Day 7: 25 January 2011

Room 207 and the Ethnographic collections

Two days a week from now until we are finished, Andrea and I are inventorying the ethnographic collections that are being moved over to room 2007. The archives building is undergoing a lot of changes to move everything into a more linear order. 

  

This is just one row of the shelves with the collections on them. There are quite a few more...

This is the ethnographic collection's new home. As of now it holds both city records and some of the museum's collections. Below are several of the boxes we worked with today, the shoes are from the Armenian collections. The ones in the plastic bag are made of straw and fur-lined, so awesome. The others are leather slipper-type shoes. 

The items in this box in plastic bags are those under observation. They are basically in quarantine to protect the other artifacts and will soon undergo more preservation measures. In the bag we have two pair of hand knit, brightly colored socks and some pretty adorable mittens. There were also textiles, scarves and bowls.

Here we have a crocheted doily, red prayer beads and a necklace with coins on it. 

On the left is a hand carved comb and the right is the base of an oil lamp. The comb is so cool! I saw a similar one when I was working at a site in Baltimore over the summer.

This is one of the inventory sheets. It has a column for the accession number, a brief description, the location code and a column for its condition and if it is to be sent to the freezer. We then took this info and went to the online database. We used it to enter in the new locations of the artifacts. It's nice to know where things are!

This is my office. Well, I share it. But I get a drawer of my own. 

SIDENOTE: the freight elevator got stuck today just as Andrea and I were about to get on it. We called it to our floor and it got stuck between ours and the one below. Super glad I wasn't in there. No thanks.