Object Biographies – By Jessica Locklear

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Posted by Jessica Locklear

This week’s readings in material culture encouraged me to think further about the different ways I can continue to write a comprehensive history of my object. Though methodology is an important starting point to writing any history, it was helpful to read Dannehl’s article, “Object Biographies: From Production to Consumption.” In this piece, Dannehl explores the various methods that can be taken in order to write a biography for a physical object. The overall goal of an object biography is to ask questions about the life cycle of an object, through its various stages and turning points from production to consumption. A typical life cycle of an object consists of the following steps . . .

  1. Raw Material
  2. Manufacturing
  3. Transportation
  4. Distribution
  5. Use
  6. Reuse
  7. Maintenance
  8. Recycling
  9. Final Disposal

Though all of these steps may not be useful or feasible to explore, examining objects in this way allows room for the contextual layers in which the object lived. Limiting and restricting the historical context of objects is a common problem that can occur when we try to categorize objects that had multiple functions and associations. This is often seen with objects displayed in museum settings, where objects are selected removed from their original contexts and presented in a certain manner. These suggestions from the article have been useful for me as I begin to write the history of the woman’s sport suit from 1919. Looking at the suit’s life cycle from production to consumption has opened a whole new lens in which I can approach the history of this object, resulting in new avenues for historical inquiry.

The next article I read was “Object Analysis of the Giant Pumpkin,” by Cindy Ott. In this piece, Ott examines the American fascination with the Atlantic Giant Pumpkin. Though Ott is not tracing the biography of one specific giant pumpkin, she does examine the pumpkin as a physical object and its role in history. Something about pumpkins makes us happy and Ott concludes that it is the American desire to perpetuate and celebrate a rural and agricultural identity. She does this by examining the history of pumpkins in America through botany, economics, art, literature, etc. This interdisciplinary approach allows us to see how historical and cultural factors influenced the physical form, definitions, and meanings of pumpkins over time. Though studying the history of pumpkins may seem a bit silly, it is actually very helpful in understanding how material culture can benefit the study of history and vice-versa. It also demonstrates how an interdisciplinary approach to material culture can be helpful in creating a more complete history of an object.

Finally, I read came from the short essay, “Regrets on Departing with my Old Dressing Gown” by French philosopher Denis Diderot. In this famous piece, Diderot says he was gifted with a beautiful scarlet dressing gown in which he was pleased with. However, satisfaction with the new gown led to his dissatisfaction with old objects that now seemed dingy. As a result, he started replacing the old things one at a time, replacing them with new and more beautiful things, leading him into debt. This social phenomenon, known as the Diderot effect, describes the process of consumerism which can have negative effects. This perhaps explains why we oftentimes buy stuff we don’t need. This is also helpful to me in studying the history of my sports suit as it encourages me to think about consumerism in a different light. Though I am not making any claims about the Diderot effect and my object’s owner, it is interesting to entertain the idea.

Some Things Money Can’t Buy…Alanna Shaffer

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Some Things Money Can’t Buy…

APRIL 5, 2019

1997_priceless-Mastercard_668

Perhaps one of the most recognizable ad campaigns in my lifetime, MasterCard’s string of “Priceless” commercials and print ads continue to spawn parodies and memes to this day.

The general format is typically the same: creating an experience costs money, but the experience itself is ‘priceless’. So, put the money part on your MasterCard and enjoy the rest.

The ads above depict experiences with very visible expense- a night dining out, tickets for a live show- and yet emphasizing the sentimental value of these experiences allows the monetary value to be downplayed. Something that is ‘priceless’ here both indicates that no amount of money could be traded for this experience….and thus any amount of money is worth spending for it.

This divergence of abstract, monetary and use value is at the center of our readings for this week, which looks at the experience of objects as they travel through the process of commoditization. Much of this commodifying process, the readings suggest, is structured within the society and the individuals who use and value these objects, and tension invariably results as people must navigate the varied equivalence of objects with cultural, personal or monetary value.

In Susan Strasser’s piece, Woolworth to WalMart: Mass Merchandising and the Changing Culture of Consumption, we see the progression of custom-made items to the massive dry goods and department stores which laid the groundwork for major big box retailers like WalMart today. In her piece, Strasser notes the campaigns once waged against both the rising monopoly of mass marketers and the labor practices utilized to keep prices low. Reading in 2019, these historic campaigns certainly echoed recent news digging into the abusive labor practices waged by companies like Amazon, and my own complicity within this society of consumers. Like the 19th century shoppers who railed against job loss as clerked grocery stores made way for self-service shopping, I detest these stories of abuse….but not yet enough to stop benefitting from one-day shipping and dirt-cheap prices.

