred.
The interpretive question in the painting is whether there’s a suggestion that the foot warmer is for the maid’s use. Typically it would have been for one of the ladies of the house, rather than for a menial worker, so it’s reasonable that it’s awaiting preparation and delivery to the user in the salon, or wherever, one of the tasks the maid has yet to perform. But maybe the maid does plan to use it herself because her feet are chilled from the floor, and nobody else needs it at the moment. Or maybe it has symbolic value, per my second link above.
Whatever the thematic intent, it’s definitely a foot warmer.
Why did you capitalize Vermeer’s name like that?
Huh. So you might warm one foot while the other stays cold. Bummer! 
I wonder if the Milk Maid could just keep it under her skirts to trap the heat and keep her legs warm.
The coals couldn’t have stayed hot very long, so that’s a major design flaw right there. And all the heat could do is rise through those vents.
I have a little space heater keeping my feet and legs warm while I type this, but it has a fan and is powered by electricity. That’s Progress, with a capital “P”!
As for the chamber pot theory, I wouldn’t mind having one for tinkling in every room. When you gotta go, you gotta go!
When not in use, the foot warmer would often be kept in the kitchen, because that’s where there would be an all-day supply of hot coals. When the foot-warmer is sent for, you fill it from the stove and bring it upstairs to whoever wants it. Therefore, you keep it near the stove.
(Even if the foot warmer is wanted at a time of day when there are fires lighting elsewhere in the house, you probably fill it from the oven in the kitchen — you don’t want to risk spilling ash or cinders in the drawing room or in a bedroom.)
If she scooted around like a Dalek that would be very doable. Smoke or flame from combusting petticoats would add a novelty steampunk vibe as she skittered across the flagstones.
Typo.
Thank you so much! I guess the red bit must be the bowl sitting inside. Very interesting.
Actually, I was thinking of her standing as she works, the way she is in the painting. But skittering along the flagstones would be cool too.
I just thought of a joke involving skirts in a kitchen, but I won’t tell it here. 
I’m convinced it was for her hands. It must’ve been very cold milking cows up there.
They certainly didn’t want the milk house very warm.
So barn to milk house. Naked hands. (Not sure you can milk a cow with mittens on, 
).
So, hand warmer.
There are actual articles from expert historians on what that is in the third post. Why do you think you know better than them?
I went to Art School for college.
We discussed it in class.
I don’t know the truth of the matter.
The first hits on Google don’t know what those people did back then. It’s not the word of God.
Never read anything that the artist himself said it was for her feet.
The milk maids did not walk around like Daleks with boxes held between their knees. I don’t think they had time to sit with their feet up on a heater, either. Milking is time sensitive.
Unless we have a time machine it’s all just speculation.
That is my speculation.
Jan Steen was a dutch contemporary and has several paintings showing them in action.
This page has some discussion and examples of Dutch foot warmers.
More importantly, Mr Steen is showing Dutch bagpipes in action!
I thought that was a big mosquito!