OBJECTS OF DELIGHT: THE NINETEENTH CENTURY MASS-PRODUCED MINIATURE

PREAMBLE

The perceived familiarity of the recent past has bred, if not contempt, then at least indifference in the British archaeological community (Tarlow 1999, 263).

In the new Galleries of Modern London at the Museum of London, visitors can walk, on strengthened glass, directly above a seemingly-random scatter of fragmentary artefacts from the recent past (Fig. 1) that are laid out a few cm below floor level. This exhibit dramatically demonstrates how physically close we are to the tangible remains of the last couple of centuries, but it also shows how we tend to undervalue them. Unlike the artefacts artfully displayed, spot-lit and labelled in nearby glass cases these apparently-prosaic, carelessly-arranged, "humble" broken bits and pieces are not identified, and they are literally beneath us. We peer down at sherds of transfer-printed plates, stoneware jugs and bottles, broken glass, clay tobacco pipes, toothbrushes, wig curlers, and various lumps of corroded metal. Amongst these functional objects are broken ceramic figurines, china dolls' limbs, crumpled lead figures and animals - miniatures - objects manufactured in large numbers that usually served no utilitarian purpose but were nevertheless present in almost every nineteenth and early twentieth century household, and therefore in many historical archaeological contexts. But, echoing the impenetrable sheet of glass in the museum, historical archaeologists are separated from the meaning of these objects not only by time, but also by a general lack of expertise in the material culture of the more recent past and a tendency to avoid what is often seen as banal and difficult to categorise "rubbish."

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

The actual things of the past hold a fascination which goes beyond scholarship: there is a joy in being able to touch and see objects which have been held by women and men who died maybe hundreds of years ago (Tarlow 1999, 263).

This proposal has been developed from research I carried out whilst writing my MA dissertation (Mills 2010) which itself resulted from my surprise at discovering that few had examined the phenomenon of miniaturisation and, by extension, what we might learn from artefacts such as the purely ornamental and decorative miniatures that became available to everyone as a result of mass-production that characterised the "industrial era."

It seems that miniatures have formed an important part of material culture since earliest times. For example, The Berekhat Ram and Tan-Tan figurines - both possible miniature representations of the human form - are (not uncontroversial) candidates for the earliest known pieces of figurative art. In the Neolithic, the subjects of miniatures are known to have included buildings. Egyptian miniatures saw further development in variety of subject-matter. In Iron Age Scandinavia, miniatures developed into free-standing objects. By the time that Greeks and Romans were creating large numbers of figurines and other miniatures it is apparent that they played important roles in almost every aspect of life, from birth to death, religion, play, humour, status, sexuality and power.

However, despite their apparent importance, on the whole this class of artefact tends to be merely listed and described, with few suggestions as to purpose or meaning other than the tired catch-alls "votive object" "funereal and "toy."

I was prompted to title this research Objects of Delight by the words of Pat Kane, who wrote of our "sheer delight in the intricate innovations that our fellow humans serve up to us. We are radical animals - able to distance ourselves from our instincts sufficiently enough to shape the world according to our imaginations" (Kane, 2011).

Unlike utilitarian artefacts such as food preparation and serving vessels, utensils, tools etc, miniatures are not a life necessity. Because they are voluntarily desired, acquired, displayed and valued, they reflect the interests, opinions, tastes, fantasies and enthusiasms of their owners, and may illuminate such intangible aspects of daily life as status/class, identity, power/control, gender, childhood/adulthood, emulation and nostalgia, to name but a few.

Mass-produced and inexpensive, miniatures were accessible to all but the very poorest members of society. Some were even given away (e.g. "fairings"). Miniatures can therefore represent and give voice to the values and attitudes of 'ordinary' people, in contrast to the curated artefacts of the elites that have been given most attention until recently. 'Ordinary' people also often created collections (large and small) of miniatures, either of single types or of different objects.

The people who acquired miniatures did not do so with hsitorians and archaeologists in mind but for reasons that are surely our job to identify. Some of them have been touched on by academics: emulation, taste, class, resistance etc. Others have not: collecting, fetish, identity, nostalgia, curation etc. Although it is unwise to project present-day social mores into the past, it could be claimed that activities such as collection and preservation of objects through curation did not arise out of the blue at some magical sudden "big bang" moment in the very recent past.

