ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a researcher’s early experiences with objects and the spaces of display around them. The chapter outlines a method and strategies for accessing and analysing material culture. Students will be able to apply this method to their own studies, adapting and changing it as circumstances demand. Experiences recorded in the chapter include interactions with trusts and institutions, curators and volunteers, as well as meetings with eccentrics, dogs and ghosts. The structure offers a chronological framework, charting a scholar’s journey from the creation of criteria, to discovery, contact and meeting the objects. The central focus of the chapter is the object, and from the object I engage with space, scholar, location, identity and emotion. The methods and language that allow scholars to harness this multifaceted nature forms a continual thread, and I analyse where the historian fits into this process. In this article and the field of material culture, the scholar is acknowledged as central to the selection, direction and interpretation of the source, alongside the curators and keepers of the objects.
