Everyday Objects Are History at the Smithsonian
By ANDREW L. YARROW, Special to the New York Times
Published: July 23, 1988
WASHINGTON— A wooden spinning wheel, a pewter goblet and a cast-iron plow stand in seemingly curious juxtaposition to a baby-blue Maytag washing machine, Tupperware dishes and a medley of kaleidoscopically colored radios, credit cards and hundreds of other more or less familiar objects in a new, permanent exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.
The exhibition ''represents a conscious effort to transform the museum setting into something new,'' said Roger Kennedy, director of the popular, 24-year-old museum, which is the repository for nearly 17 million American artifacts. ''When people look at something in a history museum, they usually ask, 'Who used it?' '' A major goal of the exhibition, ''A Material World,'' he said, is to ''get people to ask about any object, 'What's it made of, and why?' ''
Because some visitors complained that the exhibition was confusing, however, the show was recently relabeled. Mr. Kennedy said he understood the confusion because the show was ''a radical address to the traditional use of museum space.''
''It's not an object-and-big-label show,'' he said. ''It's a provocation whose objective is to induce the visitor to think about why such diverse things are made of the same stuff.''
The 600 objects in ''A Material World'' trace the transformation of America's manmade environment from one fashioned with natural materials such as wood, wool, stone and clay in Colonial times, to one increasingly made of such processed metals as iron and steel in the late-19th century, to a mid-20th-century world of objects created from artificial polymers, metal alloys and other synthetics. Industrial Revolution's Impact
A section on ''Natural Materials'' offers a slice of pre-industrial life that includes a stoneware churn, a marble millstone and a whale-oil lamp. The impact of the Industrial Revolution is seen in an adjacent, three-dimensional montage consisting of an 1841 parlor stove, an 1877 sewing machine, an 1884 lighthouse lens and other early machine-made objects. The subdued, natural hues of the earlier objects give way by the late 19th century to a modestly colorful palette of painted iron and steel tools, machines and household objects.
But it is not until a third section, ''In Synthetic Realms,'' that one comes upon a universe of objects at once familiar and startlingly diverse in design and color. ''By the 1900's, Americans no longer just painted things, but the tincture of the material permeated the entire object,'' Mr. Kennedy said. ''The dazzle of colors of our world really begins around the 1920's, and is largely a consequence of the introduction of new synthetic materials. With Art Deco, for example, there's an insistence that colors and shapes should not be natural.''
This smorgasbord of technology begins with chrome-plated toasters and aluminum gelatin molds of the 1920's. It races through such quaintly futuristic artifacts of the 30's as an Electrolux vacuum cleaner, a neon-and-aluminum railroad sign, a gaudy, ''American Graffiti''-vintage jukebox and a Formica television set.
The use of plastics - which date from the invention of celluloid in the 1860's - accelerated dramatically after World War II. Then, a multisyllabic array of new materials like acrylic, cellophane, acetate, styrene, polyester and Kevlar radically redefined the look and feel of the world. Electric toothbrushes, artificial hearts, stacking sidechairs, surfboards, race cars, lasers and other recent creations on display testify to the ubiquitousness of synthetics.
''Materials have to affect human values,'' said Robert Post, the curator who organized the exhibition. '' 'Plastic' means infinitely moldable. When people can define what they want and fire up a plant, they feel in charge of their environment, but people also lose power over nature as certain craft skills are lost.'' Technology and Nature
The recent resurgence of interest in using natural materials for everything from furniture to clothing illustrates how not only cost, technology and resource availability, but also cultural values and social context influence what materials are used. ''If it were strictly a matter of economics and availability, you couldn't explain why some people are still enamored of wood sailboats over technically better Fiberglas ones,'' Mr. Post said.
This point is emphasized in a display called ''Material Messages.'' Functionally similar objects made of different materials in different eras for different people are juxtaposed. They range from combs and tennis rackets to washing machines and musical instruments.
Aluminum is used as a case study of how public perceptions affect a material's use. Considered valuable a century ago, it was used for jewelry, violins and even the cap on the Washington Monument. As its status degenerated into that of an eminently functional but mass-produced material, its uses became more commonplace, as a wall of 1,200 aluminum cans playfully demonstrates.
A display of nylon stockings, plastic jewelry and toiletries examines how different materials have conveyed different social and esthetic meanings in fashion. And the changing feel of the material world is illustrated with things to touch, including a rough pine timber, a sleek copper rod and a 10-foot cable made of 26,474 cold-drawn steel wires for New York's George Washington Bridge.
Despite the prevalence of plastics and the current vogue for natural materials, Mr. Post is uncertain about what the material world of the 21st century will look like. ''We're going to run out of the natural resources which things are made of,'' he said. But he recalled long discussions with scientists from the Du Pont Company, which sponsored the exhibition. ''They have an endearing vision that they'll find technical solutions and be able to transform resources into entirely new materials.''
Photos of wooden spinning wheel; radio; decorative comb, bicycle; desk lamp and vacuum cleaner from Smithsonian exhibition