Reading Response: The Future of Material Culture

Future material culture studies could go on many paths, as this week’s readings attest. Whether it’s integrating material culture into scholarly articles, bringing theory to material culture, or taking the study of material culture outside of history, these readings show some possible paths.

Cary Carson’s “Material Culture History: The Scholarship Nobody Knows” reflected on the state of material culture studies. Carson points out how material culture scholars tend to import the theoretical foundations of their ideas. Carson places scholars of material culture within the larger umbrella of scholars of American history. Material culture studies has been an isolated field and I appreciate the idea of inclusion. From our past readings, Ulrich is a good example of this type of history: using material culture to tell history and not worrying about crossing disciplinary boundaries.

“The Gendered Environment of the Corporate Workplace, 1880-1930” Angel Kwolek-Folland provides an example of how traditional historical scholarship could integrate material culture studies. Kwolek-Folland concludes that the structures of office buildings reinforced domestic gender roles between male and female workers even when doing so went against the ideal work environment. The parallels between public work life and private family life shows how cultures operate in seemingly different spaces.

Devon Elliott et al.’s “New Old Things” questioned how historians could collaborate with other fields and find new, interdisciplinary ways to study material culture. This research utilized 3-d printers and model-making to replicate historic magic tricks. While I think that 3-d printing is a fad at the moment, I loved the way that this group approached a historical question about senses and communication. The idea that doing research can also be like playing, and might involve failure is powerful.

As much as I tried to give it a chance, Bill Brown’s “Commodity Nationalism and the Lost Object” did not do anything for me. On one hand, I think its great that high-theory people are getting into looking at material culture. On the other hand, the public historian in me despises Brown’s writing style. Brown studies the novelty collectible items that proliferated after 9/11 and relates these items to the issues of nationalized commodities. Brown’s sources are almost entirely theoreticians, rarely are they people who produce or consume the material in question.

One thing this weeks readings did was highlight the divide between academic historians and public historians who work outside of the academe. Carson emphasized that material culture scholars need to be involved in telling a national story. I believe this task is one that public historians dealing with material culture are fit to try. Reading Brown’s article, I get a sense that the theory which grounds much social and cultural history is narrow when considering the whole of human culture. “New Old Things” offers a good lesson for new material culture studies, namely that it may involve collaborating and looking outside of the theoretical base that history offers.


Readings

Brown, Bill. “Commodity Nationalism and the Lost Object,” in Hasselstein, et al., eds, The Pathos of Authenticity: American Passions of the Real, 33-52. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 2010.

Carson, Cary. “Material Culture History: The Scholarship Nobody Knows” in American Material Culture: The Shape of the Field, 401-428. Knoxville: U. of Tennessee Press, 1997.

Elliott, Devon, Robert MacDougall, William J. Turkel, “New Old Things: Fabrication, Physical Computing, and Experiment in Historical Practice,” Canadian Journal of Communication 37, no.1 (April 2012): 121-128.

Kwolek-Folland, Angel. “The Gendered Environment of the Corporate Workplace, 1880-1930,” in Katherine Martinez and Kenneth L. Ames, eds. The Material Culture of Gender: The Gender of Material Culture, 157-179. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997.

Exhibit Caption, Final

Here is the final edited version of my exhibit caption:

This horn supposedly belonged to Edward Braddock, a British General in the French and Indian War. Robert Tempest acquired this horn after Braddock’s death in 1755. Engraving their names and adding metal fixtures, five generations of Tempests turned this horn into a canvas documenting their personal connection to colonial America. 

I kept to a straightforward, chronological history of the horn that reflects back to colonial America at the end. Referencing how the Tempests altered the horn and used it to connect them to the past brings in the commemorative aspects of the horn. (And, it's exactly 50 words. Yay!)

Exhibit Caption Selections

Having made all the selections, there were a few things that stood out. Universally, I want the caption to tell me something that I cannot say about the object from looking at it. This might be one of those ‘I’ll know it when I see it’ things, but I try to point those moments out in the explanations. I also want the caption to tell me something about the object’s background: when it was made, who made it, or where it came from. Because all of our objects commemorate different things and were made in different times for different reasons this is especially important.

Chelsea
2. A Collector’s Item
During the Bicentennial boom, manufacturers produced America-themed items to market to the patriotic public of the mid-1970s. This McCormick Distilling Company decanter belonged to a set of seven Revolutionary War figurines called the Patriot Series, including: Betsy Ross, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Paul Revere, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson.

This caption tells me where and when the decanter originated. Also, knowing that this is just one of the set and seeing the list of who else got a decanter makes me imagine what those others look like.

