Today in the Lab

For this post, I wanted to share some images of a particularly memorable item I had recently on my bench.  As a conservator, I get to see a lot of very interesting items in Dartmouth's collections in addition to the mundane (though they are never really that mundane).  There are always items that are historically relevant, have expensive materials, or belonged to someone very important-and sometimes there are things that are inexplicably sweet and funny, or just seem to have a personality all their own without significant provenance.

This particular object in Rauner's collection needed to be rehoused: which is library speak for needing a more appropriate box.  The item itself is a little wooden box with a screw-top that contains discs with an image on one side and words on the other.  The box top is appropriately labeled "Pretty Pictures with Easy Reading."  The detail of the painted box and each of the little images is really lovely, and we admittedly got a good laugh out of the purported "easy reading."

 

                                      


Written by Lizzie Curran