Object Exercise

My reflective time of walking around the outside of the museum was stopped in its tracks once I encountered the monument to Christopher Columbus.  There were plenty of monuments, signs, and etchings commemorating groups and individuals throughout the walk.  Both Irish and Scottish immigrants received elaborate statues, while the armed services received thoughtful commemoration in an open space next to a busy highway.  In a way, however, this allowed for people to respect veterans without actually having to make any commitment simply by driving by the area.  In a way, the openness of the veteran memorials creates a type of superimposition that forces the driver or pedestrian to remember the nation’s fallen soldiers, but does not allow for any type of actual commemoration as there is no reason to actual visit the site if you can merely drive by a look at it for a few fleeting seconds.  I guess, in its own way, the memorial reflects these times of instant gratification.

However, what struck me the most during my walk, as stated previously, was the Columbus memorial.  An imposing figure, it is almost as tall as the Philadelphia Seaport Museum itself and is easily the largest monument within the vicinity.  Now I can go on and on about how the stature itself is a commitment to a genocidal human being from centuries ago.  In fact the words “murderer” and “rapist” were actually written on its base, showing people’s disgust for the monument as a manifestation to an uglier historical period.  However, it can also be argued that the Columbus memorial is also a representation of class constructs in America.  Upon further investigation, the monument was erected of the the funds of the America 500 Corporation.  A quick google search offers up nothing in terms of the corporations business dealings, but it seems they are a corporation solely founded to commemorate our nation’s past.  The best I cold come up with for a description is the following taken from the website findownersearch.com:

PROMOTING THE GOODS AND SERVICES OF OTHERS THROUGH THE PRINTING OF COMPANY LOGOS ON CONSUMER ARTICLES, MEDIA ADVERTISING, AND THROUGH THE ORGANIZATION AND CONDUCTING OF SPECIAL EVENTS

This vague and cryptic message gives us nothing about the information of the company, but clearly they had the funds to build a rather large monument, so it can be assumed that the participants and donors of these corporations are rather wealthy individuals.  Herein lies the problem with this monument.  It is a manifestation of the reality that wealth equates to power.  The more modest veterans memorials fall under the shadow of the enormity of the Columbus monument, yet the nation demands respect for our troops.  Although there is no true proof of this, the fact that the Columbus memorial is the largest memorial also probably means it was the most expensive.  The wealthy, through this memorial, continues to show their power through the extension of monument building and comemmoration.

Reading Blog #4

The readings this week mainly assisted in the development of using memory studies as a historical method and how memory can tie a number of historical fields into the same conversation.  Memory and time are indelibly linked with the American public’s ability to understand the past.  However, this ability changes fluidly, constantly being reinvented as the past moves further from present times.

In the words of Robert Weyeneth, “not being alive in a community at the time handicaps one’s eye for the traces” of the past.[1]  This concept helps in thinking about my own historical method as, after reading these articles, I realized that my own interpretations have been shrouded in my historical ideals and what I deem important.  In this way, my interpretation is affected by my own past experiences and historical interpretations that I place ahead of others.  Although a variety of interpretations keeps historical studies fresh, memory studies reveal the frustrations that can come with remembering history incorrectly and demands that historians do not add to this problem (as some have done in the past).  This anxiety was best described by Ken Yellis in his discussion of memory and museums.  In his article, Yellis stated museums are helpful to the public “by opening unseen windows on cloaked realities,” but that they can also “retard” these realities.[2]  It is dangerous, then, to place present-day interpretations on the past as they can distort history.  Historians must always reveal as much objective truth as possible before formulating their own interpretations.

Seth Bruggeman introduced a thought-provoking concept to memory studies: the way that memory can be interpreted through gender constructs.  According to Bruggeman, too often have “twentieth-century ideas about memory and preservation collided along gender lines.”[3]  The idea of gender and memory is an interesting idea that can complicate my interpretation of the hand lines.  It is interesting how I automatically assumed, even before reading the dossier that came with the lines, that they were used by men rather than women.  Perhaps it is due to the presumed age of the fishing lines combined with American society prior to the late-twentieth century.  If mostly used by men (John Coniver indeed was the lines’ initial owner), it could have represented a sense of male camaraderie and bonding that Coniver may have held dear.  However, what did this mean for his wife?  What could these fishing lines have represented for women?  Did they connote any memories at all and, if so, were they good or bad memories?  Placing gender into the story of the fishing lines introduces an entirely new interpretation (something I seem to be saying every week) and muddles the story even more, but in a positive way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Robert R. Weyeneth, “The Architecture of Racial Segregation: The Challenges of Preserving the Problematical Past,” The Public Historian, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Fall 2005): 39.