Stephen
2. This commemorative block from the HMS Minden, the ship where Francis Scott Key was believed to have composed The Star Spangled Banner was a high status commemorative object. President Lincoln was known to have had a cane made of the same material.

I like the way that this caption immediately identifies with the object and lets the reader know the object was once part of a ship. The detail about Lincoln is novel and gives readers the impression of how significant this type of object is to people.

Lyell
3.  The Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, engraved on this badge worn at a 1941 Elks Lodge convention, took on increasingly symbolic roles leading up to the country’s participation in World War II. Fittingly, the badge eventually entered the collection of the late Manfred Anson, an escapee from Nazi Germany who cherished the values associated with these symbols of freedom.

This caption ties itself together nicely. I like how it goes from symbols-of-freedom, pre-war, during war, then back to symbols-of-freedom. The information related to the collector gives me background I would never get just looking at the object.

Kelsey
1.  This commemorative flag resembled miniature flags sold at Independence Hall in 1898 by Betsy Ross’s granddaughters.  The miniature flags sold at Independence Hall helped raise donations for the preservation of the American Flag house, where it is believed that Betsy Ross created the first American flag during the Revolutionary War. This commemorative flag celebrated the Betsy Ross story and that moment in American women’s history.

I was really torn with this one. I liked #3 and how it references the bicentennial, but ended up choosing this one because I would never get the Betsy Ross connection on my own. I like the way the back-story is more narrative-based. Women are also lacking in all of our objects so we need this one to represent.

Sharron
1.  Taking a drink from this porcelain gem was not even a remote consideration in the 18th century.  This commemorative pitcher was a physical way of memoralizing American Independence.  Crafted in North Staffforshire, England almost exclusively to meet American demand, this symbolic pitcher celebrates both American Independence and the brotherly bond between America’s first President, George Washington and his French protégé Marquis de Lafayette – a bond that lasted until Washington’s death in 1799.

I chose this object because it covers where the object was created. The irony of England manufacturing American goods is not overstated, but also is clear for people who read it and gives them something to muse over while looking at the pitcher.

Reading Response: African American Material Culture

As this weeks readings attest to, figuring out how to study African American material culture first involves deciding what it means to label a person African American and what forms of material culture historians are studying. Traditional questions in the field revolve around whether or to what extent African American material culture is derived from Africa, the effects of slavery on African American material culture, and the development of folk crafts outside of Westernized markets.

Theodore Landsmark’s historiographical essay "Comments on African American Contributions to American Material Life" provides a decent summary of the scholarship of African American material culture. A point that Landsmark drives home when discussing future trends is the complexity of African American culture. Different circumstances and cultures in the north and south influenced the development of diverse material cultures that can all be called African American.

Jonathan Prown adapts this nuanced conception of what it means to be African American and how the influences material culture. In “The Furniture of Thomas Day” Prown investigate African American furniture maker Thomas Day. Day’s furniture has much in common with contemporary urban furniture making traditions, and it is tough for Prown to distinguish a distinct African American touch. Only with documentary sources Prown is able to string together a story that involves Day’s African American identity. 

In “Suckey’s Looking Glass: African Americans as Consumers,” Ann Martin analyzed store logs recording African American purchases, particularly the purchase of ribbon and a mirror by a slave named Suckey. Martin looks at how slaves interacted with the market, how they paid for their goods, and the types of things they bought. For Martin, the store is a particularly important place because it a metaphorical mirror of society. The things that slaves bought with what little money they had shows how they worked to foster an identity outside of slavery.

Both Martin and Prown partially based their search for African American meanings in material culture on the material in question having some connection with African traditions. For Prown it was if the form of the furniture had an African source. For Martin it was if the meaning of Suckey’s mirror had anything to do with African spiritualism. With limited success, both authors downplay this traditional perspective, instead highlighting how the material complicates what we think we know about African American culture.

For my forth article, I chose Debra Reid’s "Furniture Exempt from Seizure: African-American Farm Families and Their Property in Texas, 1880s-1930s." This article focuses on the material life of African American farmers. One aspect of this article that sets it apart is that it is from the perspective of agricultural history and considers material culture in a more expansive light than is typical. The material acquisitions of farm families included land and livestock in addition to furniture, equipment, and houses. Reid looks at how the laws and treatment of land-holding African American farmers affected the way that they acquired property, mostly in areas with poor soil far from rail lines, and how their material circumstances changed, such as transitioning from a hearth to cook stoves.

