The spectacle frame, the broken nail, and the concrete sample – materials telling histories of change

ABSTRACT

Inspired by researchers’ observations of the increased use of things in modern society, discussions about non-human actors, and the author Georges Perec’s interest in what happens when nothing seems to happen, this article explores how a collection of materials originally used for educating engineers can be used to study the history of everyday life. Changes in everyday life are investigated through the lens of three objects from the collection: a broken nail moulded in zinc during World War I; a piece of concrete from an experiment performed in 1980; and spectacle bows made of titanium. Through these objects, the article examines what twentieth-century history looks like when we take non-humans seriously in history writing and use such objects as starting points, inspiration, and sources. It also suggests the concepts of ‘non-things’ and ‘taken-for-granted things’ as a way of paying more attention to objects that are central to our daily life but usually go unnoticed. Using the history of concrete and titanium as cases, the article becomes a history of the many changeable materials that form the mostly unnoticed and seemingly stable background of everyday life. In affluent society, these materials have contributed to both predictability, comfort, and environmental problems.

KEYWORDS:

• Materials
• concrete
• titanium
• non-human actors
• material culture
• everyday
• non-things
• taken-for-granted things

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For general history and properties of titanium, see https://en.wikipedia.org.

2. For further information on Jan Lohmann and his titan jewelleries, see www.janlohmann.dk and www.denstoredanske.dk.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Louise Karlskov Skyggebjerg

Louise Karlskov Skyggebjerg (b. 1973) has a PhD in history. After working at museums for many years, since 2017 she has been employed as a historian in the History of Technology Division at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). At DTU, she works with the history of knowledge, technology, materials, and engineering and has developed a new course about the creation and circulation of knowledge for students of engineering. She specialises in the history of technology and industry, with particular interests in the materiality of everyday life and the history of knowledge. She is the author of several articles and book chapters in these fields, as well as books about Danish industry (Unipress 2017) and the inventor J. C. H. Ellehammer (The Danish Museum of Science and Technology, 2015). Her thesis discusses the history of technology as a field covering a wide range of approaches from the fascination of inventions to discussions about material agency.