Brazier

Despite risks in burning charcoal on open fires, braziers were widely adopted for domestic heating, particularly and somewhat more safely used (namely in unglazed, shuttered-only buildings) in the Spanish-speaking world.

Fernando de Alva Cortés Ixtlilxochitl noted that Tezozomoc, the Tlatoani of the Tepanec city of Azcapotzalco, slept between two braziers because he was so old that he produced no natural heat.

Many cultures developed their own variants of a low table, with a heat source underneath and blankets to capture the warmth: the kotatsu in Japan, the korsi in Iran, the sandali in Afghanistan,[5] and the foot stove in northern Europe.

In Spain the brasero continued to be one of the main means of heating until the early 20th century; Gerald Brenan described in his memoir South from Granada its widespread habit in the 1920s of placing dying embers of a brazier beneath a cloth-covered table to keep the legs and feet of the family warm on winter evenings.

Braziers were common on industrial picket lines, largely replaced by protest marches and rallies, and a newspaper casts strikes as more white collar as a further reason for their decline.