Reid’s article in not as nuanced as Martin’s or Prown’s, but she does get at an aspect of African American material culture history that I believe is part of the reason why these studies are so rare outside slavery studies. Reid discusses how in the 1920s and 1930s, especially with New Deal photography, the farms in question became symbols of poverty and an absence of material goods. Additionally, a farmer’s understanding of their property and material surrounding is specific to their circumstances. Perhaps, when Prown lamented not having analogous research to cite, what he really needed was analogous research that considers class and circumstances over ethnicity.

Readings

Landsmark, Theodore C. "Comments on African American Contributions to American Material Life." Winterthur Portfolio 33, no. 4 (1998): 261-282.

Martin, Ann Smart. “Suckey’s Looking Glass: African Americans as Consumers,” in Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia, 173-193. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2008.

Prown, Jonathan. "The Furniture of Thomas Day: A Reevaluation." Winterthur Portfolio 33, no. 4 (1998): 215-229.

Reid, Debra A. "Furniture Exempt from Seizure: African-American Farm Families and Their Property in Texas, 1880s-1930s." Agricultural History 80, no. 3 (2006): 336-357.

I was between a few articles for African American material culture. Ultimately I chose the one about agricultural history because it offers a different perspective of material culture than what we typically see. The other articles were:

Klassen, Pamela E. "The Robes of Womanhood: Dress and Authenticity among African American Methodist Women in the Nineteenth Century." Religion and American Culture 14, no. 1 (2004): 39-82.

Mullins, Paul R. "Race and the Genteel Consumer: Class and African-American Consumption, 1850-1930." Historical Archaeology 33, no. 1 (1999): 22-38.

Exhibit Captions

Caption 1

This horn supposedly belonged to Edward Braddock, British General during the French and Indian War. Braddock died in battle after disregarding his colonial compatriots’ advice. Acquiring the horn, the Tempest family added the metal fixtures and their own names. In doing so this Philadelphia family connected themselves to the colonial period when Americans began developing an independent identity.

Caption 1 – Thoughts

For this caption, I wanted to get a sense of the larger, national narrative in which the Tempest Powder Horn fits. This caption relays the traditional interpretation of Braddock and the French and Indian War. The horn serves as a link between the family and the larger narrative. For visitors this mediation could be a way to think about the relationships between people and famous historical figures and begin a conversation about why these relationships exist. If the overall exhibit focuses on commemorating the founding of the new nation and we were organizing it by chronology of the event remembered, than this would be a potential label. The chronology in this case would go from the French and Indian War to the War of 1812.

Caption 2

In 1834, Robert Tempest added his name to a new silver band on this recently inherited powder horn. According to family legend, the horn belonged to British General Edward Braddock who died in the French and Indian War. By altering the horn Tempest family members claimed their place in the story of America’s colonial foundations.

Caption 2 – Thoughts

With this caption I wanted get a little more personal and use the experience of one Robert Tempest as a way to relate to the visitors. Often, families will have stories of objects that are meaningful, regardless of whether or not they are true. The feeling of inheriting one of these objects can be like owning a little bit of history. In this way visitors can access the object through an individual and understand commemoration by feeling what is like to think about family and personal histories. This caption leaves the horn’s history before the Tempests acquired it and its elaborate decorations as mysteries that the visitor can ponder if they wish. I imagine that this would be an appropriate label if we did the exhibit about how commemorating the founding of America comes from different sources. The powder horn, in this scenario, would be about families and individuals remembering personal histories in ways that thy feel are significant to the nation as a whole. Other object come from companies, clubs, and official organizations.

Caption 3

Robert Tempest acquired this powder horn in the 1750s and passed it to his son. Five generations of Tempests owned this horn, among them weavers, soldiers, and silversmiths. Reportedly belonging to notorious British General Edward Braddock in the French and Indian War, this horn became a canvas for one Philadelphia family to create their own legacy in the new American nation.

Caption 3 – Thoughts

This caption focuses on the Tempest family as a whole and the question of what it means that they continuously used and altered the powder horn. Like Caption 2, this caption relies on the visitor’s sense of family as an entry point for relating to the powder horn. The idea that the family tried to write out Braddock, commonly made out to be a fool in the historical record, and insert themselves could be a good conversation point for thinking about how different people can relate to past figures and events when they do not feel any connections. If the exhibit focused on how people use commemoration as a way to construct their histories than this caption would fit in.

Final Thoughts

A challenge I had with beginning to write these exhibit captions was deciding on a main subject and action. The horn has so many names on it and potentially all of these names tell a story. How to roll commemoration in with it and make sure that the writing is relevant to the mission of Independence Hall and the theme of building a new nation added more challenges. Doing this in fifty words is definitely more difficult, and took way more time, than I originally assumed.