These issues therefore pose questions about miniatures that researchers have rarely asked, the answers to which would tell us much about the people of the recent past. We need to tackle these questions about people, because: "without people artifacts would have no value at all. We cannot ever hope to understand artifacts - especially the commodities made and used in modern times - outside their entanglements" (Orser 1996, 117).

Prior research

Mass-produced nineteenth century miniatures evolved from objects made in the more distant past, an ancestry that stretched back thousands of years to the first time someone fashioned something from a lump of clay or whittled a piece of wood to create a representation of something much larger. Yet miniatures found on archaeological sites of all periods, and those found on present-day shelves (Fig. 2) have been little researched and what they mean is poorly understood and rarely discussed. Suggestions as to the meanings and 'functions' of these artefacts, if discussed at all, have resulted in a confused picture. For example, miniatures have variously been suggested to be "metaphors," to be providing "intelligibility in a mysterious world," to be "performance" and to be "representations of landscapes" (as listed by Back Danielsson 2007), and of course, to be "votive objects." They have been diminished as lowly "toys" (Crawford 1999, 59), the "pedestrian" possessions of "simple households" (Herberling 1987, 210), and to be scorned as "trivial" and "low" (Pearce 1995, 305).

There has been little published work on miniatures in the recent past. Bailey has considered the phenomenon of miniaturisation in relation with his work on Neolithic artefacts (Bailey 2006, 2008). D'Arne O'Neil listed the small number of archaeologists have examined miniatures and figurines from the prehistoric and classical periods (O'Neil 2009). John Mack wrote about miniatures in general in The Art of Small Things, though his examples are mostly the museum-curated and collected possessions of elites (Mack 2007). Susan Stewart discussed the phenomenon of miniaturisation and collection in her book On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Stewart 1993).

More than anyone else, historical archaeologist Paul Mullins has written about "mundane" artefacts within his work on material culture and bric-a-brac (Mullins 1999, 2001, 2004, 2006, forthcoming), but even he has so far only touched lightly on miniatures. US and Australian archaeologists often mention miniatures in passing, but their interpretations of these artefacts have been critically examined by only a few. Amongst these, Sally Crawford has suggested that "child-related" artefacts may often instead be the possessions of adults (Crawford 2009). Stacey Lynn Camp demonstrated that miniatures can be associated with oppression (Camp 2008), and a few authors suggest that they can represent resistance. Rachel Engmann examined "Frozen Charlotte" dolls that were found in San Jose's Chinatown (Engmann 2007). In the UK, Eleanor Casella's detailed examination of figurines from nineteenth century contexts is a very rare example of this type of study (Casella 2004).

This lack of research leaves us with a significant gap in our knowledge of nineteenth century material culture. What are miniatures, what did they do, what impact did they have? We need to know what mass-produced miniatures have been found in what contexts, and how they have been interpreted, if at all. We need to establish the life histories of mass-produced miniatures - where they were manufactured, how they were traded and distributed, where were they sold and what monetary values they had. Most importantly we need to ascertain the meanings they had for the people who acquired them, and perhaps collected them, and what their presence meant when they occur in contexts such as pioneer settlements, mining camps, brothels, taverns and other similar locations.

RESEARCH QUESTION

A reduction in dimensions does not produce a corresponding reduction in significance (Stewart 1993, 43).

What can mass-produced miniatures tell us about the 'ordinary' people who acquired, displayed, collected and discarded them during the nineteenth century?

GOALS

Figurines were mechanisms of desire and not simply reflections of function and narrowly defined social position, so their consumption potentially holds insights into essential dimensions of everyday desire that ideology shapes profoundly yet can never utterly control or contain (Mullins forthcoming).

Definition:

For this project a "miniature" is defined as: an object that is a scaled-down representation of a real or imagined original and which was manufactured in large numbers in a factory.

This project is not a listing or cataloguing exercise. It is aimed at providing added informational value and dimension to these apparently-familiar objects.

