Ivan Gaskell

Tangible Things takes us into the bowels of Harvard University and into the stored collections. There are the old things one might expect but there is also a lot of weird stuff: ancient tortillas (1878), an egg-shaped stone from some guy’s bladder; various things Thoreau picked up on his walks around Concord; a wood-carved “pointing finger” wooden spoon from Africa, plaster casts of the heads of some long-dead people, papyrus pieces that have been written on both sides but in different centuries, Lincoln’s life mask…

As noted in the preface, this book was meant to be a retrospective catalog, for an exhibition, but became something else. I bought this book because one of the authors, Ulrich, is a favorite historian of mine (and then, of course, I’m a terribly curious sort…). In my estimations this is not a book one can declare as finished after one trip through its pages…I have been through it multiple times and I'm sure I’ve not read it all.

Photo on cover is of a plaster cast of the clasped hands of poets Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Cast in Rome in 1853… (more)