I love museums and history, so I was thrilled to be contacted by Sean Hooley a few weeks ago.

Hooley is part of a team working on The Launch at the historic Hingham Shipyard. The shipyard, located in Hingham, Massachusetts, once played a large role in World War Two and the Allied victory. The story begins on December 7, 1941, when Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. At that time all other shipyards were already working at full capacity so it was clear that a new shipyard would have to be created and within weeks the small town of Hingham was selected. One hundred and fifty acres were cleared and one of the largest shipbuilding centers in the entire country was built, with over 2500 women working to put out over six ships each month — in less than two years.

The shipyard has been largely unused since it was shut down after the end of the war. Now it’s being redeveloped — but the town wanted the story about the shipyard and what happened there to be told. So the development project includes an educational exhibit commemorating the history of the shipyard.

The Hingham Shipyard Historical Exhibit will be a series of panels located along pedestrian walkways and parks on the site, creating a walking tour. During his quest for images for the panels, Hooley had come upon my blog post on life on the home front during World War Two, and this image of “How Your Discarded Stockings Go To War” (from Volume 12, Number 2, 1943, Modern Woman Magazine, George M. Wessells, Publisher) seemed perfect for the historic project.

Naturally I was thrilled to play a part — no matter how small — in the project. It’s history for Pete’s sake! But first, we had to be clear on a few things, such as the fact that as a collector I had scanned and posted the image for informational purposes but I do not own the rights to it. Once we were rather certain of the intellectual property issues, it was a matter of me sending him a good scan.

Now I just sit and wait while Hooley and his cohorts add the image (along with an image of a woman having fake stocking seams painted on) to one of the panels. The images are to appear on a panel called “Home Front Sacrifices”, which will cover such things as victory gardens, conservation, and rationing — including the story of nylon stockings in the war effort.

Once it’s open, I’ll have to make plans to travel to Massachusetts to take the walking tour of the Hingham Shipyard Historical Exhibit. I’d love to see the exhibit I’ve been a small part of.

***

I also wanted to mention that I’ll be at the joint “Meeting In The Middle” 2008 annual conference for both the Mountain-Plains Museums Association & the Association of Midwest Museums this week; I’m part of the panel discussion on Wednesday, October 22, Session C2 titled Museums & Web 2.0. Maybe I’ll see some of you there?

Collectors are often accused of being a materialistic lot; but as collections are not just made up of objects, how can that be?

Nearly two years ago I wrote how, “Somewhere in time this object ceased to be just an object but became a symbol of something more, something larger than just itself.” Not long after, I talked about collections in context. But at a very simple level, a collection is a set of memories, on display and ready to be shared.

Collections may start with an heirloom, something personal from your past, a thing “just snapped-up” in an impulse — but along the way they transform from a set of objects. They represent more than spoils of your hunting, but the path you took. Collections document your own personal journey.

Old Stuffed Toys

My little accumulation of ratty-old-cuddlies didn’t begin with buying anything. It began with friends from my childhood, like “Tigger” shown in this photo.

“Tigger” is a sawdust stuffed tiger. He’s faded, some of his fur is worn away with love, and he’s been sewn-up several times at the seam along his back. Even if he was a Steiff, he’d likely have no “value” due to his condition.

But to me, every bald patch, every stitch, has a story.

That larger patch at the back is evidence of 8 year-old-me chewing gum in bed — I had to cut the grape-yuck out of him in the morning so my folks wouldn’t know. Those multi-colored stitches down his back are the proof of the improvement of my sewing skills; large, childish stitches in black at the bottom, pinkish more uniform threads in the middle, and tight tan stitches at the top.

So when I spotted “Big Toe Joe” my delight lay not completely in his original creation, nor did I view his missing eyes and ratty hair as desecration; I saw in him what others might miss in “Tigger” — all the spots where the stories lay. The same is true for “Jocko” the one-eared faceless monkey. There are stories in the wear & tear of these childhood cuddlies. They’d been saved for years due to love and I just had to honor that, continue their care, even if I don’t know all their stories. My collection is more than just old stuffed animals; it documents my path to save what I can of abandoned childhood memories.

Another collection which has its roots in my childhood is my “ancient Egyptian stuff” collection.

Just One Shelf Of My "Ancient Egyptian" Chotchkes

It began with those early forays to the library. I somehow stumbled into books about ancient Egypt, likely either from my love of Arabian horses, my passion of learning how to belly dance alone in my room, or a hot & heavy pursuit of mythology; take your pick. In any case I was instantly was smitten with ancient Egypt.