To answer my research question I propose:

1. To study nineteenth century miniatures;
a. Connect miniatures with meaningful contexts;
b. Examine and potentially adjust the identification and dating of miniatures;
c. Locate case studies in domestic contexts (e.g. households) but also taverns, pioneer settlements, brothels, mining camps and male-only communities;
d. Research the discard and loss of miniatures.
2. To investigate what miniatures did:
a. Intrinsic meanings of miniatures, ranged against the historical, economic and other issues of the times in which they were produced;
b. Extrinsic meanings attached to miniatures by their original and subsequent owners;
c. The roles of miniatures (e.g. their association with status, class, childhood/adulthood, gender, oppression and resistance and race);
d. Collection of miniatures and its affects on interpretation and meaning.
3. To research how people acquired miniatures:
a. Who manufactured miniatures, and why;
b. The global trade in miniatures;
c. Patterns of consumption of miniatures.

METHODS

The Victorian context was marked by a miniaturization of visible symbols (Beaudry et al 1996, 277).

To answer my research question I propose carrying out detailed material culture analyses of nineteenth century miniatures from known contexts, based on theoretical approaches that will include elements of Prown (description, deduction, speculation), Glassie (creation, communication, and consumption), Deetz/Dethlefsen and others.

My project will focus on ceramic figurines and dolls and base-metal miniatures manufactured during the nineteenth century but with reference to miniatures of earlier and later periods. It will be based on artefacts mass-produced in England and will include those exported to the New World.

I shall create a strong theoretical foundation to my study that will reflect elements such as agency, manipulation, consumption, collecting, exchange, ownership, object life histories and deposition as well as critically testing the identification and interpretation of miniatures.

Some miniatures have been listed in published reports. A few, usually complete, unusual or spectacular, examples are shared online or in online-accessible databases. However there are unknown numbers of often fragmentary miniature artefacts in stored collections. Creating a custom database and utilising both qualitative and quantitative tools, I shall source and analyse material and data from both published and from curated assemblages in the UK and US, building case studies based on domestic contexts (e.g. households) but also taverns, pioneer settlements, brothels, mining camps, schools and male-only communities.

Potential sources of material (preliminary list):

1. UK:
a. Museum of London
b. Victoria and Albert Museum
c. York (Hungate excavations)
d. The Staffordshire "Potteries"
2. USA:
a. Sonoma State University's Anthropological Studies Center (access already granted)
b. Sandpoint, Idaho, excavations assemblage (access already granted)
c. New York (e.g the Strong Museum)

I shall research the intrinsic and extrinsic meanings of miniatures using nineteenth century documentary sources, including contemporary media, advertisements and catalogues, paintings, illustrations and photographs. Using these I shall attempt to discover how and where people acquired miniatures, who actually purchased them and what were contemporary attitudes towards them, as well as establishing when 'ordinary' people began to make collections of miniatures. In order to ascertain why and how manufacturers chose individual originals to miniaturise, how they ensured that their miniatures would be purchased in large enough numbers to ensure profitability, and how the objects were promoted, marketed and traded globally, I shall also search for company records, shipping manifests, shipwreck data, insurance claims and inventories.

I shall survey miniatures found by non-archaeologists, such as those in The Portable Antiquities Scheme database. I shall carry out a comprehensive literature review, and interact with archaeologists, historians, art historians and others.

I would test my hypothesis that mass-produced miniatures are linked not only by the phenomenon of miniaturisation itself but also by:

This approach will enable me to give voice to the people who desired and possessed miniatures by providing context, meaning and roles, through, for example, their association with status, class, childhood/adulthood, gender, oppression and resistance and race. I shall work to learn how and why they acquired and discarded them, and sometimes collected them.

TIMELINE AND FUNDING

Year 1:
Autumn: Planning, organisation, background research; create web site/blog
Spring: Refining methodology; literature review; create network of contacts
Summer: Field research UK; data collection.

Year 2:
Autumn: Desktop research
Spring: Desktop research; field research US; data collection
Summer: Data collection, analysis

Year 3:
Autumn: Consolidation/analysis of data;first draft
Spring: Refining draft, gap-filling research
Summer: Writing and editing

Because it involves significant disruption of my normal income stream, in order to carry out this research it will be necessary for me to be successful in applying for financial support through a scholarship or studentship.

