Haley Stodart

Professor McCleary
Material Culture
6 March 2022
Essay 4: New Contributions and Perspectives

When contemplating the depth and size of the history field, it should be no surprise that

the study of material culture is just as broad and full of nuance. Throughout this week, it has

become apparent that while understanding and analyzing where these objects of material culture

were found and who owned them is important, analyzing who made the objects is just as

profound. In fact, the entire provenance behind these objects plays a large role in the stories that

can be told about them and the larger culture. Within this culture, it has become abundantly clear

how important it is that the material highlight those who have often been left out of the written

narrative and one individual can represent or touch upon a larger culture.

This week’s focus was on the history and material culture of black craftsmanship,

specifically within the United States. According to the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive,

“Black craftspeople [are] people of African descent practicing a trade or craft leading to the

production of tangible material culture. Black craftspeople include both free and enslaved

individuals.”1 “Of African descent” is critical in this definition, because the history of America’s

relationship with Africans/African Americans is a tumultuous one, that includes connection with

the transatlantic slave trade, constant displacemeent and abuse, and modern day conflict still

attempting to reconcile such acts. Therefore, this definition does not specify a particular African

community or culture on purpose, as many Africans who came to the U.S. through enslavement

or related circumstances came from various parts of Africa. Also, those individuals and their

personal culture has now mixed with U.S. culture(s) over the years, fostering a completely

1 “Defining Black Craftspeople,” Black Craftspeople Digital Archives, accessed on March 2, 2022,
https://blackcraftspeople.org/Website
unique, but yet interconnected culture that is represented in various ways through its material

essence. This is touched upon in Comments of African American Contributions to American

Material Life: “The emergence of such multidisciplinary approaches to understanding American

material culture has led to the application of increasingly diverse aspects of regional studies to

the interpretation of the interactions of various ethnic influences on the development of

identifiable African American styles of making and embellishing objects.”2 Therefore, the use of

“African descent” is imperative, as it highlights that broad, nuanced aspect of material culture

that was touched upon above.

With the history of the definition in mind, one can now analyze who these craftspeople

are. Where did they come from? Where were they when they made these items? Who did these

items go to after leaving their hands? And what can that tell us about the environment and

culture at that time? These are all questions that highlight how one individual, and their personal

decisions and contributions towards material culture, can have a much larger effect on the history

of that time. This was emphasized by folklorists such as Henry Glassie, who noted that we can

derive the context, communication, and meaning from an object by looking at its creation, which

essentially ties us back to its creator. He emphasizes this by saying “The only people we can

learn much about are the ones who made the things,”--looking at this in the sense of art, as

Glassie likes to emphasize throughout, “Viewed from afar, works of art fit general types…Up

close, however, seen from within the tradition, all works of art contain a signature, the unique

impress of their individual creators.”3 Just as we can learn on a macro level about the time, place,

culture and more from material objects, we can also learn on a micro level about the individuals

in the past that actually formed the history we so eagerly research, analyze, and interpret. When

2 Theodore Landsmark, “Comments on African American Contributions to American Material Life,” Winterthur
Portfolio Vol. 33, No. 4, Race and Ethnicity in American Material Life (Winter, 1998), 280-281
3 Henry Glassie, Material Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 81; 120.
taking this folklorists view in conjunction with black craftsmanship, it becomes clear that much

of this history is only still visible today because of the collaborative contribution of enslaved

peoples in early American history. This is emphasized in Tiffany Momon’s “Object Stories:

Black Craftspeople Digital Archives,”. Here, she denotes that the Courtland room of the home

she is studying only stands today because of the enslaved blacksmiths who made the nails that

continue to hold it all together.4 Their individual contributions have now revealed the larger

culture and story that historians are looking for.

Furthermore, this larger story being told from an enslaved perspective is even more

critical because it is a perspective they predominantly could not write down or read for

themselves. Black history has often been silenced, kept out of the written record, and continually

missed. Material culture revealed the reality and quality of the illiterate, such as many enslaved,

and the literate who were pushed aside, such as those who continued to fight for human and civil

rights against the powerful in society.5 Henry Glassie also discusses this, highlighting how

literary documents can often leave out the illiterate, lower classes, and portray a bias based on

who the document was written for: “My advocacy of the artifact should no be taken to mean that

I am opposed to the use of documents in history…What I do oppose is the idea that there can be

no history when there are no documents, which leads drearily to the idea that the only real

history is that of the literature. If it were, most people would have no place in time, history would

serve the power of the privileged, and it would be better to have no history at all, no guidance

from the past about conduct and order.”6 This is further emphasized by Tiffany Momon on

4 “The black worker in such recollections become an anonymous laborer whose achievement appears minor because
no one seems truly responsible for it. Slave labor become invisible labor and credit for its products is assigned
elsewhere.” Tiffany Momon, “Object Stories: Black Craftspeople Digital Archives,” Youtube.com, accessed on
March 5, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azEz6Ole_g4
5 Theodore Landsmark, “Comments on African American Contributions to American Material Life,” Winterthur
Portfolio Vol. 33, No. 4, Race and Ethnicity in American Material Life (Winter, 1998), 268.
6 Henry Glassie, Material Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 46
NCPH’s Black Craftspeople Digital Archive Q&A: Parts I and II. There are unique ways in

which information is found, and she highlights how through the advertisements and mapping

research, they were able to discover so much about these enslaved craftsmen and offer a more

inclusive history. She also encourages public historians to do the same: “When objects connected

to Black history come up at auction, I would encourage museum employees to purchase those

items for museum collections. Additionally, I’d encourage [them] to seek out objects for

donations or gifts that enable them to tell inclusive stories.”7

If we are to do public history and material culture justice, we must embrace the nuanced

and inclusive stories they can tell. We also need to go back to the creator, respect their decisions

and signatures, and highlight how they can relay a larger cultural context. These new

perspectives were highlighted through this week’s readings, and it is imperative that public

historians continue this work that is being introduced each and every day.

7 Tiffany Momon, Torren Gatson, and Victoria Hensley, “Black Craftspeople Digital Archive Q&A: Parts I and II,”
NCPH, accessed on March 2, 2022, https://ncph.org/history-at-work/black-craftspeople-digital-archive-qa-part-i/
and https://ncph.org/history-at-work/black-craftspeople-digital-archive-qa-part-ii/