In both Peter Stallybrass’ Marx’s Coat and Igor Kopytoff’s The cultural biography of things: commoditization as process, we see the varied ways that both the abstract and use value of object shift within both complex and simple economies, and how cultural structures typically determine these values.

While reading, my mind leapt to an article which just came out about the new smoking ban inside Pennsylvania prisons. I didn’t have commoditization on the brain at the time, but revisiting it from that perspective has made me wonder how Kopytoff would see analyze the economy that springs out this particular society. While the new, complete ban of tobacco products is cited as a health initiative, many working or involved in corrections have noted the disruption this may also bring to the prison economy, which has long revolved around cigarettes as a commodity. Reminiscent of Marx’s coat, which carried an exchange value often complicated by its abstract value (the coat must be pawned to put food on the table, but without the coat there is no respect, there is no research, etc.) one prisoner quoted in the article mentions the benefit of using cigarettes to pay for a clean load of laundry, with a fresh laundered shirt boasting a similar respectability value of Marx’s coat. Conversely, the potentiality of ramen flavor packets as a new form of currency invoked Kopytoff’s definition of ‘non-commodity’: nobody needs more soup, so no amount of .28 cent packets can equal the $5 pack of cigarettes.

These shifting understandings of value, both in prison and without, bring me back to a phrase my sister and I like to yell while running around a grocery store: there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. How does the way a society does/doesn’t value labor, and who is performing the labor, shape the ways we understand the abstract value of these objects? How can the average consumer (like me) make the right choices for their income level without immediately becoming complicit in a vast network of invisible labor and capital?

Basically: can I be an ethical consumer and still get next day shipping?

Objects of Study

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Joy Feagan: Golf Pants- 61.40.351

1920s. Off-white linen? Pants gathered at bottom w button and ties.  Donated by Mr. J. Kenton Eisenbrey (the clothes belonged to his aunt, Mrs. P. Howard Eisenbrey).

Grace Tang: Stetson Derby- 66.52.3

1925, USA. Black w black trim around middle; brim is curved on sides; inside label reads “Made expressly for Max Levit.”  Donated Mrs. Mary McCue Epstein in July, 1966.

Jessica Markey Locklear: Wool Sports Suit- 59.33.1

1919, Philadelphia.  Dark brown, tan, and olive-green wool tweed tailored jacket and pants; belt around middle of jacket; pants are gathered at bottom and secured with a buckle (adjustable).  Donated by Mrs. Stanley Bright.  Donor records say “wool tweed knicker suit worn at Lake Placid.”

Ryan Langton: Wanamaker Hat- 61.40.38

1918-1920, USA.  Wide, oval-shaped hat w straw brim and golden yellow taffeta top; fake flower detail on side of hat w taffeta ribbons.  Donated by Mr. J. Kenton Eisenbrey (the clothes belonged to his aunt, Mrs. P. Howard Eisenbrey).

April McGreger: Lingerie Dress- 85.2.3

1910-1912.  Off-white (due to age?) linen? dress w lace, ruffles, and floral embroidery details; skirt is two-tiered.  Donated by Callahan.  No available donor records for this item.

Joseph Deitch: Manufactured Shoes- 60.41.91

1890, USA.  Off-white suede kitten heels w greenish gray bows w beading detail near toes and beading on toes.  Donated by Mrs. R. R. Loening on 12/16/1960.

Alanna Shaffer: Red Coat- 56.5.2 abc

Red child’s coat w cream colored lace trim; detachable capelet around shoulders of the same color and lace detail.  Donated by Mrs. Frances S. Rutan (Mrs. Frank E. Rutan, Jr.) on 1/28/56.  Donor records say “The child’s coat, collar, and bonnet in red silk were hers (donor’s mother)—bought at an annual showing of Shoemaker’s when they came to Pittsburgh (donor’s mother’s hometown) in 1884.”

Lena Lannutti: White Beaded Dress- 64.63.5 ab

Cream and ivory colored jacket and long skirt w gold detailing; features bands of beaded net.  Donated by Mrs. Morris Cheston on 10/15/1964.  Donor records say the dress was made by Darlington Runk & Co, and the ruffle accents were originally lavender.  Donor left note reading “This dress was worn by my grandmother, Mrs. Wm D Henszey.  It was made in Philadelphia 1870-75.”

 

 

Using and Moving In, By, Around… Material Culture & Space – GVGK Tang

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Animated GIF
“Waiters from Call Her Savage, 1932” GIPHY. Accessed February 17, 2019.
https://giphy.com/gifs/4JXRVBMI1emY7WQzDb.

