Researching Museum Objects #1 – General Dating

At the Museum, we try to collect as much information as possible on artefacts from the source. Sometimes, though, that’s just not an option—either the source doesn’t know, or an item may have been in the collection for 40 years, and the source just isn’t around anymore to ask. This is always a shame, because once the specific history of an item is lost, it’s almost impossible to reconstruct it. But, there’s usually some basic information we can research—and the first thing we generally try to do is establish a time frame for the item.

The material a thing is made of sometimes provides useful information, although this can be deceiving—plastics have been around since the 1850s! Generally, though, most 19th Century goods were made of wood or steel; aluminum was commercially available starting around 1910; bakelite (a certain type of hard plastic) was most extensively used between 1920 and 1940.

The decorations on an item can prove useful as well. Black cast iron painted with gold details was common on 1890s sewing machines, typewriters, etc.; the bold lines and sweeping curves of the Art Deco style date mostly to the 1920s and ‘30s; plastic items with gold flecks were popular in the 1950s and ‘60s; the colours avocado green and harvest gold almost certainly point to the 1970s.

The Industrial Revolution was old news by the time Medicine Hat was established in the 1880s, so most objects we see have been mass produced. The maker’s names, and sometimes the city they were located in, are often painted, or sometimes cast, right into the item. Then, as now, this was an important means of advertising. With a little e-digging, finding out when a company was in business will at least provide a date range of when the item was made. If no record of the company can be found, knowing where they were located might point to a museum or historical society in that area that may have further information.

A lot of products have their patent numbers on them somewhere; these can be looked up on websites such as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (http://patft.uspto.gov/). This not only often yields information on when the item was made, but can also tell us what it’s supposed to do, and how to use it.