[2] Ken Yellis, “Examining the Social Responsibility of Museums in a Changing World,” Artes Magazine (November 13, 2011): 10.

[3] Seth C. Bruggeman, “‘Save the Olympia!’: Veterans and the Preservation of Dewey’s Flagship in Twentieth-Century Philadelphia,” 15.

Object Exercise #3

The fluidity of commodities, as described by Igor Kopytoff, can be utilized for the fishing hand lines donated to the Philadelphia Seaport Museum.  Kopytoff’s thesis stated that things may “be seen as a commodity by one person and as something else by another.”[1]  Originally a donation to the Museum, the fishing lines were appraised just a year later at the request of Jane Allen, a curator at the Museum.  This fluidity between donation and commodification introduces the methodology of space and time.  However, unlike J.B. Jackson’s piece, where he clearly emphasized time’s importance, material objects can more easily be understood by their commodification through both place and time.  To an individual that perhaps grew tired of his objects—practicing what Kopytoff calls “terminal commodification,” or the gradual and inevitable depreciation of an object’s value—a donation to a museum seemed an obvious choice as he may have believed the items to be relatively worthless due to their outdated technology and overuse throughout the years.  Terminal commodification, then, reveals the importance of time to an object.  However, time is only half of the story.  Once in the museum, items are then handled by experts with greater knowledge of an object’s importance especially objects from earlier times.  By going to an appraiser, the curator tried to recommodify the objects, therefore implying their de-commodification when originally donated.  Moving through space and into a museum shows the fluidity of the hand lines and therefore the importance of space to an older object.

The readings for this week also held a common theme: landscape and its importance to history.  Landscape and margins, to combine the Dell Upton and John Stilgoe readings, can be intertwined with class to better understand the importance of fishing overall in America.  Because my hand lines were donated with several other objects, it can be assumed that the individual in possession of these materials owned a boat.  A boat, with its ability to move away from the crowded beach and into the isolated waters, can represent two ideas.  First, the boat itself, and its ability to create a maritime barrier between the individuals on the boat and those on the water, created a sense of mobile hierarchy much like Dell’s eighteenth century planters.  By floating along in the water, probably within eyeshot of individuals along the shore, the boat is a moving representation of wealth and therefore power with its ability to parade along the coast, displaying its luxury in the process.  Second, by having two lines in my project, fishing was clearly meant for more than one individual attempting to escape into the natural world.  Rather, this was meant to be a social event, and perhaps an invitation to this maritime event gave the guest his or her own sense of importance and their own sense of climbing the social hierarchy.  These readings helped me to better understanding the importance of both commodification and landscape to material culture and, more specifically, to my hand lines.

[1] Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as a Process,” in Arjun Appadurai, ed., The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Persepctive (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 64.

Reading Blog

The articles assigned this week have provided fantastic insight into the methodologies of material culture.  At times, sparks of influence for my fishing rods came from the unlikeliest of sources.  Admittedly, I was not entirely sure of the correct methodologies to instill for my final paper.  However, readings such as Ann Smart Martin and J. Ritchie Garrison’s “American Material Culture,” Jennifer Van Horn’s “George Washington’s Dentures,” and Kenneth Ames’ “Meaning in Artifacts” provided the kinds of methods that helped to blend my academic background with material studies and how the two can correlate to form fruitful observations into the smallest of artifacts.

All of the articles called for historians to judge, in the words of Kenneth Ames, “the meanings of objects in people’s lives” and “how they felt about a certain artifact.”  Although it is nearly impossible to discern how one would feel about something, artifacts themselves can interpret this through their utilization.  Use, one of the three major components of material interpretation according to Martin and Garrison, is an indispensable methodological tool for my assigned fishing rods.  Clearly designed for leisure instead of occupational or commercial activities, the fishing rods represented feelings of happiness and relaxation for Dr. John Conover and not only Conover, but anyone else using these maritime tools.  However, as Cary Carson reminds us, material culture “demonstrates and validates our diverse backgrounds,” meaning how Conover felt about the fishing rods or fishing in general can be drastically different than interpretations from family or friends or even Conover at a later time.