As discussed in last week’s post, I’m interested in the gendering and sexing of material culture. However, beyond twentieth- and twenty-first-century marketing and commodification, how has this process worked? How can the shape, movement and utility embodied by an object itself suggest gender and sexuality?

As Laurel Thatcher Ulrich illustrates in “Furniture as Social History: Gender, Property, and Memory in the Decorative Arts” in American Furniture (edited by Luke Beckerdite and William N. Hosley) – “to a twentieth-century eye, the graceful curves of a cabriole chair leg might appear ‘feminine,’ a massive chest with stubby bracket feet, ‘masculine.’ In the colonial world, the gender attributions were probably reversed. In both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a well-formed leg was one of the defining attributes of an upper-class male” (47). In other words, because constructs of gender and sexuality are fluid, subject to change, and vary throughout time and place, material culture (much like other primary sources) cannot be read through a presentist lens – or a Eurocentric one, for that matter. The elements of a single item – its materials, composition, production and consumption – can be and have been gendered and sexed in a variety of contexts.
For example, Ulrich quotes Claudia Kidwell in “Gender Symbols or Fashionable Details?” (126), her description of a green- and yellow-clad individual with “sloping shoulders, a padded chest, and a narrow, cinched waist … flared over the hips into a full skirt” – that of a woman’s dress or a man’s coat. In turn, Ulrichs argues that “an ‘hourglass’ figure, then, is not an eternally feminine symbol, nor do ruffles, flowered fabrics, or satins belong exclusively to women” (42). If shapes, textures, colors or patterns (through sight and touch) can be arbitrarily assigned gender and sexuality in a vacuum, how are they experienced in a given space? Particularly, how are they lived or embodied – through taste, sound or movement?
Ulrich claims that “gender codes are best conveyed in action” (51). Posture, gesture, stride, rest and reaction are the means through which sexuality and gender expression/presentation can be conveyed through movement – or, are motions to which sexuality and gender can be ascribed. Therefore, how does material culture like furniture suggest motion – what is expected of users, what uses the object contains, how users’ motions are influenced by its presence in a space, etc.? Indeed, material culture is relational. What items are present in the same space, nearest each other, or used in tandem?As Kenneth Ames outlines in Death in the Dining Room and Other Tales of Victorian Culture, how food and its consumption was conceived of by middle- and upper-class Victorian families is evinced in nineteenth-century dining room furniture (44). Everything from sensuality and pleasure derived from eating, to the elaborate etiquette and violent customs associated with meal preparation are illustrated in the crafting of statuary and carvings (68). The contrast between “masculine” sideboards – depicting the trappings of manhood through hunting elements and wild animals (73-74) – and “feminine” conceptions of mealtime – a women-led ritual of service, intimacy and abundance (88) – cast the dining room as a site of gendered power dynamics and sexual tension.Given the construction of material culture, its arrangement in a given space –  how are people associated with it, how do their bodies navigate or use it, and how is it a reflection of their lives and contexts? For example, as Dayna M. Pilgrim observes in “Masters of a Craft: Philadelphia’s Black Public Waiters, 1820-50,” foodways scholars neglect the connection between eating culture and service work, women’s history scholars focus domestic labor among immigrant and native-born whites, and material culture scholars emphasize bourgeoisie experience and aesthetics in a static setting. Instead, Pilgrim’s interdisciplinary research examines the experiences of Black male public waiters in dining spaces (271). Rules of behavior extended to all five senses and “shaped the performance that both diners and service staff enacted” in a space ridden with bourgeoisie material culture (277). The aesthetics of a waiter’s costume, the quiet movement of his shoes, the calm confidence of his mannerisms and handling of utensils, near soundlessness and avoidance of touch each symbolized race, class and gender dynamics. The social and cultural expectations of the context were demonstrated through the uses of material culture, as well as its embodiment.

Material Culture Methodology: One Red Coat and a Lot of Questions – Alanna Shaffer

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I did it. I said yes to the dress.

It’s a bright red children’s coat dress from 1884, with a tan lace cape collar. I picked it from Drexel University’s Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection, an archive made up of roughly 14,000 articles of clothing, accessories, and other objects related to fashion. I’ll be diving deep into the life of this little red coat, seeing what it can tell me about Philadelphia’s history as a manufacturing and retail giant throughout the 19th century.

