Community Curated Exhibit: Collecting Household Treasures from the Past
By: Jake Kilroy, along with Jimmy and Max Kilroy
The Kilroy Brothers: Jake (left), Max (center), and Jimmy (right)
As a teen growing up in the twenty-first century, I am far removed from the lives of generations before me. Word of our past has faded greatly since then, now only temporarily revealing itself within history classes in school and the occasional “when I was younger” story from an older relative or family friend.
The truth is that, in reality, the daily lives of those living about a century ago were not as removed or unrelatable as they may seem to us today. A century ago, people brushed their teeth, combed their hair, listened to music, drank soda, played with toys, and put on jewelry before a night out, just as we do.
In this collection of historical artifacts, I hope to show the undeniable root connection between the technologies and lifestyles of our modern-day and those of former times. In fact, people living in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries used many of the same household implements that we rely on today.
My brothers and I recovered many of these items from abandoned trash heaps in the Natick area. Typically, with no regular rubbish collection, residents would burn their cast-offs and dump the refuse on their own property. Many of these sites are now overgrown and hardly recognizable. But sleuthing with a metal-detector and old-fashioned rakes and shovels has released their treasures, many damaged but others surviving unscathed.
Click on the images below to enlarge the picture and read the caption describing the object.