I began to get every Egyptian chotchke I could, no matter how obscurely it was connected. Family and friends have helped through the years, giving things with an excited & hopeful, “You don’t have this yet, do you?” I’ve amassed scarabs, papyrus, wooden and glass hippos, tacky tin mummies and boxes, jewelry old & new, plaster museum reproductions, African candle holders, handmade things with Egyptian motifs — and of course books.

At first my books were those heavily illustrated Time/Life numbers grabbed-for-cheap at flea markets and garage sales. As my fetish continued, including some study in college, family & friends continued to enable me by gifting me lush tomes full of photos of pharaoh tombs. But eventually I graduated to works which focused on the written word, even (when I can afford it) rare works by archaeologists either forgotten or mentioned in the footnotes of others.

When I look at my “Egyptian stuff” I don’t just see a collection of objects on a theme; I see my growth from dreamy romantic child to history lover, from history lover to history student, from student to independent researcher. And I see in all the items gifted to me, the support and love of family and friends.

These displays of my personal growth, of my values, aren’t “just things”. They are as important as snapshots. They are the visual cues to oral stories — if only someone would listen.

How, then, can collecting be seen as just a materialistic act?

We were on vacation last week, in Florida. In Tampa, to be exact. Along with Disney, we did several other tourist things, which got me thinking about souvenir albums — you know, those old books with construction paper pages and all sorts of postcards and paper glued into them along with hand written notes on what they did and thought… The ones that force you to page through them at the estate sale so long that you have to buy them so you can take them home and really read them. And in doing so you experience the trips taken by persons long gone, to attractions (if not actual places) which may also be long gone… But in those faded pages the spirit(s) still live.

I get goosebumps just thinking about those old scrapbooks.

I wanted the kids to make such scrapbooks, but they had no interest in it. They never really have. Nothing short of forcing them would make it happen, and vacation memories at gun-point isn’t exactly the sort of charm I was going for.

If they wouldn’t do it for me, they certainly had no interest in doing it for some future collector. And that made me a little sad. At first.

I wondered if we just weren’t making vacations good enough — or at least “like they used to,” but then something happened…

In our condo’s packet of stuff to see and do, I found a brochure for Tampa Bay Ghost Tours. Boasting “All The Best Haunts”, I called and made reservations for the whole crew, including the kids (ages 7 through 18), without asking any real questions. I didn’t ask what the tours were, how long it lasted, or anything that (apparently) sane people ask. I just thought we’d all enjoy it and booked a date.

Now perhaps I should preface all of this by saying that the kids are, among many things, into ghosts.

Along with having hysterically historical parents (both in terms of our ages and our love of history), they are themselves imaginative as well as scientific in their approach to such things as ghosts. (Our household not only watches History Detectives & MythBusters, but Ghost Hunters too).

And it should be noted that one of the favorite Disney attractions was the Haunted Mansion. It was such a favorite, my personal souvenir from Disney was the book, The Haunted Mansion: From the Magic Kingdom to the Movies; certain to be a favorite for it’s ghost theme as well as (especially by the eldest) its information on theatrical effects. Oh, and we’ve officially got at least one goth kid. :sigh:

So while I may not have known much about the Tampa Bay Ghost Tours, I did — and do — know a lot about our kids. So I felt confident booking the evening walking tour along the boardwalk at John’s Pass, called the Maritime Mysteries & Pirates of the Pass tour.

The tour itself was everything I could have asked for — and so much more.

It was over an hour of ghost stories, told to us against the backdrop of the beautiful boardwalk at sunset. The stories or legends are of real people who lived in or around John’s Pass, documented and researched by Deborah Frethem who has authored Ghost Stories of St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Pinellas County: Tales From a Haunted Peninsula — a book available in the tour’s gift shop.

Books I eventually purchased.

Yes, “books” — because, for reasons I shall soon explain, each of the kids and myself, needed a copy.

You see, the tour was very cool, but what really made the tour so neat was our tour guide, Quartermaster Moe.

A large, physically imposing man dressed as a pirate (but not in an over-the-top way), his deep voice and mesmerizing storytelling had all three of the children, as well as we adults, spellbound. I can’t really say enough about Quartermaster Moe without further embarrassment of my family or the Quartermaster himself, but will say that Tampa Bay Ghost Tours has a goldmine in that pirate.