To fit in with the mission of Independence Hall and the other artifacts I tried to use Braddock as a way to link the colonial period and the French and Indian War to the colonists beginning to view themselves as somehow independent from Britain. This connection in combination with the ways the Tempest’s engraved their own names on the horn provides a good platform to think about how people commemorate the founding of the nation. One thing that sets this particular artifact apart from the others is that specific individuals initiated the commemorating on the Tempest Powder Horn. Most of the artifacts were either mass produced, manufactured, purchased, or created for profit.

Each caption places the Tempests, Braddock, and commemoration in a particular relationship with slightly different connotations. Right now I like Caption 3 because it give a sense of the family and the generations that the horn lived through. Additionally, Caption 3 focuses on how, in addition to commemorating the colonial era, the alterations allowed the family to create a legacy. For thinking about commemoration, this type of active history making would be a useful conversation point.

Reading Response: Theory and Material Culture

This week’s readings tackled theory and material culture. While the writers use different aspects of material culture to link to theory, they all highlight the difficulty of theorizing things. Most theory focuses on abstract ideas whereas things are tangible. The benefit of these writings is that they can bring material culture studies to a wider academic audience.

Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” traces changes in art that resulted from technological innovations. As material culture studies, this piece is a great example of how different types of material culture affect one another and how society as a whole uses, reacts to, and develops alongside these changes. I admire Benjamin’s writing, in particular the way that he places his subject clearly within the present in which he wrote. Reproduction and questions of new technologies are as relevant today as they were in 1936. The themes of presenting and disseminating information and the blurry line between authorship and readership have particular importance for current cultural studies of the Internet.

Jean Baudrillard analyses the whole atmosphere of domestic spaces and interprets the symbolic meaning of the stuff within. This reading is more difficult to grasp than the others. Unlike Benjamin, who pinpointed the historic moment in which he wrote, Baudrillard is abstract and does not place himself in historical context. His theory of material culture ultimately highlights a constructivist perspective and looks for the ways people manipulate their surroundings to appear natural. This theory involves the scholar taking a more detached view a material than the other writings, which focus on material that is living.

Daniel Miller’s “Theories of Things” directly confronts the difficulties to theorizing about material culture and how humans relate to stuff. I am attracted to the framing theory. This theory acknowledges the stuff that humans interact with as being integral parts of daily life but also explains how these things become so normalized as to be invisible. This explanation of why stuff is sometimes invisible helps me understand why lots of theorists tend to disregard the material world. Miller’s idea that objects make people is also thought provoking and could relate to the Tempest Powder Horn because the horn’s owners (after the first) all grew up with the thing before it became theirs. In a sense, this approach gives agency to objects and takes it away from people.

Glenn Adamson’s “The Case of the Missing Footstool” focuses on how historians can use the gaps in the material record as ways to deepen historical interpretations. Adamson studied the footstool, common from the eighteenth century, but absent before. Adamson offers a few hypotheses, but the most effective is his nuanced interpretation of how the adoption of the footstool could represent a normalizing of exotic cultures.

I am not sure which approach best aides my interpretation of the Tempest Powder Horn. Despite its functional form, the horn is primarily decorative. I like Adamson’s method for looking at a classification of objects, but do not think it applies to the horn. Miller and Benjamin offer me the most. In terms of changing technologies, the horn’s meaning likely changed when guns were manufactured without the need for separate powder horns. This point in time may have helped determine why the horn was altered and revered in the later generations of the family.

Readings: 

Adamson, Glenn. “The Case of the Missing Footstool: Reading the Absent Object” in Karen Harvey, ed., History and Material Culture: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources. London and New York: Routledge, 2009.

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Hannah Arendt, ed., Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. New York: Schocken Books, 1969.

Baudrillard, Jean. “The Functional System, or Object Discourse,” in The System of Objects. London: Verso, 2005: 11-69.

Miller, Daniel. “Theories of Things,” in Stuff. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010: 54-78.

Local History and the Tempest Powder Horn

The Tempest Powder Horn is engraved with the names of five Tempests: Robert Tempest, Robert Tempest II, Robert Tempest III, James R. Tempest, and Robert Tempest IV. In terms of physical location there are two places that stand out as being important to the Tempest’s story. The first is the land on the northwest corner of Fifth and Walnut. Currently this land is the park ground behind Independence Hall, formerly, the State House Yard. Before then it was the residence of Robert Tempest and family. The second important location is the Slate Roof House, or William Penn’s Mansion. When Robert Tempest IV donated the Tempest Powder Horn to the city he donated it along with the wainscoting from the Slate Roof House. The Slate Roof House was Robert Tempest III’s workplace for over fifty years. Both of these locations were demolished within the Tempest family's lifetime.

