I am always amazed at how many things have survived the test of time and are still such things of beauty so many years after they were produced. Many things that are decades old are still being used to this day for the purpose they made for, I often wonder in the generation of plastic and throw away if there will be anything from the 21st century that will still be around in the 22nd century.
I have read that Medalta Potteries was so sure of its products that it offered a 3,000 year warranty on the things they produced. I have seen pieces that are 100 years old but there are many more years to go to fulfill the remaining 2,900 years to go.
A hundred years ago there were not that many things that were produced just because they looked pretty, rather they had to serve a utilitarian purpose to be used in peoples homes on a daily basis such things as crocks, jugs, beater jars, fridge jars, chicken waterers, cookie jars, teapots, butter churns and butter crocks just to name a few. My grandparents used crocks to make things like sauerkraut and butter, in fact I have helped make butter in a stoneware butter churn and have the scar on my chin to prove the fact.
There are many small towns that take great pride in the museums they have developed and the artifacts that they have in their collections. We have been to few small town museums and plan to visit more as we have time.
As we get further in the the digital age the small town museums have to work harder than ever to maintain the building and their collections, that being said the larger museums are starting to record their collections in digital images for people to see. The Medalta Museum in Medicine Hat has been doing that if you have not checked out the digital images it certainly is worth having a look.
Photos in the blog are all taken at the Medalta Museum in Medicine Hat, Alberta, some photos from the collections gallery and some from the storage area.
Now it is time to sit down with a map and a list of small museums and see where we are off to next....
And the Search Continues.......
