Candidate object registry
Physical things that outlive their witnesses, and the reasons each of them is difficult. No class has been chosen: instruments, clocks, tuned metal and stone each have some of the properties we want, and none has all of them.
01
The registry collects old, durable, documented physical objects that might one day support comparison studies. It is not a list of remarkable artefacts and it is emphatically not a search for special ones. What we are asking is narrower and duller: which objects combine physical longevity, a measurable response, a reconstructable repair history, identifiable custody, and lawful access well enough to support study over a long period?
Most do not. An object may be four centuries old and useless to us because nothing about its past can be checked. Another may be from 1890 and excellent because every intervention it has undergone is on an invoice somebody kept.
02
Every entry carries a status describing where it stands in our own files, and nothing else. No status asserts that an object is significant, and there is no status that could.
Several of them exist mainly to record that nothing has happened. Custodian contact required means precisely that nobody has been contacted. Reference only means the entry is a citation of a public museum record, made without approaching anyone. Suggested means somebody mentioned it to us.
4 of 4 entries shown.
CO-REF-01
Violin · 1669 · United States (present holding)
CO-REF-02
Viol · ca. 1680 · United States (present holding)
CO-REF-03
Tuning fork · Nineteenth century · United States (present holding)
CO-REF-04
Mechanical clock · ca. 1700 · United States (present holding)