Rusty Cans and Blurry Photos...
As I sit here tonight working on one of my most difficult projects yet (something in far worse shape than the FPIA Meat Unit pictured), I find myself again lamenting the way that time fades and obscures what came before. I am a historian, my masters is in American history, and I work with museums. The affects of time on tangible and intangible history constitutes the focus of a historians field, from which we branch out and reassemble the past like collecting pieces to a puzzle with no defined edge, no picture of how it should look, or any idea of how many pieces there should be. Air, water, light, and even the human touch are ever present threats to our physical history. Poor storage conditions turn artifacts to dust, and poor archiving disperses knowledge, separating documents across time and space, eroding the context which binds material together producing an incomplete picture with few clues as to where the missing pieces may be stashed. Through careful study of our craft, historians must make educated guesses based on a comprehensive study of primary, secondary, and tertiary sources that are either directly relevant, or adjacent to the topic. This is no different when it comes to creating a reproduction, and educated guesses help fill the gaps left by decay and missing or inaccessible records.
In the case of rations, the food itself reacts inside of its metal can, turning acidic eating holes in the metal, chemical reactions create gas which bloats the cans and bacteria festers adding to the mix. Seams burst, sludge spills out, and slowly the efforts of man to cheat decay are thwarted turning the container and its contents to dust. Insects burrow into cardboard boxes, the polymer bonds in cellophane packaging break turning plastic to dust, and amidst all of this, the once vibrant markings and colors that adorned the packaging, fade, flake, rust, and disappear. This is perhaps the greatest tragedy of any collection, when information which only exists on the artifact, is lost through decay.
This is a problem that heavily impacts ration collectors. While there are a great many records which show general pictures of a ration, explain the contents of a ration, the recipe to make the contents, the contracts awarded to make them, and the model designations, in many instances there can precious little information that explains the minutia of how the containers were marked. The packaging is as important as the food within. Packaging provides critical cultural context clues about the past, and in the case of military rations its variation even within a single type of ration can be mind boggling. The size of the lettering, the spacing of lettering, the order of ingredients, the special instructions for heating, opening, serving, ect, are usually not present in primary sources documents. Sure these things might be discussed, but only in generalities that is entirely appropriate for government contracts or historical studies. But nine times out of ten, the minutia of this detail only exists on the artifact, the ration itself.
Which brings me back to the title of this blog post and the educated guesses that historians make about rusty cans and blurry pictures. Despite mine and many others best efforts, sometimes all we are left with is a rusty can, with incomplete markings, a blurry photograph that it too low quality to make out minor details, or a primary source document that does not cover in the level of detail, what we are looking for. When that happens we have to make an educated guess on what should be on the can. This is done by studying similar examples that came before or after. Studying the way that information was formatted, how ingredients were listed, what the marking conventions of that year or years may have been, and then filling in the gaps that rust and time have created. I find that this can be a frustrating thing to do, not because it involves exponentially more work, but because it is hard to know how close to the mark you got. This is where experience and self critique are critical, because when you recreate something of the past, people inevitably look to your work, trusting you have given them something that is accurate.
Regardless of where my reproduction ends up, whether in a museum, a reenactment, or an office shelf, people will absorb what it is, and that item which I have created becomes part of how they view and understand the past. That is a big responsibility, and one which all stewards of history must take seriously, and one that drives me to strive for accuracy in everything that I do.