

This is a page of assorted parts – gizmos, “contrivances,” what-have-yous – for doing things in machines. It’s from a catalog of such bits and pieces from 1890 called The engineer’s sketch-book of mechanical movements, devices, appliances, contrivances and details : employed in the design and construction of machinery for every purpose : classified and arranged for reference for the use of engineers, mechanical draughtsmen, managers, mechanics, inventors, patent agents, and all engaged in the mechanical arts, with nearly two thousand illustrations, descriptive notes and memoranda, which I found on archive.org.
I don’t believe these were parts for sale so much as they were just ideas for things that did things. If you were inventing a washing machine, you might use the parts on the top left part of this page. The first figure is a “Coal Washer,” but the rest all have labels like “Cylindrical perforated drum, with internal fixed spiral flange which causes the material to travel at a fixed rate of motion,” and “A contrivance to keep a continuous circulation in a boiling tub or copper in which clothes, &c., are washed.”
The bottom right figures are all “Windmills and Feathering Wheels,” which di things like “drive a
vertical worm inside the chimney cap to maintain an upward draught, by employing the wind as a motive power.”
If it ever seemed like the Victorian steam-powered aesthetic had a clearly defined visual language, then this was a dictionary for it.