Little boxes, little boxes…

In our second workshop on “Objects as Archives” Professor Jill Journeaux shared some of her thoughts – and beautiful artworks – on family inheritances. From place settings to lacework, her talk was wide-ranging and thought-provoking: are family dinner tables a form of archiving? Some audience members also shared stories about their own treasured family heirlooms. Perhaps the most unconventional was a scrap of old dishcloth! An audio recording of this workshop is now available on the ‘Resources’ page of this site, and you can see more of Jill’s work on her website, drawingconversations.org.

Another conversation that arose during this talk was less about objects as archives than archives in objects: the ways paperwork might be stored in the home. One participant commented that, as an archivist, it is often not possible to preserve the materials a paper archive arrives in. Pressures of space and storage, for one, can be prohibitive, and she also commented that archivists do not always perceive the value in containers that a museum might. 

This led me to thinking about the vessels in which early modern family archives were stored. From comments in wills and letters, it’s clear that boxes were a popular choice. In his will, the eighteenth-century clothier George Wansey bequeathed ‘all my Papers and Writings, which are in a Box in [my] Woolloft closet’ to his wife and eldest son, while in 1817 Elizabeth Dryden noted that ‘All the family writings which I have are in a long box bound with hair by my grandfathers initials’. The Johnson family papers, meanwhile, which I referred to in my first post, were kept in a ‘tin box’. 

It is true though, that, in my research thus far, I have encountered relatively few original boxes or containers actually preserved in the archives. The Wansey collection, for example, is remarkably complete: but there is no sign of the box itself, once stowed safely away in the wool loft. However, there have been exceptions. The Greswolde family archive, for example, still resides in its original boxes, complete with the labelling and indexing instigated by its seventeenth century custodian, the rector Henry Greswolde. 

[Box containing Greswolde family papers, mid 17thc, reproduced by kind permission of Warwickshire Record Office]

In other cases, it appears individual items had their own storage containers. Take, for example, “register” of the Bennett family, from Wiltshire, which recorded genealogical information, and was kept in a custom-made wooden box. Or the parchment roll recording the masters and scholars at Winchester College, c. 1769, and which formed part of the Frewen family archive: this still resides in its original – and once colourful — tube. From the fit it seems likely this container was purchased with, or specifically for, the document: it is certainly a more commercial product than the rather homespun Greswolde boxes. 

As part of this project, I hope to uncover more examples archival containers that have successfully made their way into record offices. For these items are of more than incidental interest: they can help us to understand how archives were arranged, accessed, and used; their place within the material culture of the home; and hierarchies of value — does a special container, for example, denote an especially prized object? They might also help us to think about processes of transmission and archival selection – why have some boxes survived, while others have perished? And what might it mean to read archives detached from the objects that once mediated their organisation, access, and arrangement? Further examples of early modern archival containers are always welcome, so if you have come across any on your own travels do drop me an email!