He so fascinated the children that when we returned to John’s Pass to purchase books the next day (the gift shop being closed by the time the tour ended), that I had an idea… I’d ask if we could get the quartermaster to sign our books. I wasn’t sure if this would be possible that day, but driving there I figured I could shoo the children to grandma for a few minutes and sneak into the gift shop and ask. Even if it meant having the books sent to us via mail, I imagined how happy each child would be… But when we arrived at the shop, who awaited us outside? Quartermaster Moe!

The kids were falling all over themselves at the sight of him when I asked him if he’d mind signing our copies of the book. He was surprised and said he’d never been “honored” with such a request before, but he’d happily do it — and shouldn’t we have photos of that too? At which time one of the other ghost tour guides offered to take a group photo of us all.

Well, long-story-short, he signed all three kids books and my own copy (because the kids wouldn’t have it any other way) and that, my friends, was the high-light of the day if not the trip. Girls clutched the books like they were pirate booty and even the seven year old boy who normally cannot be bothered with books outside of school sat down to read it!

From a collector’s standpoint, Quartermaster Moe’s signature may have no value — but to our family it sure does. In those bits of ink, the spirit of our family and our vacation are collected. Just like those old scrapbooks. Even if it is something a future collector would scratch his head over…

For unless this article makes Quartermaster Moe famous or something, researching that name will be rather difficult.

And that makes me rethink every book I own, ever seen, which has an unknown or seemingly unrelated inscription… Who might that person be/have been and what secrets does it hold?

It wasn’t until later that I noticed the books had also been signed by the author. Then I felt a twinge of guilt. I was marveling at what will likely be “meaningless” or intrinsic personal value of Moe’s signature and oblivious to what is perhaps the autograph with monetary value.

But then I realized (or at least hope) that Frethem would get our family’s love of such quintessence — she, after all, spent a great deal of time researching and writing about similarly powerful but oft unseen mysteries: ghosts.

Her collection of ghosts, or at least their stories, is a preservation of more than History with a capital ‘H’, but the specters of the past which are as incoherent yet potent as any other memory. And collecting them has value.

Every spring we have a wonderful treat as we look out our kitchen window. We love birds and sometimes lament the cost of buying the seed, the continuous chore of filling up the feeders in the cold Wisconsin winters, and putting suet into the ‘cage’ with frozen fingers. But we do get some special rewards for our endeavors! We have an incredible visitor – an indigo bunting! Vibrant blue, small and cheerful, he makes us smile and we always vie for which of us will spot him first. He is our ‘bluebird of happiness’, you might say!

But long before he came along, I have loved blue birds. I have them in the kitchen, on old china pieces, on salt and pepper shakers, a creamer, a vase, and even a sentimental plate. My most recent treasure is a German, lustre canister set that is just covered with them! (This was a gift from dear hubby for our anniversary.)

As I glanced around at them this weekend, I realized they needed to be cleaned for anticipated guests and family. (Kitchen items do tend to get a bit ‘greasy’, even though I am constantly teased for not cooking a lot.) I began to wonder just why we call them ‘bluebirds of happiness’ and if this was a fairly new thought process. So, using one of my favorite tools, I “Googled” those words “Blue Bird of Happiness” and ‘voila’, I received the requested information and learned a lot.

It turns out that to many Native American tribes, the bluebird was sacred. According to the Cochiti tribe, the firstborn son of Sun was named Bluebird. The Navajo hold the Mountain Bluebird to be a great spirit in animal form and associate it with the rising sun. Their Bluebird song is still used in social settings and performed in the 9-day Ye’iibicheii Winter Nightway Ceremony.

I also learned that a popular song by Jan Peerce and Art Mooney and his orchestra called “Bluebird of Happiness” was recorded in 1948 and introduced at the Radio City Music Hall. There was also a stage play called “The Blue Bird” by Maurice Maeterlick in 1908. It was made into several films throughout the 20^th century, including the 1940 original starring Shirley Temple.

But the mythology of the bluebird actually goes back a lot farther. For example, in Europe, a noted fairy tale is called “L’Oiseau Bleu” (The Blue Bird) by Madame d’Aulnoy (1650-1705) and it seems to be the root of modern accounts of bluebird symbology and myth. In this tale, King Charming is transformed into a bluebird, who is the love interest of the younger princess Fiordelisa and aids her through her trials.