Martin and Garrison also steered my interpretation to folk materials and their meaning.  “Horrified by commercialism,” folk materials resist mass production in order to maintain “old style” culture.  I will have to research this further, but my first intuition is to assume that small fishing rods, with their varied handles and sizes, were not mass-produced and therefore are comparable to the types of materials Martin and Garrison considered in their article.  This concept, combined with Ames’ material interpretation, provide two separate interpretations that combine the emotional and material that intertwine with one another.

Methodologically, no article is more essential to interpretation material than Jennifer Van Horn’s article on George Washington’s dentures.  Although it could not be further away from my project in both time and space, the varied methods and interpretations opened a number of new ideas for my final paper.  Van Horn spares no expense in describing the dentures, allowing for a number of speculations.  Most obvious is that Washington used dentures to chew food and “improve speech.”  Though seemingly an unimportant statement, it reminds me to state the obvious before diving into the abstract ideas to provide greater clarity to my narrative.  Also important is Van Horn’s use of literature, specifically a book entitled Caroline Archer.  Not only did this literary piece help to disavow the immorality of false teeth, it also encouraged the use of human teeth as dentures.  This type of analysis is important to my work as, per a discussion with my colleagues last week, there was some talk of my need to read fishing literature such as The Old Man and the Sea.  Although I never really took literature seriously as a historical tool, the fact that I just recently discussed this idea and now have read this article makes me believe that literature may be essential to my project.

Helpful in many ways, I hope to actually instill some of these articles as secondary source material.  Although they provide little in terms of fishing information, their methods and interpretations have proven essential to my own interpretations of material culture.  If utilized properly like the above-mentioned historians, my small fishing rods may be able to provide some tremendous insight into not only the daily life of John Conniver, but, hopefully, of American society as a whole.

Object Exercise #2

For my final project, I received what appears to be two small fishing rods complete with two fishing hooks.  After some basic measurements, one rod measured ten-and-one-half inches while the other was slightly larger at thirteen inches.  The smaller hooks, with the inscription JIGO-3 etched into them, both measured at five inches.  I also had to learn the hard way that these hooks were still extremely sharp after all this time!

The twine, located in the middle of the fishing rod, still felt extremely tough and durable.  After a brief discussion with Craig, the Philadelphia Seaport’s curator, he told me along with a few colleagues that fishing twine can be made into a Z-twist or S-twist pattern, but would say no more, leaving the rest for us to find out on our own.  After visiting a few websites, I realized that my twine was made with a Z-twist pattern.  For a Z-twist, the twine would spiral downwards to the left, making a Z-pattern.  Although this idea was rather confusing as I had little knowledge of thread twisting prior, I learned that creating a Z-twist makes the twine a bit tougher while the S-twist is used only when the sewer would like for the twine to quickly unravel when necessary.  Therefore, it may be assumed that most fishing lines, to avoid the fish from snapping the line, would be created with a Z-twist pattern.  Although somewhat confusing, the distinction is critical for anyone manufacturing fishing lines and shows the intricacies of something many people assume to be a simplistic craft.

The fishing rods operate by two small wooden rods sticking out of each end.  The smaller fishing rod was carved into an octagonal shape while the larger one’s rods were smooth and circular.  Upon a closer look, the smaller, octagonal rod had a few small holes in the handles that went clear through to the other side while the larger one’s handles seemed to not have been damaged at all.  I began to assume that the smaller rod was favored by the previous owner, who turned out to be Dr. John Conover of Absecon, New Jersey.  It is my contention that these small holes were created by nails being driven through the wood.  However, I am still unsure as to why one would do this to their fishing rod.  Perhaps it was nailed to the side of the boat for easier storage, but then why did the larger of the fishing rods have no indentations in the handle?  Moreover, why would one handle be carved differently than the other?  Did one rod hold an advantage over the other or was it created like that for aesthetic reasons?