I went to both of these locations, initially to sketch them there, but being rained out, I ended up taking pictures. The pictures I printed on plain copy paper and transferred to velum drawing paper. I then drew ghost images of the buildings that have since disappeared. 

The first location I visited was the corner of Fifth and Walnut. 

Tempest House Ghost, northwest corner of Fifth and Walnut, park behind Independence Hall, mixed media

In April of 1743 Robert Tempest was a plush-weaver in Philadelphia who had recently moved his business to Strawberry Alley. A few months after moving shop, Robert Tempest married Rachel Hinds at Christ Church. Rachel’s father, Robert Hinds, worked as a bricklayer on the State House and later acquired two lots on the corner of Fifth and Walnut that backed up to the State House Wall. In 1746 Robert Hinds gifted these two lots, and the three houses he built on them, to his daughter and her husband. Rachel gave birth to their son, Robert Tempest II on Christmas day that year.[1]

In 1760 the Pennsylvania Assembly began the process of acquiring the lots that extended to Walnut Street and on the 10^th of September 1762, the Assembly trustees purchased the Tempest’s land for £1400. The Tempests continued to live at Fifth and Walnut, paying rent to the Assembly through 1764, the first date that appears on the horn and the year the year I suspect Robert Tempest passed away. By the 1770s the Pennsylvania assembly cleared the square around the State House, leaving no trace of the Tempest’s home.[2]

Close up view of the square around the State House (later Independence Square). The map on the left is from 1762. This map depicts buildings in the shaded regions. L is the State House, the thin line to the below of L is the State House Wall and the building on the corner of Fifth and Walnut (lower right of the square) is the Tempest’s home. Map created by Nicholas Scull. Source:  Philadelphia GeoHistory Network, http://www.philageohistory.org/rdic-images/view-image.cfm/FF-Maps_1762. The map on the right is from 1796 and depicts the square around the State House clear. Map created by John Hills. Source: Philadelphia GeoHistory Network, http://www.philageohistory.org/rdic-images/view-image.cfm/237-MP-019

Visiting this location today, the square looks as if it has always been an open park space. For the building that I drew I looked at a variety of colonial prints of Philadelphia. I chose simple, standard architectural features. I am guessing that the house is a double by deduction, but really I do not know what the building looked like. I do know that this location was the first home of the powder horn.

The second location I visited is the Welcome Park, formerly the site of the Slate Roof House.

Slate Roof House Ghost, currently Welcome Park, corner of 2nd and Sansom (formerly Norris Alley), mixed media

Robert Tempest III was the grandson of Robert Tempest. At 25 Robert Tempest III went into business as a jeweler and silversmith with Joseph Marshall. Marshal and Tempest set up shop in the Norris Alley wing of the Slate Roof House in 1813. They remained there until approximately 1865, when the house was no longer usable. It was demolished in 1867.[3]

Steroeview titled Slate roof house, 2nd &Sansom, photographed by John Moran in 1864. The bottom is a close up of the stereoview that shows a very faint sign for “Marshall and Tempest” above the doorway on the left wing of the building.Source: Free Library of Philadelphia Historic Images of Philadelphia Collection, libwww.freelibrary.org/hip/ecw.cfm?ItemID=pdc100025

In addition to being a craftsman Robert Tempest III was an active volunteer with the Hibernia Fire Engine Company, eventually becoming President of that organization in 1851, and was a Director of the Union Burial Ground Society in Southwark. Both Robert Tempest III and the first Robert Tempest were craftsmen who also dedicated their time to the city, one as a constable, and the other as a fireman. For Robert Tempest III, the powder horn that his family owned since colonial times was an important link to the past and to his grandfather. I believe that Robert Tempest III was responsible for engraving the names of his father and grandfather along with their death dates, the newer silver and brass modifications to the horn, and for continuing the tradition by engraving it for his son, James. The yearning to hold tightly to a vision of Philadelphia that was quickly fading could have been the catalyst for Robert Tempest III to modify the horn and directly connect himself to a colonial past. That Robert Tempest III’s business occupied the former residence of William Penn further displays the desire to connect with the past.[4]

The Welcome Park today is a quiet, lonely feeling open square. There is a historical narrative along the south wall of the park relaying William Penn's story, but very little afterward. For my ghost house I used later images of the house after different additions had been made in the nineteenth century instead of the model version in the middle of the park. My main reference image was from 1854, courtesy of the Library Company found here.

