Object History, Theory, and Criticism

Sherlock Holmes, the fictional detective, is never seen without his pipe, tape measure, or magnifying lens, and, these items stand in for him even when he is not present. These items literally embody the detective's strong mental faculties and his empirical and logical means of understanding the physical world around him in his relentless pursuit of clues and their significance. They are synonymous with the detective and his superhuman powers of concentration, observation, assessment, and analysis.

As the philosopher Jean Baudrillard noted in System of Objects, we often use objects – and collections of objects – as a means of constructing self (Baudrillard, 2005). Writers use this apparatus to construct fictional characters.

Architectural historian and theorist Beatriz Colomina has proposed that the interior environment itself is a detective story waiting to be decoded, and the role of objects in these stories – in the form of furniture, decorative objects, everyday utensils, clothing, books, or family heirlooms – illuminates these mysteries (Colomina 1994, p. 233).

Gerristen and Giorgio Riello describe the emergence of the disciplines of material culture, its academic roots, its advantages, and disadvantages as a historical approach in the introduction to their anthology Writing Material Culture History.

Gerritsen, A. and Riello, G. (eds.) (2014). Writing Material Culture History. London: Bloomsbury Academic.  

Gerritsen, A. (2016). From long‐distance trade to the global lives of things: writing the history of early modern trade and material culture. Journal of Early Modern History 20: 526–544.