CONCLUSION - IMPLICATIONS, IMPACT AND DISSEMINATION

We remain quite ignorant about the daily lives of large sections of the [nineteenth century] population (and especially their material culture) outside the writings of social commentators (Matthews 1999, 157).

Today, miniatures are ubiquitous across cultures, from Japanese Little Kitty figurines through German Marklin HO model railways, US dollhouse hobbyists, wargamers, Barbie and manga to souvenirs of Big Ben, all of which developed from the mass-produced miniatures that were an important aspect of material culture throughout the last two centuries.

My research, though focused on the recent past, will hopefully throw additional light on miniatures from all periods. I am proposing a PhD project that could be regarded as an example of Orser's "Modern-World Archaeology" (Orser, 1999, 280) beginning yesterday and looking backwards in time. I shall impose an important terminus post quem - the advent of mass-production - for my study period, but hope that my proposed project will, across disciplines, lead to more understanding of and interest in miniatures.

My project will impact:

  1. Knowledge of the lives of "ordinary people" in the C19th;
  2. Art history, social history, achaeology, historical archaeology, contemporary archaeology, industrial archaeology; English/American studies, English/Australian (and New Zealand) studies;
  3. Material culture studies;
  4. Identification, dating and interpretation of British mass-produced miniatures that will be of use to field archaeologists;
  5. Aspoects of gender, identity, race, oppression/resistance, class, status, sexuality, childhood and collecting;
  6. The archaeology of global trade and consumption, colonisation;
  7. The recognition of and value given to miniatures by historians, archaeologists and the public.

I plan to disseminate the results of my research in the following manner:

  1. Journal articles, conference papers, posters, book;
  2. A web site and blog to engage with both academic and general audiences.

PRELIMINARY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Back Danielsson, Ing-Marie, 2007. Masking Moments: The Transitions of Bodies and Beings in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. Doctoral thesis. Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies.

Bailey, Douglass 2008a. The corporeal politics of being in the Neolithic. In Boric, Dusan and Robb, John. Past Bodies: Body-Centered Research in Archaeology. Oxford: Oxbow Books, pp 9-18.

Bailey, Douglass 2008b. Prehistoric Figurines: Barbie Dolls, Walt Disney, and Sex Abuse. The Joukowsky Institute Workplace Lecture.

Baxter, Jane Eva, 2005. The Archaeology of Childhood: Children Gender and Material Culture. Walnut Creek: Altimira Press.

Beaudry, Mary C., Cook, Lauren J. and Mrozowski, Stephen A., 1996. Artifacts and Active Voices: Material Culture as Social Discourse. In Orser, Charles E. (Ed.) Images of the Recent Past. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, pp272-310.

Camp, Stacey Lynn. 2008. One Size Does Not Fit All: Size and Scale in the Archaeological Interpretation of "Child-Related" Artifacts. Anthropology News 29(4) pp10-11.

Casella, Eleanor Conlin, 2004. The Alderley Sandhills Project: The Archaeological Excavation of Two Rural Working-Class Cottages, Alderley Edge, Cheshire. London: English Heritage.

Chudacoff, Howard P., 2007. Children at Play: an American History. New York: New York University Press.

Crawford, Sally, 2009. The Archaeology of Play Things: Theorising a Toy Stage in the 'Biography' of Objects. Childhood in the Past: An International Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp 55-70.

Egan, G., 1998. Miniature toys of medieval childhood. British Archaeology, 35. London: CBA.

Forsyth, H. and Egan, G. 2005, Toys, Trifles and Trinkets: Base Metal Miniatures from London 1200-1800. London: Unicorn Press, Museum of London.

Heberling, Paul M., 1987. Status Indicators: Another Strategy for Interpretation of Settlement Pattern in a Nineteenth-Century Industrial Village. In Spencer-Wood, Suzanne M. (Ed). Consumer Choice in Historical Archaeology. New York: Plenum Press, pp 199-216.

Hobsbawn, Eric, 1962, The Age of Revolution: Europe, 1789-1848. London: Abacus.

Kane, Pat, 2011. The 'I'm happy I'm green' consensus won't placate our lust for novelty. London: The Guardian, 26th April 2011, p27.

