How do you eat an elephant?

Stacks of materials in boxes, waiting to be catalogued.

The answer to the proverbial question asked in the title of this post is the same whether one eats an elephant or starts an archive: “one bite at a time”.

This past month was my first visit back to California since starting this project, and since my grandfather had moved out of the family home. Hindsight is always 20/20, but if I’d had more clarity or motivation for this project five years ago I might be in a very different place with the material available to me. However, I can only make do with what I have at my disposal, and so onward we push.

A good portion of Marian’s remaining materials at home were donated to UC Davis and their Department of Design. Roger—Marian’s husband—was liaising with Jo Ann Stabb, a widely recognised scholar of textiles and namesake of Davis’s design collection. Unfortunately Professor Stabb passed away earlier this year, and UC Davis completed its acquisition of many of Marian’s remaining pieces and ethnographic collection of objets d’art.

Dresses and other pieces not taken by UC Davis wait in the storage unit for their next adventure

What remains from the house that’s been saved for me now fits into a 5’ x 10’ storage unit not far from the former home, and takes up over a dozen storage boxes, at whole metal shelf as shown, and several drawers and file folders. Two small cardboard boxes of slides, not even full storage box-sized, came home with me this trip and will have me occupied with scanning and categorising for months. More boxes yet await me as you can see.

No one said this thing would be easy!