🏷️ Collection as Teacher—Alternative object record: Two red flannel petticoats
Editorial note:
This work has been created in the context of the Bauhaus Open Studios programme with students from Cornell College of Human Ecology’s Department of Human Centered Design (studio lead: Catherine Kueffer Blumenkamp) in September 2023. Students were asked to select an object from CF+TC, and devise an alternative object record. Starting from the structure and information in the record, we encouraged them to explore ways to go beyond the visual and verbal description provided therein—sensory features, speculation—in order to describe their object’s specific qualities.
Object Record for Items 3028 and 3029
We gave them new names, the old ones were lost,
and called her after her mom.
We could tell the two are related;
she’s much like her mom, but a bit smaller.
We discovered their humanity,
hidden in their little imperfections since birth.
We traced their weariness, left by a long journey,
from their heads to their toes.
We studied their dressings,
carefully tended by those they sheltered through winter.
We took in their delicate beauty:
we gathered it was nourished by love and dedication.
We were content in our findings and left them to be,
together, as they had always been.
All photographs: Kimberly Rivera Cotto / Cornell Human Centered Design