Mack, John, 2007. The Art of small things. London: The British Museum Press.

Mayne, Alan and Murray, Tim (Eds). The Archaeology of Urban Landscapes: Explorations in Slumland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Matthews, Keith, 1999. Familiarity and Contempt. The archaeology of the 'modern.' In Tarlow, Sarah and West, Susie (Eds), The Familiar Past? Archaeologies of later historical Britain. London: Routledge, pp 155-178.

Mills, Ralph, 2010. Miniatures in historical archaeology Toys, trifles and trinkets re-examined. Unpublished MA dissertation.

Michals, Teresa, 2008. Experiments before Breakfast: Toys, Education and Middle-Class Childhood. In Denisoff, Dennis (Ed). The Nineteenth-Century Child and Consumer Culture. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, pp29-42.

Mullins, P. R., 1999. "A bold and gorgeous front": The contradictions of African America and consumer culture. In M.P. Leone and P.B. Potter Jr (Eds.) Historical Archaeology of Capitalism. New York, Kluwer Academinc/Plenu Press. pp 169-93.

Mullins, Paul, 2000-2009. Ransom Place Archaeology Field School Reports. Web site. < http://www.iupui.edu/~anthpm/ransom.htm >

Mullins, Paul R., 2001. Racializing the Parlour: Race and Victorian Bric-a-Brac Consumption. In Orser Charles E. (Ed.). Race and the Archaeology of Identity. Provo: University of Utah Press, pp 158-176.

Mullins, Paul R., 2004a. Consuming aspirations: bric-a-brac and the politics of Victorian materialism in West Oakland. In Praetzellis, Mary and Praetzellis, Adrian (Eds). Putting the "there" there: Historical archaeologies of West Oakland. Anthropological Studies Center, Sonoma State University. pp 85-115.

Mullins, Paul R., 2004b. Ideology, Power, and Capitalism: the Historical Archaeology of Consumption. In Meskell, Lynn and Preucel, Robert (Eds.).The Blackwell Companion to Social Archaeology. Oxford: Blackwell, pp.195-212.

Mullins, Paul R., 2006. Racializing the commonplace landscape: an archaeology of urban renewal along the color line. World Archaeology, Vol. 38(1) pp 60-71.

Mullins, Paul R, forthcoming. The Importance of Innocuous Things: Prosaic Materiality, Everyday Life, and Historical Archaeology. Paper to be presented at the plenary session of the Society for Historical Archaeology conference 2012.

O'Neill, D. 2009. The first millennium BC stone and metal miniature repertoire of the Awam cemetery, Marib (Yemen). 2 vols. Unpublished PhD, University of Sydney.

Orser, Charles E. 1996. A Historical Archaeology of the Modern World. New York: Plenum.

Orser, Charles E. 1999. Negotiating Our 'Familiar" Pasts. In Tarlow, Sarah and West, Susie (Eds), The Familiar Past? Archaeologies of later historical Britain. London: Routledge, pp 273-282.

Pearce, Susan M., 1994b. Objects as meaning; or narrating the past. In Pearce, Susan M. (Ed) Interpreting Objects and Collections. London: Routledge, pp 19-29.

Prown, Jules David, 1993. The Truth of Material Culture: History or Fiction? In Lubar, Steven and Kingery, W. David (Eds). History from Things: essays on material culture. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp 1-19.

Sánchez-Eppler, Karen, 2005. Dependent states: The Child's Part in Nineteenth-Century American Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Stewart, Susan, 1993. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham: Duke University Press.

Tarlow, Sarah and West, Susie (Eds), 1999. The Familiar Past? Archaeologies of later historical Britain. London: Routledge.

Tilley, Christopher, 1991. 1991. Constructing a Ritual Landscape. In Kristina Jennbert, Lars Larsson, Rolf Petré and Bozena Wyszomirska-Werbart (Eds) Regions and Reflections. In Honour of Märta Strömberg. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International, pp 67-79.

Wilkie, Laurie, 2000. Not merely child's play. In Derevenski, Joanna Sofaer (Ed) Children and Material Culture. London: Routledge pp100-113.

Acknowledgement:

Many thanks to Professor Paul Mullins for giving me sight of his forthcoming SHA paper.