One deduction that is certain is both fishing rods were used for leisure and not for any commercial activity.  There are two reasons fro this assumption.  First, it would be tremendously difficult to fish commercially with these small rods that would prove tedious to reel in hooked fish with such award handles.  Frankly, I find the entire idea of fishing with these rods nearly impossible especially with larger fish.  However, the documents provided with the rods and hooks defined the two hooks to be “blue fish hooks,” which are rather large fish.  Small rods used for catching large fish means that to catch just one fish would cost the fisherman a great amount of time and effort.  For someone to accept such a difficult task presumably means that person must enjoy fishing rather than fishing for sustenance or income.

Second, I deduced the leisurely use of these fishing rods simply by looking at the owners name: Dr. John Conover.  This man clearly was some type of physician and not a true mariner.  He probably went to the open ocean as some form of escapism and his prominent position as a doctor means that he could afford more vacation time than the average person.

These small deductions are only the beginning.  Who is John Conover?  Why did he give these pieces assigned to me as a gift to the museum along with two fairly large boats?  One year after his donation in 1989, Frisk & Borodin Appraisers priced Conover’s entire collection out to the sum of $700.00.  Was Conover trying to sell this because he was no longer interested in fishing?  Was the museum itself trying to determine the price of Conover’s fishing goods?  As the semester goes along, I am determined to discover the facts behind this fascinating story.

 

Object Exercise #1

After the first encounter with Lesley, one cannot help but notice the massive chunk of wood rotted away from years of disuse, the odd shape and even odder size.  Of course, when a craft is almost a century old, one expects the years to eat away at the wood.  The red, white, and blue paint only reinforces the age of Lesley, where is paint is difficult to see and at times is even nonexistent.  Upon hurt examine the water vehicle, one can understand the need to scrap it in a few months.  One question I originally had was the way in which the boat actually operated.  A small rudder was found to the side of Lesley, but this does not take into account the two tankers on its insides, nor does it help in understanding the small amount of wiring strewn about Lesley’s floorboards.

The first aspect of Lesley to grab my attention was its manufacturer, engraved on the back-inside of Lesley as “J.H. Perrine.”  Upon further research, this man turns out to be J. Howard Perrine, a third generation boat maker operating out of Barnegat, New Jersey.  With the Pine Barrens close by, and white cedar being both abundant and “a favorite of boat builders” according to a small newspaper clipping, boat making made for a lucrative occupation for Perrine.

Within the correct historical context, Lesley tells the viewer something about the culture of Northeastern society in the 1930s.  First, Lesley is a sneakbox, a vehicle normally used for naval occupations such a fishing.  However, one of the first ascertainable observations is Lesley’s seating arrangement.  Bench-like seats flank the insides of the boat, forcing the occupants to face one another.  This seating arrangement deters one from facing the water and therefore away from any type of fishing.  Instead, Lesley’s make-up means it was once used for leisurely activities, encouraging passengers to face, and therefore converse, with one another instead of drawing their attention to the open waters.  In “The Trouble with Wilderness,” published in 1996, environmental history megastar William Cronon discussed the odd relationship human beings have had with nature since the closing of the frontier in the late-nineteenth century.  While people enjoy shortened stays in uninhabited places, hoping to escape from a society of wage work and urban environments, they still never fully appreciate the nature around them, the fact that urban environments themselves are their own type of biosphere.  Lesley, with its odd seating arrangement, allows for individuals to be within nature while ignoring the vast and watery world around them.

More importantly is the timing of Lesley.  Created in the 1930s, the leisurely boat was constructed at a time when leisure activities coincide with luxury.  Facing the greatest economic downturn in American history, it is amazing to view an object linked with wealth, as many Americans during the Great Depression simply could not afford a vehicle such as this.  However, one can look at this from class perspectives.  Lesley may have been used for its opulent representation, yet Lesley could also have been a racing boat.  With a mast hole, and the fact that Barnegat Bay held a great amount of races at the time, Lesley could have also represented an escape from economic realities for the lower class as well.  Indeed, racing boats could have been an individual’s only escape from the Great Depression, a time that affected millions including those in the New York and Philadelphia areas.  Perhaps Lesley, even for a few fleeting moments, allowed for a therapeutic deterrence from the failures of the free labor enterprise.  As the semester goes on, it is these types of observations I look forward to understanding more, and just how Lesley fits into these economic, cultural, environmental, and social realties of the time.