Though the destruction of both of these places destroyed important pieces of the Tempest's family history, neither was premature. The first Robert Tempest had passed away before the assembly cleared his home. Robert Tempest III was 78 and no longer working at the time the Slate Roof House was demolished. Once Robert Tempest III modified the horn, he established a precedent for succeeding generation to do the same. Robert Tempest IV inherited the horn after his father James Tempest passed away suddenly.  In 1899, Robert Tempest IV broke the precedent and gifted the horn to the city. By 1907 he had left Philadelphia altogether. Why Robert Tempest IV left the city, breaking the family’s connection to local history is another chapter in the story of the Tempest Powder Horn.

Notes:

[1] For Robert Tempest's occupation and location see The Pennsylvania Gazette, April 21, 1743, page 4; For marriage documents see Pennsylvania Archives, Series 2, Volume VIII, Marriage Record of Christ Church, Philadelphia.1709-1806, 133; for information about their home at Fifth and Walnut see Charles H. Browning, “The State House Yard, and Who Owned it First after William Penn,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 40, no. 1 (1916): 85-103.

[2] For purchase of land see Browning, 101; For rent documents see Pennsylvania Archives, Series 8, Volume VII, Votes of Assembly 1767, 6047; also see Charlene Mires, Independence Hall in American Memory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 10.

[3] Westcott, Thompson, The Historic Mansions and Buildings of Philadelphia: With Some Notice of Their Owners and Occupants (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1877) for Slate Roof House see 37-55, for Tempest see 55. http://books.google.com/books?id=PTUWAAAAYAAJ&pg

[4] For involvement in Union Burial Ground Society see Public Ledger, December 8, 1842, page 2. For involvement with Hibernia Fire Engine Company see “City Items,” North American, February 24, 1851, page 1.

Reading Response: Independence Hall

Charlene Mires’ Independence Hall in American Memory tells a holistic history of Independence Hall. Mires stated, “If we organize history around buildings, the past we perceive may be limited by the boundaries that we establish.” (Mires, 55) The current historical interpretation of Independence Hall is specific to the American Revolution and Revolutionary ideology represented in documents such as the Declaration of Independence. Mires argues that Independence Hall’s whole history has shaped out memory of it and determined the things that we have forgotten.

The first third of the book was a little slow for me. Mires uses a lot of space pointing out ironies and contradictions between the popular vision of American Revolutionary ideals and the history. As a reader, I do not react well to an author telling me that something is surprising when the surprise is based on an assumption that I only believe in the most simplified, glorious version of the American Revolution. I would rather the author just tell me the history and let my surprise come naturally. Thankfully, Mires did this once she got beyond the revolution and delved more into the memory and interpretation of Independence Hall. Mires told this part of the story in such a way as to place the current popular interpretation of Independence Hall within context. Studying memory, it may have been easier and more natural for Mires to write the story after the Revolution, the prime focus of memory around the site, than to write about the earlier history.

One of the most effective aspects Mires’ story begins with Chapter 4, “Shrine: Slavery, Nativism, and the Forgotten History of the Nineteenth Century.” In this chapter, Mires begins the story of how Philadelphians used Independence Hall (and later mostly the liberty bell) as a place to support their personal view of freedom and liberty. The people that used Independence Hall included nationalists, labor workers, European immigrants, and African Americans. Late in the nineteenth century, after the centennial, the vision of Independence Hall became dominated by idealist interpretations of the Revolution and nation’s founding. This transition, that shows active changes in interpretations, adds the depth to the story that Mires set about to tell.

The other part of the book that caught my interest, and is relevant to our class project, is Mires’ account of the development of the museum at Independence Hall. Robert Tempest IV gave the Tempest Powder Horn to Independence Hall at this time. The background to the collection the Mires gives is very useful for putting Tempest IV’s gift in context.  

All in all, despite the rocky beginning, this book contains a lot of thought provoking history. For our upcoming visit to Independence Hall, the variety of activity that has gone into thinking about the meaning of this building since Lafayette’s visit in 1826 will put the current interpretation into a wider perspective.

Reading

Mires, Charlene. Independence Hall in American Memory. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

Readings Response: Imagined Histories and Spaces

This weeks reading grappled with social constructions. Upton and Weyeneth looked at race, Belk and Wallendorf, gender. Ulrich provides necessary insight by using a particular myth about colonial New England as her inspiration to tell history.

Dell Upton’s “White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth-Century Virginia,” analyzed the ways the planter class and the slave class acquired different perceptions, perspectives, and uses of the landscape. Upton views the landscape and an assemblage of realities that combine formal architecture, such as the placement of planter houses in juxtaposition to slave quarters, and daily activities, such as churchgoing and farming. The only parts of Upton’s article where I raised my eyebrows wanting more were when he tried to equivocate the poor white landscape with that of slaves. Despite his broad treatment of race, Upton’s piece was about slave societies that exist on large plantations and I would have preferred that he embraced this specificity.

