While I was growing up I always took to gathering items that looked old and worn. I absolutely loved to gather old newspaper clippings, vintage buttons and anything that had age to it. The dustier the item, the better it was in my eyes. As an adult my love for old items has not changed. The only exception is now I enjoy collecting larger, more meaningful vintage pieces. In my later years I have grown a taste for specific items which include collecting 1930’s Depression Era furniture, vintage sewing machines and World War II memorabilia. For a long time, I thought my love for all things old diminished. Long were the days of collecting scrappy pieces of paper. But, this all changed when I saw my first 1930’s depression era piece of furniture. I was at a flea market when I saw it; the beautiful mahogany, glass inlayed china cabniet. The china cabinet was stunning in itself, but it was the history behind it that captured me. It had belonged to a farmer, passed down from his mother during the depression era. During that time period, high end wood furniture pieces were scarse. For me, pieces like the china cabinet are a reminder of a time where people were not as fortunate as we are now. Stumbling across the china cabinet led me to begin collecting more depression era pieces of furniture, as a result, I …show more content…
My first sewing machine was a 1938 Singer sewing machine. The craftsmanship from an item nearly 100 years old excited me as the machine still was functional. This was fascinating to me as newer items do not hold up well and often break. I have gone on to collect 4 more sewing machines which all range in size from small hand cranked machines, to larger cabinet styled ones. My favorite is a Singer sewing cabinet that was imported from Germany in the 1920’s. With my love for items around the early 1900’s, it should come to no surprise that I picked up another collection of interest, WWII
"Queen's University Archives - World War I." Queen's University Archives - Home. Web. 23 July 2010.
The furniture represents the Birling families longing for status. In the early 1900s social status was virtually everything. This was because socialism dominated the whole of the United Kingdom. The vertical social ladder of status was what controlled who was a "somebody" and who was a "nobody".
To collect is to bring things together. However there is an art to collecting, as it is not simply just bringing miscellaneous things together. There is a common theme for the objects and together they serve as a special meaning to their collector. In both texts “The Museum and the Public” by Stephen Weil and Walter Benjamin “Unpacking My Library” by Walter Benjamin, and in the film “Mardi Gras: Made in China”, the purpose of collecting is to tell a story and to showcase the significance of the objects in the collection.
The 1920’s can be described as the “Roaring Twenties” whereas the 1930’s have been correctly called the “Dirty Thirties”. Politics, social conditions and economics separated the two decades, as there were huge transitions made in these categories from the 1920’s to the end of the 1930’s.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has one of the finest Asian art collections that has enlightened and strengthened my understanding in my personal art experience. The Museum itself is an artistic architectural structure that graces the entire block on 82nd Street in Manhattan. Entering inside, I sensed myself going back into an era, into a past where people traded ideas and learned from each other. It is a past, where I still find their works of yesteryears vividly within my grasp, to be remembered and shared as if their reflections of works were cast for the modern devoted learner.
The Web. The Web. 18 Mar. 2014. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/wwIIbayarea/womenatwar.htm>. Reinhardt, Claudia and Bill Ganzel. "
I recently visited the American History museum and came upon the most interesting artifact in the Lighting a Revolution section within the Transportation and Technology wing of the museum. This artifact is an advertisement from Charleston, South Carolina in 1769 about the selling of “a choice cargo” of two hundred and fifty slaves.
In the 1930’s many horrible things happened to the economy, and all sorts of people. Many became unemployed and were struggling to get money, food, and other necessary items to survive. All of these items were hard to come by in those days because of the stock market crash. Once the stock market crashed about $140 billion just simply vanished. This caused many immigrants to be sent back home, and the buying and selling of materials very difficult.
In her short story Everyday Use, Alice Walker talks about a Mother Mama, and her two daughters Dee and Maggie, their personalities and reactions to preservation of their family heirlooms. She shows that while Dee has been sent to school for further education, Maggie is left at home and brought up in the old ways. Mama often dreams and longs for the day she can be reunited with Dee, like in the TV shows. She knows this may not be possible because Dee would read and shower them with a lot of knowledge that was unnecessary, only to push them away at the right moment, “like dimwits” (313); Mama and Dee have different conceptions of their family heritage. Family heirlooms to Mama means the people created, used
"World War II by the Numbers." National World War II Museum n. pag. Web. .
In addition to the notably simplistic design, the collection itself provides access to a remarkable breadth and depth of both classic and contempora...
American Home Products Corporation (AHP) was founded in 1926 and has a history of continuous acquisitions of smaller companies that made proprietary medicines. In 1931, AHP purchased John Wyeth & Brother, Inc. from Harvard University. Another important acquisition was that of Canada’s Ayerst Laboratories in 1943. Ayerst was a large pharmaceutical company that had introduced Premarin, the world’s first conjugated estrogen product, and now the most widely prescribed product in the United States (ahp.com). In March of 1982, Sherwood Medical was acquired, enabling AHP to capture a share of the developing medical devices market. In 1984, Whitehall, an original member of AHP, started to market ibuprofen in the United States that was sold under the trademark Advil.
Antiques and Collecting Magazine 108.7 (2003): 24-30. MasterFILE Elite. Web. 29 Apr. 2014. Jordan, Gwen Hoerr.
Set - in a modern kitchen, there are drawers all the way around and a
I had amassed a small hoard of treasure over the years; I sold to the tune of twelve hundred dollars for my metal detecting finds. My wife, well she was very happy when I showed her that diamond ring, she still has it till this day. She went and had it appraised for fifteen hundred dollars. The good news I retire soon, guess what my hobby will be, Metal