Antonio Ferraro
This week at Eckley, I finalized (the largest portion of) a major project that culminated the past several weeks and began two new projects that will take me to the end of my internship.
Tuesday was spent finishing the inventory of the Artifact Storage House. I knew based on the number of artifacts left to inventory that I would only need the better part of a day to finish it this week, so it was no surprise that the house was completely inventoried by Tuesday afternoon. It was an incredibly tiring and monotonous process, but as I have said before, the experience and knowledge gained through performing an inventory by myself is incredibly valuable and taught me an inexplicable amount about handling and inventorying artifacts of all shapes, sizes, natures, and conditions. That portion of the “2023 Inventory” for Eckley is now mostly complete, save for any clarifications or revisions I may have to make if Collections Management has any questions about artifacts or notes I made.
A twentieth century miner’s helmet, exterior. This helmet was produced from the same materials as and in similar fashion to WWII-era American military M1 helmet liners.
A twentieth century miner’s helmet, interior.
A WWII-era M1 helmet liner for comparison. The body is made from compressed fiber giving the iconic orange-brown triangular pattern that can be seen on the miner’s helmet as well. The inner suspension is made from olive drab cotton webbing with a leather sweatband (again, very similar to the miner’s helmet).
A temperance education booklet designed for “school and family” use, c.1884.
On Wednesday morning, I had another Keystone Learning Session over Microsoft Teams, where I got to sit in with other interns and get industry insight on museum education from the planetarium director of the State Museum of Pennsylvania and the educator at the Lumber Museum in Ulysses, PA. We got a whole wealth of information on and got to ask questions about the process of rising in museum work as a career, the challenges of interacting with the public, and developing both valuable and realistic educational programs for public history.
That afternoon, I received the data for inventorying the Visitor Center at Eckley, which mostly includes our archival storage and some other loose artifacts on display in the lobby—I will not have to inventory the main exhibit hall, which is located in the same building, since that was done a couple years ago already as part of the 2023 Inventory.
My final few weeks at Eckley will be spent doing a combination of that portion of the inventory, as well as completing a new project I was given by John: I will be researching, developing, and compiling a small single-case exhibit display that will be shown in the lobby of the Visitor Center. I was instructed to peruse the oral histories of Eckley residents collected in the 1970s that are publicly available on our website and to choose a specific topic that could be shown through artifacts in our collection. After doing some reading and basic research, I have decided that my exhibit will act as a simple timeline of the development of lighting instruments in nineteenth- and twentieth-century patch towns—everything from candles to oil lamps to electric wall sconces. This project, as well as the remainder of the inventory, will be completed on a day-by-day basis, likely alternating one day at a time for each to vary my schedule.
