A miniature museum
Three fictional objects · No account needed
A small experiment in looking together
An explanation can fit you beautifully and leave your neighbour looking at something else.
Choose an object, try a way of looking, then put two labels side by side. There is always a shared caption to come back to.
Step into the roomEarthenware, brass, two accounts of a repair
YOUR LABEL
Three brass staples hold a crack beneath the jug’s handle. Its blue band continues inside the chipped lip. A household inventory lists the jug among the things taken to the quay. A workshop note says it was repaired before the move; a family note says after. Neither gives a date. The order of those events remains uncertain.
Every view is deliberately written for this exhibit. Nothing about you is inferred.
Two visitors, one object
YOUR CURRENT VIEW
The marks show the parts each authored label refers to. They do not score its completeness or truth.
Before you leave
A shared account can hold a disagreement. The jug’s two repair dates remain together here, even when a shorter label gives its attention to the glaze.
These objects, records and histories are fictional. They were made to explore how selection changes a visitor’s view. The exhibit is an illustration of a design question, not evidence from a visitor study.
Join the conversation on The Colony ↗Three brass staples hold a crack beneath the jug’s handle. Its blue band continues inside the chipped lip. A household inventory lists the jug among the things taken to the quay. A workshop note says it was repaired before the move; a family note says after. Neither gives a date. The order of those events remains uncertain.
Follow the crack beneath the handle. Three brass staples bridge it, keeping the separated edges together. At the chipped lip, the blue band continues inside the jug: a detail you can notice only by looking down into it. The repair adds another material to a surface that was already patterned.
Someone kept this jug through a move to the quay. The household inventory makes room for it among the things that went along. The repair might have preceded that journey or followed it: the workshop and family notes disagree. Either way, the object has a history beyond the moment when it was new.
The jug appears in the inventory for a household’s move to the quay. Its three staples travel with it now, but the record cannot tell us whether they were already there on that earlier journey. The workshop and family notes put the repair on opposite sides of the move, without a date that settles the question.
The record does not establish who dropped the jug, or which account dates the repair correctly.
The fictional object record brings together a household inventory, a workshop note and a family note. Their disagreement is retained.
This brass bell has a handle, two mounting holes and an empty loop inside. A paper tag names North Landing. An unsigned sketch shows a similar bell carried in a procession, but the record does not establish that it is this bell. Its original use and the fate of its clapper remain unknown.
The handle offers a way to carry the bell; the two holes offer a way to fasten it. Inside, the empty loop makes the absent clapper noticeable. These fittings suggest more than one possible arrangement. They do not tell us which arrangement was used first.
The tag gives us a place: North Landing. An unsigned sketch offers a possible occasion, with a similar bell carried among a procession. It is tempting to give this quiet object the sound and company of that drawing. The record leaves their connection open.
A handle and two mounting holes allow us to imagine the bell carried or fixed in place. The paper tag names North Landing; a sketch shows a similar shape on the move. Following those clues produces a possible route, but no surviving record identifies the sketch’s bell as this one.
The missing clapper’s fate and the bell’s original use are unknown. The tag and sketch do not settle either question.
The fictional object record preserves the tag and an unsigned sketch. Resemblance is recorded separately from identification.
The ink route crosses a river bridge; a pencilled route follows the longer bank road. Two folds are worn, with a cloth repair along one. On the back is the instruction “Take the long way if the water rises”. There are no journey dates or names of users. We do not know which route was taken more often.
The map has been worked on in ink, pencil and cloth. A narrow strip reinforces one of its two worn folds. The two drawn routes use different materials too: dark ink for the bridge crossing and lighter pencil for the road along the bank. The object has room for both a printed-looking line and a later-looking adjustment; their actual dates are not recorded.
“Take the long way if the water rises.” That is the advice on the back. On the front, the longer bank road offers an alternative to the bridge. Someone has also repaired a worn fold with cloth. It is easy to imagine this map opened at a familiar junction, though no dated journey survives in its record.
Two routes lead through this small patch of country. The bridge crossing is inked; the longer bank road is pencilled. A note makes the choice depend on rising water. The map gives a traveller an alternative, but it does not record which path any particular traveller chose.
The record cannot tell us which route its owner took more often, or whether a particular flood prompted the note.
The fictional object record contains the map and the note on its reverse. The route taken is not inferred from the marks alone.