The fullery at IX-10, 2 was used to wash and process textiles. It was installed in an earlier atrium house facing Via di Nola.
Recent excavations have shown that the building had Samnite origins, but during the first century AD it was extensively altered to accommodate a laundry, with work counters and vats used to treat, wash and probably dye textiles.
The conversion formed part of a wider reorganisation of Insula 10. A new wall separated the atrium area from the former peristyle, while spaces farther to the rear were adapted to new uses.
The fullery was closely connected with the neighbouring House with Bakery at IX-10, 1. Research has shown that a water pipe ran through the complex, linking its different productive activities.
Archaeologists have suggested that Aulus Rustius Verus may have controlled both production units in Insula 10—the bakery at doorway 1 and the laundry at doorway 2—through freedmen and other members of his familia. Electoral inscriptions and other evidence from the excavation support this attribution, but it is best presented as a possibility rather than treated as certain in the title.
