July’s Artifact of the Month is a souvenir program from the Fifth Annual Shasta County Sheriff’s Posse Rodeo in 1953. This sublime relic can teach us so much about what life was like back then.
Malaria? In Redding? You bet! Step back a hundred years to the “good old days” and imagine a warm June day after a nice, wet spring. It’s a recipe for mosquitoes! Malaria was a common, and deadly, ailment – along with a host of other preventable and treatable diseases that we seldom worry about today.
Just as no subject was unremarkable, no spot was inaccessible. Colby maneuvered around the Dam carrying a 40-pound 8” x 10” format Kodak camera, a wooden tripod, film holders, and the rest of his gear. He also used a 4” x 5” format camera for some shots. This combination of a large format camera and Howard’s skill produced crystal-clear, high-resolution photos with incredible details.
Insects represent some of the planet's most bizarre – yet familiar – and enchanting life forms. Some can be as intricately delicate as a butterfly, while others can be as tough and gnarly as some beetles.
The community eagerly anticipated the Turtle Bay Auction, and this year's event did not disappoint. The theme was "Off to The Races," and guests arrived dressed in their finest Kentucky Derby-inspired ensembles. They were greeted by a stunning display of decorations that transported them to Churchill Downs.
How providential that we are able to present this perfectly pleasing yet peculiar pickle paraphernalia! This is not your ordinary pickle jar! In fact, it probably didn’t hold the type of pickles we are most familiar with today – those delicious, tangy, former cucumbers. Before the ubiquity of refrigeration, jams, jellies, pickles, and chutneys preserved produce for future consumption. Victorian pickle recipes included sweet pickled cantaloupe, pickled onions, cauliflower, cabbage, radish pods, nasturtium seeds, walnuts, as well as the more familiar gherkins and cucumbers. Spiced or pickled fruits such as sour plums, blackberries, cherries, and pears were also popular. Yum!
You may think this is a horn to blow – a type of trumpet to gather the troops and charge into battle! Though these objects were sometimes used in battle, by local militiamen during the Revolutionary War for example, powder horns served a different purpose. In addition to bullets and the firearms themselves, powder horns carried another important part of the kit – gunpowder!
Long before we cozied up for a movie with a bowl of popcorn and a loved one, shuffled through our iPod playlist, cheered to a baseball game on the radio, or sheltered-in-place, folks sought live entertainment in the company of friends and strangers. It was both intimate and communal. Performances such as plays, operas, ballets – even music, magic, and comedy – took place on a big, well-lit stage. Patrons sat in a darkened auditorium. Some were close enough to see the sweat of an actor’s brow, yet some sat too far to make out important details that helped tell the story. Sporting events like horse racing also presented a need to see the action from a distance. Luckily, a series of technological advances led to an elegant solution – opera glasses.
When we first encountered this artifact in the collection, we asked ourselves what on earth it could be. The name implies that it was “medical” in nature. Patent dates indicated that it was manufactured sometime after 1919 and the overall style and materials suggested not too long after that patent date. This gadget is a “violet ray” medical appliance, once advertised to cure a multitude of ills by applying a high voltage, high frequency, low current to the human body, and by producing ozone for direct inhalation. These devices were designed to be used in medical settings and at home by the consumer.
World War I, also known as the Great War, lasted from July 1914 to November 1918. It was the first time poisonous gas was used in battle. U.S. troops did not have a standard gas mask for combat, so they eventually adopted the British version. The use of chlorine gas by the Germans received widespread condemnation and the Geneva Protocol of 1925 banned the use of chemical weapons.
Sometimes, the internet is a curator’s friend. For 42 years, this Artifact of the Month has been misidentified in our records. The donor thought that her late husband had passed on to her a 50-yen banknote that he’d acquired when he was stationed in Japan during World War II. She noted in her correspondence, that it had been worth “about 20 American dollars when he got it.” When the Redding Museum of Art and History received the donation in 1978, they did not have immediate access to the resources required to verify or refute this identification, so it went into the records as “yen.”
Stylish and sleek, February’s Artifact of the Month is a 1960s Murray Pedal Car. Murray Ohio Manufacturing Company was originally founded in 1919 to make fenders, fuel tanks, and other automobile parts. They began making children’s toy cars in 1923 and bicycles in the 1930s. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this pedal car is the high likelihood that it was designed by renowned artist and industrial designer Viktor Schreckengost, who worked for Murray from 1936 to 1972.
Federally recognized as the Timbisha Shoshone Band of California, and sometimes referred to as “Panamint”, the Nümü Tümpisatti’s traditional homelands located in the Death Valley, Saline Valley, and the Panamint Range are some of the most challenging environments on earth. The harsh desert landscape has shaped traditional material culture, such as this coiled basket.
Most of us had access to some sort of wagon when we were kids. Commercially made children’s wagons have been around since the 1880s and the iconic red metal Radio Flyer brand debuted in the early 1930s. Even today, with the prevalence of digital gadgets, wagons come in a wide range of materials and still sell well.
