Fig.1: The unidentified object. Any guesses on what it is?
Do you know what this is? We didn’t. Our artifact collection contains over 7264 items, so on occasion we come across an artifact with an unknown function. We try not to use or alter the artifact in any way, so most of the time there is no clear way of figuring out what the heck something does. As a new staff member here at the museum, I have a particularly hard time figuring this type of thing out.
Fig. 2: The accession number for our object - 96.001.01F
As you can see, the item has a little white mark on the bottom – this is the only change we make. On that little white mark is an accession number, which helps us figure out what an item is. “Accessioning” is the formal process by which an artifact enters into our collection, meaning that after the accession is complete we have legal ownership and responsibility of the item and its preservation. The number assigned to that item is then put into the database, and if you search for that number you should find the item! But what happens when you don’t have the number? I’ll take you through both the ‘with’ and ‘without number’ processes.
Accession numbers for objects follow a specific pattern, for example: 1996.001.01. The first four numbers are the year the object was accessioned (1996), followed by a number that represents which ‘group’ the object came in with (001, meaning this was the 1st group of things to be accessioned in 1996), and finally the number of this specific item within its group (01, meaning it was the 1st item in this batch). If there is a letter following this last number, it means that there are multiple pieces of the same artifact. For example, one of the pieces I will talk about in this post has two parts to one pipe, and is thus differentiated in the accession number using ‘a’ and ‘b’. The number looks like this: 1978.013.40a or 1978.013.40b.
There are two ways to go about this: one way for if you have the accession number, and one for if you don’t. If you don’t have the accession number you can go through the archival database, searching with keywords to see if you can find a match in the pictures or description – very similar to how we proceeded in the last blog post I made! The problem with this is that sometimes the entries do not have pictures, only descriptions, which makes it hard to confirm that you’ve found the item you’re looking for. For this item I used the keywords “black” and “metal” in a broad search, and came up with a couple possible matches.
Accession numbers for objects follow a specific pattern, for example: 1996.001.01. The first four numbers are the year the object was accessioned (1996), followed by a number that represents which ‘group’ the object came in with (001, meaning this was the 1st group of things to be accessioned in 1996), and finally the number of this specific item within its group (01, meaning it was the 1st item in this batch). If there is a letter following this last number, it means that there are multiple pieces of the same artifact. For example, one of the pieces I will talk about in this post has two parts to one pipe, and is thus differentiated in the accession number using ‘a’ and ‘b’. The number looks like this: 1978.013.40a or 1978.013.40b.
There are two ways to go about this: one way for if you have the accession number, and one for if you don’t. If you don’t have the accession number you can go through the archival database, searching with keywords to see if you can find a match in the pictures or description – very similar to how we proceeded in the last blog post I made! The problem with this is that sometimes the entries do not have pictures, only descriptions, which makes it hard to confirm that you’ve found the item you’re looking for. For this item I used the keywords “black” and “metal” in a broad search, and came up with a couple possible matches.
Fig.3: The database page for accessioned item number 1978.013.40a
The matches I found by using keywords in the database were 1978.013.40a and 1992.025.01. Neither of these entries have pictures in the database, so I cannot be sure that they are really a match to the object I am trying to find, but it is because these entries have no picture that they could be a match.
1978.013.40a is described as a stove pipe, with “…an air vent near the top, flattened at the bottom. Covered in soot”. Does this description match the picture at the top of the post? It’s definitely a possibility, but we could do better.
1978.013.40a is described as a stove pipe, with “…an air vent near the top, flattened at the bottom. Covered in soot”. Does this description match the picture at the top of the post? It’s definitely a possibility, but we could do better.
Fig. 4: The database page for accessioned item number 1992.025.01
The next item is 1992.025.01. This is described as “…a large black adding machine with white plastic keys and a black cord…black non-slip coating … is flaking off to reveal smooth black-painted metal”. This could be our item. It is black like ours, and the paint is flaking like ours, but ours doesn’t have any white keys. This is also not our item!
Luckily, our item has an accession number on it! All we have to do is take this number and search for it in our database, and voila!
Luckily, our item has an accession number on it! All we have to do is take this number and search for it in our database, and voila!
Even though we have the accession number, this still took a little bit of work as the accession number pictured (fig.2) is one that follows an old format. Fortunately we can still find the same information! It turns out that, with some fiddling, 96.001.01F translates to 1996.001.01. Using the accession number, 1996.001.01, I can do a specific search for our item.
Our item is a “pot belly stove” that was used for heating homes using wood! In hindsight, this makes a lot of sense. We can see now that the small door at the front was for coal, while the tall upper section was for fire and the long joined pieces were to control air-flow. Because this object came with only a description, and no history attached (we don’t know who owned it, where it came from, or if it is even relevant to the Coast) it is referred to as an Example of Kind. Being an Example of Kind makes this object relevant to the collection because it was an example of the common technology of the eras we are trying to preserve.
Our item is a “pot belly stove” that was used for heating homes using wood! In hindsight, this makes a lot of sense. We can see now that the small door at the front was for coal, while the tall upper section was for fire and the long joined pieces were to control air-flow. Because this object came with only a description, and no history attached (we don’t know who owned it, where it came from, or if it is even relevant to the Coast) it is referred to as an Example of Kind. Being an Example of Kind makes this object relevant to the collection because it was an example of the common technology of the eras we are trying to preserve.
 Fig. 5: Our pot-belly stove next to a more popular/modern version |  Fig. 6: A more popular rendition of the pot-belly stove next to our accessioned version |
See you next week for some more adventures into the collection! Feel free to tell us your initial thoughts on what the object was in the comments below!
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