The ephemera of the past — photos, documents, letters, etc. — have the power to connect us to their time and to the people who lived in it. That power increases when such items are held in one’s hand. The crispness of aged paper, the musty odor, the crackle of permanent creases being folded and unfolded, the sense of being in the place of the owner or writer — these can only be experienced with the artifact in hand. My project creates an evocative setting for the physical interaction between the visitor and three collections of artifacts. Each collection represents a person who lived in a time before our own. The collections are concealed within a cabinet and the individual artifacts are accessed only after the visitor has passed over three thresholds — an outer door, an inner door, and a drawer. This series of steps moves the visitor into a separate imagined space.

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