In magical symbology, bluebirds are used to represent confidence in the positive aspect and egotism in the negative. A dead bluebird is a symbol of disillusionment, or the loss of innocence, and of transformation from the younger and naïve to the older and wiser.

Indigenous cultures across the globe hold similar beliefs. It is the most universally accepted symbol of cheerfulness, happiness, prosperity, hearth and home, good health, new births, and the renewal of spring! Virtually any positive sentiments may be attached to the bluebird.

So I am not alone in my thinking. I will wear my bird pins and earrings regularly, display my blue birds around the house and whistle a cheerful song! How big is your bluebird collection?

I’ve been struggling with how to begin this post for about fifteen minutes, and the one thing that keeps on coming to the forefront of my mind is this :

“Holy *&%$, this is the most amazing book I’ve ever seen.”

So, let’s begin there.

I’m not going to lie - I’ve been a bit disillusioned with toys lately. This happens when you go spelunking into the recesses of the closets and can’t find the back, but can still find 30 different Green Lantern action figures. You start to question the nature of things. Between tax time and running out of space, things haven’t been looking pretty in my brain. I have all of this stuff, but what does it MEAN? I was losing focus. I knew that none of this was ever about ‘having stuff’, so where did this all start?

Toygiants is a 200+ page tome of toy photographs. In their own broad way, toys are a perfect representation of the homogenous plasticization that the media has been putting us through. They’re little imperfect clones of creatures and movie stars that we can own. They’re popped out of molds, and they’re painted up and sent out into the world as tiny little icons of adulation. Still, many recent toy-art books have gone the safe Dorling-Kindersley route, presenting a collection of pristine toys, neatly labeled on white backgrounds, informational and organized, all remaining a few steps less than ‘art’. They read like product photography, which is great if you want to know what something looks like, but little else. A few other toy photographers place toys into realistic situations, trying to blur the line between reality and toy as much as possible, which also has its charm.

What the Fuchs do in Toygiants shatters these concepts. The gigantic Batman head plastered on the cover is an illustration of this. It has scraped paint, really bad seam lines, and isn’t really in a state where a collector would covet it. Here’s where I’m reminded that toys go beyond collecting, and into a world of color and form and shape. This is why I started collecting them in the first place - not because I NEEDED to have a complete Batman rogue’s gallery, but because the shapes and colors and forms inspired me. That inspiration turned into a never-ending quest to find better and better inspirations, until it turned into a collection. I don’t think that my outlook on this kind of amassing would be so positive if I hadn’t viewed this book.

Toygiants has a good deal of white background photography, the book is initially dominated by page-sized photographs of toy faces, from He-Man to Andy Warhol, Luke Skywalker and The Incredible Hulk, which I read as a kind of parody / statement on celebrity worship - keeping in mind that the original prints are wall-sized. Where the book begins to really impress me is their redefinition of the idea of a ‘collection’ through the photography of certain themes of items together, regardless of where and which ‘series’ they came from. While it doesn’t usually occur to me to place a Flash figure in a collection of toys based on the color red, seeing it in a new context is refreshing, not to mention accessible. We have these toys - we just didn’t think of constructing a rainbow with them, and the concept is kinda beautiful.

Beyond color-coded collections, figures are gathered in sunburst patterns, melted, and put into surreal scenarios - not based on their characters, but based on their formal, visual, or cultural properties. It kinda makes my shelf of Justice League team members look terribly pedestrian. And freezing a whole freezer full of ice-themed figures, until they’re covered with a thick sheet of ice, is genius. The closest I ever came to this was putting a meat-themed robot into my freezer and taking some Polaroids a few years ago. Many of these images can be seen on the book’s website.

So, just as much as I’ve always looked at machines and wooden constructions as potentially dissectible, Toygiants has benefitted me in the same way on a personally creative level, giving toys a new meaning and purpose. The greatest compliment I can give anything is that ‘it inspired me’. Toygiants not only inspired me, it re-interested me in collecting for art, and I feel urged to share it with whoever I possibly can. Even if you’re not interested in toys, the design aspect and the accessibility remain.

This is great stuff. The original edition has an MSRP of $65, but the Silver Edition, released this month, has a much cheaper $45 MSRP, additional pages, and a pull-out poster of silver-themed toys. Other editions exist at the Toygiants website, with limited edition prints enclosed. I can’t stress this enough : it is a beautiful thing.