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Monday, July 21, 2014

A Personal Touch Makes a Whorl of Difference



The title is a pun, not a typo, so press on, my dedicated and curious readers! I know it's been almost a whole month since my last post (due in part to technical difficulties, and also a temporary lack of inspiration), but today’s blog post is something special. Trust me.

Have you ever come across something that you just can’t believe? Something that you look at multiple times just to make sure you’re really seeing it? Well, a couple of weeks ago, I had one of those experiences. But first, background information is probably a good idea (I know, I’m sorry, I totally teased you all just then. But hey, you’re even more curious now, right?).

One of my recent projects was to catalog and photograph a collection of artifacts from Cyprus that are currently on exhibit, and move them into a different display case afterwards. And here they are, awaiting their new display home:

This collection consists of mostly terracotta lamps and pitchers, but also a piece of rope used in a mine in Cyprus; a professor from the University of Cyprus has requested fragments from the rope so that she can have them radiocarbon dated!
 I was pumped to get my hands [literally] on this display re-design opportunity. The case these artifacts were in originally was very small and a bit outdated in terms of appearance. Also, the large pyramid-shaped case was hung so high above the display that housed all the other artifacts that I actually didn’t even see it until I took it down for cataloging. Here’s what the display looked like before I was let loose on it:


Pretty cramped, and nothing really stands out.

 We’ll come back to the display. Now for the exciting bit. As I was going over the artifacts and filling out condition reports for each of them, I saw something on one of the small terracotta pitchers. I did a double—no, triple-take. I put the pitcher down. Then I picked it back up. I tried to reason with myself, what are the odds? As I stepped into the curator’s office, I tried not to seem overly excited (I did not want to look like a young and naïve intern that jumped to a thrilling conclusion prematurely). Calmly sitting in her office, I presented her with what I thought I had found:

The pitcher in question . . .

What's that . . . ?
Wait, is that another one!?
ANOTHER!?
Do you see what I think I see? Well, do you!? Fingerprints! More than one! I was relieved and totally psyched when I found out I wasn’t the only one who thought I had discovered something special. I expressed my amazement and nonchalantly left the office since I didn’t want to totally freak out in front of everyone, but let me tell you: THIS IS ONE OF THE COOLEST THINGS I HAVE EVER SEEN OR TOUCHED. EVER. And I have seen some pretty cool stuff.

This pitcher’s estimated date is 600-500 BCE (before common era), as in about 2,500 years ago! What we have here is something that connects us with humans through space and time, across countries and different languages, something that connects us as humans through art, invention, labor, trade so many things! Despite all the odds stacked against the survival of ancient artifacts, here it is. It’s cracked and damaged, but here it is. These fingerprints are, quite possibly, two thousand and five hundred years old. They might be from the very person who was involved with crafting this pitcher. And here I am, halfway across the world in a tiny mining town that actually qualifies in a Colorado guide book as a ghost town, working as a curatorial intern for $8.50 an hour, and this slice of history and culture is resting in my hands. I found a website and journal for the Society of Ancient Fingerprints, and a quote on their homepage sums this up well: "When a ceramics sherd or piece of clay has a preserved fingerprint it suddenly becomes personal. It is possible to actually hold the very same object someone held thousands of years ago." 

I’m no expert, and it's completely possible that a ceramics or terracotta expert could come in here and rain all over my parade. Maybe the fingerprints are from later, though I’m not sure how that would happen once the pitcher was completed. Terra cotta translates from Italian into baked earth, and once this piece was fired, I don’t know how fingerprints would have been made in it afterwards. My little discovery happened over two weeks ago, but can you tell that I’m still TOTALLY PUMPED about this!?

Phew, I think I got my heart racing a little bit back there. Anybody else feel that? So, deep breaths, let’s return to re-designing the display. The curator and I decided to use an old empty case in a different and more appropriate wing of the museum. I really wanted the display to look both visually dynamic and clean/organized at the same time. The goal was something simple, but not BORING, because these artifacts are too beautiful to be victimized by a boring visual display. I used some small stands that the museum had in the workshop to change things up a bit. I edited the new labels the curator typed up and discussed where we wanted to put them in relation to the objects on display. We are both extremely pleased with the final product, and I am absolutely over the moon that I got to do this.

After! Sorry about the photo quality, I took this with my iPhone.

The small pitcher on the clear stand is the one with the fingerprints. I just had to give it something a little special.

As Stephen King once wrote in one of his MANY books: " . . . I was being paid to do what I loved, and there's no gig on earth better than that . . . "

Sometimes I can't believe this is my job.


Also, rewinding just a little bit (okay, a lot) back to those educational kits that I made (see previous post): they were a hit! The lunch-and-learn we presented them at was a huge success and I had the opportunity to interact with some of the attendees after the lecture. This was at this historic park in Frisco, CO. Not only did we get newspaper coverage, but there were also about 70 people in attendance! For those of you with limited small-town experience, that’s a lot of people. We ran out of chairs and standing space, and unfortunately had to even turn some people away because the crowd number got too high for code! Getting to talk to people about the artifacts and sharing with them which of them were my favorite and why was a blast.  

My internship is about halfway over already, and I have had so many enriching experiences (cliché, I know, but whatever . . . it’s true). I’m so proud of the work I have done so far, and I am very happy that I had the guts to move all the way from DC/North Carolina to this tiny town 1,500 miles away. 

If I hadn’t, I probably never would have touched the fingerprints of a 2,500 year old person. And that's what makes this the greatest gig on earth for me.