Robert Weyeneth takes landscape analysis forward and looked at the different ways that people used architectural spaces to enforce and imagine segregation. Weyeneth’s ideas about temporal separation and malleable partitions provide a fascinating set of challenges to the study of landscapes. The idea that certain physical spaces are shared confronts the more conventional stereotypes of segregated schools and bathrooms. For a public historian interpreting a streetcar, it can be difficult to describe what happens in the middle of the bus. However, that interpretation has far more potential to spark visitors’ imaginations about what it must have been like to live in a segregated society than simply knowing that blacks were at the back and whites were in the front.

Belk and Wallendorf’s “Of Mice and Men” looked to gender instead of race. They ask if collecting and collections are gendered. I was intrigued by their ideas, but I am not certain I buy them. The authors showed that individuals are likely to reflect their gender identity in the things that they collect, an important consideration for looking at collections from individuals. I am curious about how mission-based collecting at museums compares with idiosyncratic collections. Something about this use of gender in history does not sit well with me. I preferred how Ulrich adopted an imagined conception of the past, and used gender when it was relevant.

I absolutely loved The Age of Homespun! Ulrich’s writing contains enough storytelling to get lost in her characters, but enough history to produce reflection. Beginning with the 1851 sermon by Horace Bushnell that coined the term “age of homespun” and painted an idyllic vision of colonial New England, Ulrich moved her narrative backwards to the eighteenth century and searches for the roots of the myth. In “Willy-Nilly, Niddy-Noddy,” Ulrich looked at cross reels, or niddy-noddys. This tool, used to create a skein and measure the amount of yarn produced, is an important part of homespun production. Ulrich looked at the important of homespun in reference to the non-importation movement, but also went further and interpreted niddy-noddys as meaningful for women who claimed rights to their own labor.

Ulrich’s “A Bed Rug and a Silk Embroidery,” compares the textile work and diaries of two women, one from a patriot family, and one from a royalist. Despite their politics, the most important aspects of the stories are personal, how these women dealt with their daily struggles. Ulrich highlighted the shifting roles of women and women’s place in the wage economy through telling these two stories. All of these readings use history to confront social constructions. Looking at race and gender often involves articulating our current understandings of these ideas and trying to figure out how they have changed. Part of why I liked the Ulrich reading so much was that she began with the myth then strove to understand it and challenge it, all the while acknowledging that the myth of rural New England is ingrained into American culture.


Here is a video on how to use a niddy-noddy to make a skein:

Readings

Belk, Russell W. and Melanie Wallendorf, “Of Mice and Men: Gender Identity and Collecting” in K. Martinez and K. Ames, eds. The Material Culture of Gender, the Gender of Material Culture (Winterthur: Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum , 1997): 7-26.

Ulrich,Laurel Thatcher. “Introduction: The Age of Homespun,” “Willy-Nilly, Niddy-Noddy,” “A Bed Rug and a Silk Embroidery,” and “Afterward” in The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth. New York: Vintage Books, 2001.

Upton, Dell. “White and Black Landscapes in Eighteenth-Century Virginia,” in Robert Blair St. George, ed., Material Life in America, 1600-1860. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988.

Weyeneth, Robert. “The Architecture of Racial Segregation: The Challenges of Preserving the Problematical Past,” The Public Historian 27 (Fall 2005): 11-44.

Readings Response: Emotions and Things

Things often resonate with people is different ways. The material that people interact with throughout their lives can trigger emotions and memories, and can provide a point of access to share those emotions and memories with others.

Kay Healy’s “Lost and Found” was a wall instillation at the Free Library of Philadelphia that featured rooms with objects that the artist made from people’s recollections of things that they once possessed but are now lost. The people selected all have emotional stories that connect the thing they have lost to their life and draw out larger lessons about concepts of family and home. On one hand, asking people to talk about a lost thing they wish they could still have is a set-up that required respondents to feel an emotional attachment to their objects as a prerequisite for participation. On the other hand, the lost and found motif is extraordinarily relatable and prompts listeners to think about their things and what they would say if asked the same question.

This American Life’s “House on Loon Lake” tells the story of a young boy who broke into an abandoned home and became enthralled in the mystery of the family that once lived there. Where Healy told the stories of object that people longed for, this story was about one that people consciously abandoned. The conclusions of this story, though sad, offered perspective on how and why people sometimes choose to leave the past in the past, whereas others, like the narrator or any of Healy’s interviewees desired to hold onto it.

