Conclusion: Biography and Identity

Henry A. Loveloy, A Puritan Hearthstone, c1906

This photograph, entitled, A Puritan Hearthstone, contributes to many of our previous observations on the ideological significance of the spinning. Again, it is found to be including the hearth, the very traditional, rural-style room, and the traditionally dressed woman. But in this situation, the name gives us clues in what to look for—she is a Puritan, dressed in religiously traditional clothing, with a home styled much more traditionally American. The object in it, especially the spinning wheel, can actually lay claim to this identity as much as she can. Her heritage and home as a puritan are more long lasting than her, and in a sense provide her with the ability to live in an authentically puritan home. The ‘Puritan Hearthstone’ next to the puritan spinning wheel gives both her and us a biography of her lineage’s religious history and identity. 

F. G. Van Vliet, Excerpt from "The Spinning Wheel. Our Heirloom, A Soliloquy, "1893

 

The excerpt is a book in which a woman’s daughter receives an heirloom spinning wheel from a relative. She retells through a variety of prose and poem segments, the impact and significance of this event. In many ways, I believe this piece of text to be the most important piece in the exhibit. It represents exactly what this collection has been hinting to—the collapsing together of human and object identity. The “Holland Dutch” refer just as much to the creators of the spinning wheel as to the human progenitors. The “pride of ancestry” that the human owner of the spinning wheel might feel can apply to the wheel. It can stand as a surrogate, a direct contact for those ancestors whom the woman never could have known, yet is constituted by. She is from Dutch descent and can emotionally connect to that through this living heirloom in a way that would have been impossible otherwise.