Antiques Roadtrip!

It’s been a while now, living with the pencil box. I’ve been carrying it around with me, taking it to work, showing it off to my colleagues and generally absorbing it into my life to see what ideas might arise. I think about its past, our past, its little dimples, I mean, ‘indents’. Actually, it’s those indents that got me thinking. They’re in inches of course – back then they still perceived the world through imperial dimensions. The other thing that got me thinking was the actual wood – what was it? I realized at this point that I didn’t know much about wood types or how to recognize them…except maybe MDF!
So, I thought to myself, “I’ll find out about wood” and went forth to the trusty internet to sort the wood from the trees. After finding a few retro wooden pencil boxes and a couple of ‘antique’ ones, I came to the temporary conclusion it must be made of Beech. I discovered all sorts of interesting things about Beech. For instance, Beech can be pulped and spun to make a fabric called Modal (similar to cotton) and that Beech, native to the south west of England, is now considered an endangered species. But anyway, this didn’t help me immediately so I decided to find a decent antique dealer who could tell me all sorts of interesting facts about the old wooden pencil box!...
It didn’t take long before I found a fair selection of antique dealers in Colchester but as it was a Saturday I thought it best to phone the first shop on my list – which happened to be ‘Elizabeth Cannon Antiques”. I explained all about myself and my pencil box and Mrs C was extremely helpful and enthusiastic about my enquiries, inviting me to pop down before 5!



I arrived mid-afternoon and pressed the door bell to be let into the shop. Mrs Cannon was expecting me; a very helpful, interesting and sophisticated lady, herself a former artist and now, like me, in the business of recycling!

She introduced me to the primary tool of the trade – the X10 lens! With this little gadget you can see all kinds of detail and she showed me how to focus in on the wood, pointing out the brown flecks in the grain of the wood that discounted my initial suspicion that the wood might be molded, proving it to be natural. She also pointed out the build-up of crystals on the surface, forming a feint pattern - a sure sign of ageing. Also, the crack in the wood at one end followed the grain, proving again that the wood was natural.
What Mrs. C also noticed was that the impressions made for the numbers were all slightly different - at different distances to the inch markers and the impressions were deeper for some numbers – suggesting that these were impressed by hand; but also the divisions were in tenths rather than the usual eighths, which suggests they may have been made to line up with mathematical graph paper, having the same divisions. It seems that even then the decimal/metric system was creeping in, suggesting a period where our perceptions of spatial dimensions were inherently different.
In ancient times they measured lengths based on the distance from a builder’s elbow to his outstretched fingertips (a cubit) which was subdivided into digits, approximately equal to the width of a finger. The width of the thumb was later used, which was named an inch. Then, the foot was used for longer measurements. A yard was the distance from a man’s nose to his outstretched fingers and a fathom was the distance from the tips of the fingers of one hand to the tips of the fingers of the other hand when the arms were stretched out. (http://www.buzzle.com/articles/units-of-weights-and-measures-before-the-metric-system.html)


So, the movement to the metric system symbolises a significant change in our perception of our spatial environment from a physical connection with our bodies, to a perspective based on a standard that has no relationship to our physical body - which to me represents an important milestone in the gradual shift of our everyday experience from the real world to the virtual world.