Object of the Week

We have rebadged the Old Gippstown blog (not this blog, which is the Cataloguers blog), as Old Gippstown Object of the Week.

If there is anyone out there who would like to write up their favourite object (we will handle the photos), feel free. This is the chance to tell everyone about some obscure, favourite item in the collection.

We are over there as I write, looking at Shears. This set of Shears.

News from the Store

We had a very successful InMagic day with Barbara Kowalski from Maxus last week, getting into the nitty gritty of our Cataloguing. Seven user-groups were represented, and we hope to meet again in six months' time.

So now your faithful Cataloguing Team has returned to working away in the Narracan General Store. So there is not a lot of news. Except we thought you might be interested in seeing some of the items that we have found in the store, that are ear-marked for elsewhere in the park.

This is a good example of a piece of World War II "Trench Art" - souvenirs made by soldiers (and airmen, and sailors), from items to hand, designed to be sent home. We have located a photograph of the same plane on another example, so think there may have been a common mould for the plane, with the ash tray section being of much rougher construction. Anyone else have a similar one, or any thoughts? There is a larger version of the photo HERE. This piece is off to go into the Military Collection.

We were a little taken with this strainer, as it is made from perforated metal, not the mesh we are more familiar with. There are probably numerous examples in museums all over the place, but we thought it would be good to get it into a kitchen display, where it can shine a little more. Our main problem is that we do not have a lot of good, secure kitchen exhibition space. Our best one is the kitchen at the rear of the Cobb and Co building, but a lot of people miss walking around there. So we are looking for a good place to display it.

This souvenir plate shows a view of Commercial Road in Morwell, not yet dated. Items like this are becoming collectable (read "portable", which means at risk of being lifted). Maybe the best place for this piece is in the Camera display - as an example of one of the many mediums on which photographs can be found. And one of the few places where we have glass cases. It is hard to interpret buildings as if people lived in them, if they are full of glass cases.

Items like this are also a challenge for collections which have several databases to record their holdings. Is this a photograph? Is it an "object"? Which database does it go into? We are fortunate that we only have one database, for everything, so it just goes in their and we find it if we are searching for photographs of Morwell, or if we are searching for souvenir plates. Makes life much simpler.