Antonio Ferraro
This week at Eckley, I continued my project of inventorying the old artifact storage house.
The week started off with me continuing from where I left off two weeks ago (I took the week of the 4th off for vacation); I had gotten about eighty percent of the room I had been working on done, which in total accounts for roughly one half of the objects I would have to inventory in the house. The last several things in that room that I started with on Monday were a mixture of hundreds of millions of years old anthracite fossils (of which there were dozens) in incredibly varied shapes and sizes, then finally a collection of a couple dozen earth sample boxes. These were long rectangular wooden crates that were used by the mining companies to store samples of earth taken from prospective mining locations, which would be tested for viability of mining.
After that room was finished, I did a once over of the entire east side (the side of the house I had been working on) to check any small things that had been missed either by me or back in June by Collections Management. After catching a few things, I moved on to the west side, where I have been since. I started by plugging any holes in the upstairs rooms, which had already been inventoried last month, checking to see if any random missing objects could be found or were just missed before. All that was left, besides some stragglers that were mishandled in our database, was the front room downstairs on the west side. As of the end of the week, I managed to get through about ninety percent of the room, with only a few free-standing things left to inventory (as well as some objects stored on the floor). Once that room is done, I should be done with the project unless Collections Management reaches out to ask for clarification on anything they need to know more about from the data I will submit (which is likely, since there is always a chance I missed some details on describing an object, etc.).
This project has been incredibly rewarding thus far. While difficult at times and very tedious, as explained in my previous blog posts I am gaining an incredible amount of valuable experience working with artifacts and the appropriate means of handling, describing, and storing them that I hope to use in the future.
Attached below are some interesting objects from the week:
A copy of the Hazleton Standard (1930s).
A copy of the Hazleton Standard (1930s).
A diphtheria treatment kit.
An amputation kit, complete with bone saw and scalpels.
An army sewing kit, likely private purchase and post-WWII.
Contents of the sewing kit.
A sign posting a reward for information on a burglary of the Eckley Social and Sports Club (1951).
