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| 'Iron Helmet with bronze mounts', Pencil on Paper |
Had a chance to head down to the Ulster Museum today, so took some time to take a few photo's of things of interest to draw over the next week or so. I've been meaning to take a trip to the Ulster Museum for a while so the drawing project gave me the perfect excuse to.. well stop making excuses for not going.
I was always fairly interested in History when I was at school and although I never really kept up that interest or pursued it I'm still fascinated by history. In the case of the above object, as the title suggests, it is an Iron helmet with bronze mounts that was found at Lough Henry in County Down and is thought to have been used around the 13th or 14th century. Although I don't know that much about it the thought that this object was in use 100's of years ago is amazing to me, the fact that it still exists even in it's deteriorated state is testament to the memory of that object, where it came from, how it was made and how it ended up being found again. This is the thing I think that makes the objects in a museum interesting to me, the notion that each object has its own identity and its own story. This may make me seem overly sentimental but when you actually think about the things that you possess yourself it should help you come to the same conclusion. I'm sure if you think about objects in your home, all those things in your life you interact with on a daily basis they have some sort of identity there is some sort of story associated with it. We have these stories as it is in our nature to be sentimental, to want to hold onto those things that we find precious or important, the stories then are our justification and rationale for doing this. However in many cases the things that we hold onto are for the most part worthless... for example look in the closest drawer you can find, in there you will discover at least one of the following:
- A battery that doesn't work.
- A Biro that's broken.
- One sock with a hole in it.
- An old Christmas/Birthday card.
- A piece of paper with a note scribbled on it that no longer makes sense
- A loyalty card for a food outlet with almost all the stamps filled in.
- A business card for a person/company/taxi service that you've never used.
- Screws belonging to some furniture you built about 10 years ago.
- Some sort of audio/visual equipment (scart, TV aerial, sound cables etc.).
- 7 or 8 menus for the some chinese restaurant.
- An elastic band and paper clip
I could go on and normally I do but I'm sure you get the idea, we are prone to hoard things with this just in case attitude. So whether we like it or not we are all susceptible to nostalgia we need objects as proof that something has happened. In no way do I mean to imply that this is by any means a negative thing, actually it is probably this sense of sentimentality that makes us want to understand more about how we came to be in this place in time by looking back at those objects that for some reason or another are now important to us.
I was always fairly interested in History when I was at school and although I never really kept up that interest or pursued it I'm still fascinated by history. In the case of the above object, as the title suggests, it is an Iron helmet with bronze mounts that was found at Lough Henry in County Down and is thought to have been used around the 13th or 14th century. Although I don't know that much about it the thought that this object was in use 100's of years ago is amazing to me, the fact that it still exists even in it's deteriorated state is testament to the memory of that object, where it came from, how it was made and how it ended up being found again. This is the thing I think that makes the objects in a museum interesting to me, the notion that each object has its own identity and its own story. This may make me seem overly sentimental but when you actually think about the things that you possess yourself it should help you come to the same conclusion. I'm sure if you think about objects in your home, all those things in your life you interact with on a daily basis they have some sort of identity there is some sort of story associated with it. We have these stories as it is in our nature to be sentimental, to want to hold onto those things that we find precious or important, the stories then are our justification and rationale for doing this. However in many cases the things that we hold onto are for the most part worthless... for example look in the closest drawer you can find, in there you will discover at least one of the following:
- A battery that doesn't work.
- A Biro that's broken.
- One sock with a hole in it.
- An old Christmas/Birthday card.
- A piece of paper with a note scribbled on it that no longer makes sense
- A loyalty card for a food outlet with almost all the stamps filled in.
- A business card for a person/company/taxi service that you've never used.
- Screws belonging to some furniture you built about 10 years ago.
- Some sort of audio/visual equipment (scart, TV aerial, sound cables etc.).
- 7 or 8 menus for the some chinese restaurant.
- An elastic band and paper clip
I could go on and normally I do but I'm sure you get the idea, we are prone to hoard things with this just in case attitude. So whether we like it or not we are all susceptible to nostalgia we need objects as proof that something has happened. In no way do I mean to imply that this is by any means a negative thing, actually it is probably this sense of sentimentality that makes us want to understand more about how we came to be in this place in time by looking back at those objects that for some reason or another are now important to us.
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