A testament to my nerdiness
So it’s been a while since I’ve updated here. I spent the last two weeks in the Washington DC area, visiting family and attending a cousin’s wedding. It was good to see everyone again, but I’m also glad to be home and getting back to business.
Today, however, I had to take care of something that had been bothering me for a while…
I’ve had in my posession, for several years, some artifacts that have never been properly displayed or labeled. Today, I decided to actually curate a corner of my bedroom. I spent some time researching a couple of the items before actually setting up the display and printing out some temporary labels on my computer. I also ordered some engraved brass plaques that will eventually take the temporary labels’ place.
I’m not going to lie, it’s probably really weird to have a museum display in the corner of your bedroom — complete with labels specifying materials and dates — where no one will ever, ever see it. But I’m an enormous nerd.
So anyway, here it is:
For the record: I did not sponge paint my bedroom walls. That was all the crazy cat lady who occupied this place before me. If you care: the bowl is stoneware with a celadon glaze dating from the Goryeo period (AD 918 - 1392), the swallow tail spoon and chopsticks on the bottom right are bronze and date from Goryeo as well, and the two coins are sangpyeongtongbo from late Joseon (minted between AD 1678 and 1882). I used to have a more precise fix on the coin mints, but I lost that information a few years ago.
I’m still trying to figure out what to do with a 200 - 250 year old copy of a chapter of Meng Tzu’s history of China, printed with carved wood blocks on rice paper. Really effing cool. Also really effing delicate. (It also possesses some impressive cultural significance, in that there are handwritten notes all over the inside pages where Chinese characters, rather than being used ideographically, are used phonetically to spell Korean words. Apparently very rare.) I may digitize each page before displaying it.
