Now on a blog (not so near) you: 145 cans of Captain Cookesley’s Consolidated Pea Soup (and other cool old stuff)

Leslie Madsen Brooks — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 22:21:16 -0500

Yep, 100-year-old pea soup.

In academia, we have different names for researchers who love the stuff left behind, items that have passed out of fashion or usefulness or run out of conventional beauty: curators, historians, archaeologists, material culture specialists, collections managers, packrats.

Fortunately for people interested in studying cast-off stuff, denizens of the developed world have been living in an age of mass consumption for more than a century. We've left them plenty of stuff to ponder--including those cans of soup. And fortunately for those of us who are interested in stuff but can't travel to, oh, Antarctica to see artifacts or who have no place to store those porch pillars rescued from a neoclassical home, there are blogs by people who love stuff.

Possibly the most amazing blog about artifacts is The Antarctic Conservation blog, where a group of conservators write about their ongoing conservation of explorer Ernest Shackleton's 100-year-old hut. Recent posts of note include the conservators' attempt to preserve a tin of matches and 145 cans of Captain Cookesley’s Consolidated Pea Soup. These are women with patience, my friends. Not only do they painstakingly conserve each piece, but they've been doing so during the Antarctic winter--in complete (and dangerously frigid) darkness! They also blog about special events at the research stations, and may I just say the accommodations Way Down Under aren't even up to the standards of the San José Marriott (inside joke for BlogHer 2006 attendees)? And the cuisine: Hungry Man burritos? Frozen pizza? Don't even get me started. These women deserve better.

Beaded Victorian whiskbroom holders more your style? The Wood County Historical Center in Ohio has you covered, and is happy to provide you with information about their manufacture and sale.

The Kansas State Historical Society hosts a podcast titled "Cool Things From the Collection." You can hear curators talk about their passions, everything from Mickey Mouse undies to Custer's dumbbell (Yes, that Custer.) All are fascinating listens.

From the Getty, we get updates from curators on their apparently fabulous exhibition on animals in art. And the writing is wonderful. Here's an example:

In the 1740s Clara the rhinoceros sailed from India into the Age of Reason. She arrived in a political world that would soon declare that "all men are created equal" without abolishing slavery or stepping back from the colonizing of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. The West was redefining what it meant to be a human, an individual, and a self in this period. But what, then, did it mean to be an animal in Enlightenment Europe?

Curators and collections managers in Minnesota are wondering what to do with architectural artifacts, pieces of buildings that no longer exist. To get a sense of how these folks see objects differently from the average person, check out Kathy's explanation of how to interpret architectural salvage:

Finials from the porch roof may be used to interpret exterior house decoration, metalurgy, paint, effects of weather on outside metal pieces, construction methods (there are hinges on the finials), bricks may be reset to form a wall or window opening... Interpretation is the key.

Fascinating stuff!

But what about places where there isn't money to sustain a corps of archivists, curators, and historians? Fear not: Molly MacDonald of the Public History blog alerts us to the existence of Archivists without Borders. Molly tells us that

Archivists Without Borders was formed in 1998. Through AWB projects, archivists work collaboratively to offer their professional skills to people in regions where an absence of resources, ongoing warfare, natural disasters or other circumstances have left the region's documentary heritage in jeopardy.

The organization operates with the aim to defend the value of identity, historical memory, the right to information and administrative transparency.

At Material World, Sandra Rozental shares her insights on the fascinating Wellcome collection of artifacts "related to understanding the human body and curing its ailments." On the same site, Mukulika Banerjee tells us a bit of the story of Muslim fashions, including this:

The sheer range of vocabulary to describe the veil, the mind boggling complexity of different styles of veiling (most readers won’t notice the differences in the excellent visuals without the help of the text), the completely different ways in which women who choose to veil are treated in different countries, how the same garment is viewed in totally opposed ways in different contexts, are some of the indications of this diversity. The struggles between the homogenising tendencies of governments, clerics and the influence of global fashion trends on the one hand and the diversifying tendencies among the wearers themselves is a common theme across the volume.

What stuff do you love? And what stories are connected with it?

Leslie Madsen-Brooks helps university faculty improve their teaching. She blogs at The Clutter Museum, Museum Blogging, and The Multicultural Toy Box.

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Now on a blog (not so near) you: 145 cans of Captain Cookesley’s Consolidated Pea Soup (and other cool old stuff)