The Radio Lab episode “Things” more directly contemplates the emotional connections people form with things. At one point in the episode, the presenters discuss whether a 3D print of a sugar egg that resonates with childhood memories means the same as the original. In the end, the process of making a new egg with a child turned out to be more meaningful than a 3D print could have been. Talking about the difference between things that have a physical connection to people led to a discussion of what one presenter called the “unbridgeable gulf” between people and the things that people make with technology. This conversation highlighted the role of human imagination in making things powerful. The ability to touch something and think about how someone made it, what they did with it, and what it meant to them may be the most important part of studying material culture.

Sam Roberts’ “Object Lessons in History” speculates about the popular surge of object-based histories that the three previous works arguably feed into. Acknowledging that material culture is a great way to lure people into history, the article points to correlations between more recent object histories and contemporary reality television. This link that Roberts makes between momentary popular trends and object histories makes me think about whether the relationships that people currently have with material things are the same relationships that people in the past had with material things. How would Kay Healy’s project be different if it revolved around people 500 years ago, or 50 years from now?

Powder Horn Reflections: The works covered this week largely had to do with how people look back upon things and how they use things to look back. The powder horn, passed down through generations, could have been handled as a vehicle for some story about the past that the family relayed to every succeeding generation. Its owners could have looked at it in the same way Radio Lab’s presenter looked at the Neil Armstrong letter and asked many of the same questions. Thinking about that letter, the presenters wondered whether the letter being typed instead of handwritten affected its meaning, if the emotional connection to the letter would be the same even if Neil Armstrong never actually touched the thing. For my powder horn, this is an integral question because I have no proof yet that the horn ever belonged to General Braddock, nevertheless the care of the horn implies that it was important to the family.

Works Cited:

Healy, Kay. “Lost and Found.” Instillation runs October 2, 2014- October 2, 2015.

This American Life. "House on Loon Lake." Episode 199. November 16, 2001.

Roberts, Sam. “Object Lessons in History.” New York Times. September 27, 2014. 

Radio Lab. “Things.” Season 12, Episode 8.  

Reading Response: When Things are More than Things

In Cultural Revolutions, Leora Auslander argues that the English, American, and French revolutions were cultural revolutions that brought about many characteristics associated with modern, western society. The insightful, provocative portions of the book were where Auslander displayed how the democratizing effects of these revolutions were not just political and rhetorical, but brought about changes in the way everyday people associate with, and are able to politicize everyday things.

In his review of the book in American Studies (Vol. 50, ½) Andrew Cayton voiced skepticism about Auslander’s decision to organize her thesis by comparing political revolutions. I agree with this sentiment entirely. Narrowly truncating a cultural revolution within the bounds of political events oversimplifies the process of cultural change.  More often than not, the objects Auslander used to make her points were not everyday objects, but novelties. Knowing that upper class American women wore homespun in public and that the French Jacobins changed street names does not say very much about a cultural revolution. As I think of it, a revolution involves lasting change: a worldview shift from which there is no return. Most Americans, especially the poor, did not wear homespun and most of the Jacobin measures (with the exception of their measurement system) were quickly reverted back to pre-revolutionary status.

I see two excellent books itching to get out of Cultural Revolutions. The first is an analysis of the symbiotic relationship between political events and mass culture. Stallybrass’ “Marx’s Coat” did an excellent job of portraying this type of close relationship between the simple action of pawning a coat and the larger social implications of selling one’s status in industrial cultures. The second is a more theoretical groundwork of Auslander’s conceptualization of cultural revolutions and emotional history. Personally, I do not like the comparative model for writing history. As an alternative to comparative history, framing the book around a specific idea allows the telling of histories at different times and places, while eliminating the need to constantly qualify similarities and differences.

Igor Kopytoff’s “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as a Process,” successfully played with ideas in this way. Kopytoff does not tell a historical narrative. Instead, he analyses and theorizes how and why things become commodities, and the implications of this commoditization for different cultures. From this cultural, anthropological perspective, commodities are things that have value. But how different people interpret that value determine the commodity’s status. Kopytoff’s analysis of the singularization of commodities, particularly in Western cultures, is particularly useful thinking about my object.

The powder horn, illustrated and engraved with a succession of names, is definitely a singular object. Rather than selling it, giving it a monetary value, its last owner donated it to a public institution. After reading Kopytoff I wonder how the horn’s commoditization evolved. At some point in the horn’s history it was a tool, part of a standard military uniform. The engraving may mark a transition point in the life of the object from military gear to a singular commemorative object.

Readings

Auslander, Leora. Cultural Revolutions: Everyday Life and Politics in Britain, North America, and France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.

Kopytoff, Igor. “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as a Process,” in Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Stallybrass, Peter. “Marx’s Coat,” in Patricia Spyer, ed., Border Fetishisms: Material Objects in Unstable Spaces. New York: Routledge, 1998.