Behind the scenes at the Royal Alberta Museum
Last week, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Royal Alberta Museum with another anglophone but French speaking friend for a French-language behind the scenes tour of two different rooms in the Western Canadian History Collection. An intern from Quebec led us around the historical cameras section, which was so fascinating and fast-paced I quite literally forgot to take photographs of the cameras with my own photographic device, but I did take many photographs of the domestic history section. Here some of them are!
Oh, what a lovely little child's carriage, which such realistic, adorable little horses...
Wait. WHAT. Are those stitches? Yes, indeed. As the curator informed me, that is real horsehair. From fetal horse foals. Made in Germany!
Here, a picture of happy slot machines! The centre one dispenses gum.
Some of the artifacts they have are relatively "modern", but as the curator pointed out, if we wait 50 years to collect them, many things will be either in poor condition or non-existent, especially when it comes to technology. Who has a mint-condition walkman lying around the place? (Random aside: my spellcheck doesn't even acknowledge it as a word, unlike iPod!) On that note, our guide explained that their most recent acquisition was an iPod shuffle.
My lovely friend and some equally lovely grandfather clocks!
Vacuums, carpet cleaners... Most of their ads promised the same things as ours do too!
Jelly molds! This one looks like a turtle shell!
There were also dozens upon dozens of those old black metal Singer sewing machines - they built those things to last, in those days - of all different sizes and uses!
These ones are miniature and are either for children or are portable versions for travelling!
There were loads of other strange and awesome things to be seen! Including THIS museum artifact mystery challenge I posed earlier!
Oh, what a lovely little child's carriage, which such realistic, adorable little horses...
Wait. WHAT. Are those stitches? Yes, indeed. As the curator informed me, that is real horsehair. From fetal horse foals. Made in Germany!
Here, a picture of happy slot machines! The centre one dispenses gum.
Some of the artifacts they have are relatively "modern", but as the curator pointed out, if we wait 50 years to collect them, many things will be either in poor condition or non-existent, especially when it comes to technology. Who has a mint-condition walkman lying around the place? (Random aside: my spellcheck doesn't even acknowledge it as a word, unlike iPod!) On that note, our guide explained that their most recent acquisition was an iPod shuffle.
My lovely friend and some equally lovely grandfather clocks!
Vacuums, carpet cleaners... Most of their ads promised the same things as ours do too!
Jelly molds! This one looks like a turtle shell!
There were also dozens upon dozens of those old black metal Singer sewing machines - they built those things to last, in those days - of all different sizes and uses!
These ones are miniature and are either for children or are portable versions for travelling!
There were loads of other strange and awesome things to be seen! Including THIS museum artifact mystery challenge I posed earlier!