2019-01-28 15.00.39

I was admittedly wary when I first found out we’d be working with objects relating to fashion. Outside of the occasional watch of Project Runway, I know nothing about fashion. But visiting the collection was thrilling: in some ways, clothing seems like one of the most personal material objects we have. Observing a 19th century dress- all the unfamiliar straps clasps- you could easily imagine the person who once fit inside, and suddenly the dull, black-and-white images of 19th century Philadelphia in my head became filled with vibrant color.

I’m more than a little excited now to dive into my piece, and my head is already swimming with questions. Knowing so little about fashion and thinking about taking on this fashionable piece of history feels daunting- where do I even begin?

According to most Material Culturalist, with a good old fashioned description. E. McClung Fleming’s model for artifact study begins with simple identification- begin with ‘what even is this?’ an go from there. Fleming also suggests that historic information can play a role in identification, by providing background detail on the item’s maker, owner, or location of origin. Next, according to Fleming, would be a personal evaluation from the item’s perceiver, followed by a cultural analysis of the object and subsequent interpretation of the object’s significance today. Eight years after Fleming, Jules David Prown proposed another methodology, with some similar steps: begin with a physical, objective description, followed by a more subjective, emotional deduction.

My concern about starting from a purely factual, descriptive angle, has a lot to do with the idea of connoisseurship. In Charles Montgomery’s “Artifact Study A Proposed Model”, he aims to provide a practical guide to becoming a connoisseur. But even with his model, I am a fashion novice. How could my analysis and that of a connoisseur produce similar results? Even though Prown suggests that “the analyst must…guard against the intrusion of either subjective assumptions or conclusions derived from other experiences”, it seems to me that the true connoisseur could nonetheless come closer to objectivity by actually using their experience. Whereas a fashion expert, for instance, may be able to easily look at a dress and determine its material or see the craftsmanship (or lack thereof) behind its creation, my uninformed description can’t help but be subjective (ie. ‘the dress is made of silk’ vs. ‘well I don’t know what this is made out of it, but it seems soft!’)

As such, I think that perhaps a method that actually begins with subjective evaluation up front might better serve a fashion novice like me. To observe the object and record any sort of initial impression, no matter how subjective (this color seems bright! This looks like it’s made well! The garment seems heavy!). Going in without any background knowledge might actually create space for real revelations to occur.

By recording initial impressions- however uninformed they may be- I imagine lines of inquiry would be created that could help guide and order the research. Why does that color seem so bright to me? Does that mean it is in good condition or has it still faded from its original shade? Was that kind of coloring common for children’s clothes of the period or was it considered garish? What can perception of color in clothing tell us about the time? These sorts of questions would help inspire a deeper dive into the object and begin to peel away at its cultural significance. I imagine this might require the help of a connoisseur to really start to notice the object’s intricacies.

Gathering relevant historical data, which seems to all be part of Fleming’s first descriptive step, would come next, inspired by the questions produced from the perceiver’s first impressions. In his article, Montgomery notes an obscure English law related to textile printing that, once known, helped precisely date many of the objects made during that period. This kind of historical knowledge on the background of the item would hopefully begin to answer many of the analyst’s initial questions. I’m lucky that my object has both a tag for the retailer (with an address) and a name tag inside. This will make a fantastic entry point for researching the historic context of my item.

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In a near reversal of Fleming and Prown’s ideas, a factual description would come close to last in my methodology. Putting together both the initial ‘uninformed’ observation with the historic context gathered through research, the analyst could begin to assemble a comprehensive description of the object, including everything that has been learned about material, color, style, craft, etc.

The last step in my methodology would be the cultural analysis and interpretation of significance. Especially for someone who lacks knowledge in that particular item, I don’t believe a full cultural analysis would be possible until the full background of an item is really explored. But finally, armed with the answers to why this was made, for who, by who, why does it look the way it does- and all the other questions you began with- can you ask: and what does it all mean?

I’m excited about diving into my object, and I think this method is helpful in creating a place to start for the uninitiated. Even Jules Prown admitted that “deductions almost invariable creep into the initial description,” (9) so why not lean into it? In many ways, all historical inquiry is about following your gut impressions about something that feels wrong, misunderstood, or simply left out, and that gut feeling helps you to know what questions to ask.

Works Cited:

E. McClung Fleming, “Artifact Study: A Proposed Model,” Winterthur Portfolio 16 (1981): 154-173.
Jules David Prown, “Mind in Matter,” Winterthur Portfolio 17 (1982): 1-19.
Charles F. Montgomery, “The Connoisseurship of Artifacts,” in Thomas J. Schlereth, ed., Material Culture Studies in America (London: Altamira Press, 1999).