This week, I tackled the Stephenson room once more. I spent a lot of this time going through the remainder of art prints that were laying loose. I continued with my system in my piles (1- not in PastPerfect, 2- in PastPerfect, and 3- no accession record/not in PastPerfect). I showed Jonathan my organization system and as far as I could tell, he seemed pleased with it. As my piles get bigger, they start to take up more space. In the future I will have more tables and space to sort these items, but for the time being I do not. There are other volunteers that work in that room, organizing/packing up the military clothing collections that have been in there. I try to leave room for them to work so they do not touch my piles and get them all jumbled up.
Things got interesting, to say the least, this week. I had started to get bored of looking up all the artwork, so I reached for what seemed to be a harmless Christmas box. Inside of this box, was a bird. This shocked me quite a bit, as it was not was I was expecting. I delved deeper into the history behind this particular item.
Upon further research, and talking to Jonathan, I learned that this bird was once part of a hat. While I knew that women used to have extravagant bird feathers attached to their hats, I never knew that they would put an entire bird on them.
By the middle of the week, I had finally made a large dent in the artwork and was finally starting to get into other objects, such as hats (there are many of them). The area with the pile of stuff to go through is finally looking clean and my piles are getting bigger as I continue to organize them. In addition to this, the other volunteers have made enough of a dent that a whole rack is gone and I can now access more of the area without struggling or moving too much stuff.
By Thursday, I hadn't been feeling well so I just worked some more on the surname files. It's a slow process, but I'm finally in the D's -- which is like the fourth filing cabinet, so I'm making progress!
I look forward to the next week where I get to tackle even more of the Stephenson room and unearth some interesting items!
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