There is a narrative arc to the objects we possess, the things we touch, interact with and hang on to can be arranged to tell the story of our lives. Our personalities resonate through the style of clothes we wear or how we decorate a room. Our thought processes, emotions and history are captured in journals and letters. When shared with our children, friends and relatives these personal belongings can become heirlooms or “more of that crazy junk grandma used to collect”. Do the new owners find them useful objects or are they merely tethers to a beloved relative or part of larger and more removed family history? What to do we do with all the stuff we inherit?
In October of 2019, in collaboration with the Broomfield Depot History Museum, I presented a series of creative salons exploring these questions with hands on activities in heirloom preservation and transformation. Having conversations around our objects and who owned them before us was a key component of these meetings and each participant was invited to bring an heirloom to discuss at each evening event.
Over the course of the month we transformed linen scraps into award pins and brooches, refreshed vintage china plates with clip art and waterslide decals, embellished fabric crowns with antique jewelry and crafted accordion fold scrapbooks from wood engraved at InventHQ the City of Broomfield’s maker space. The evenings were divided between a brief preservation technique demonstrated by Veronica Rascona, the museum curator and crafts projects with discussion time. Along with handouts, Veronica has linked preservation resources for our heirlooms on the website here
At our textile themed salon guests brought a depression era crazy quilt, embroidered handkerchiefs, beloved flannel pajamas and a Navajo rug that one woman’s mother had taken in trade for cooking she’d done at a dude ranch. Sharing these stories helped frame a larger conversation about objects, what do we hang on to and why. Tara, who is the Arts and History Manager, brought up a really excellent point that stuck with me through the month. If you donate something like a chair to a museum- it changes form and is no longer a chair, it is a curated object, no longer sat on, but instead displayed or archived- something discussed by general qualities “chair-ness” how it resembles or is different from other chairs and its context within history. Looking through my own home, how many objects have I put on a shelf or curated in a similar fashion, no longer in use but touchstones to my past. Too sentimental to say goodbye to baby clothes and grandma’s handkerchief brought back from Japan by her handsome fiance I was delighted to have the chance to share my heirloom with friends before turning them into buttons.
