This past week, the collections and curatorial teams tackled one of the challenging aspects of the Pavilion collection—the family silver.
Unlike the furniture and paintings that make up the core Pavilion collection accessioned in the 1970s and assigned unique object ID numbers, all of the silver that stayed in Ticonderoga year-round was given a single number and described as a “large collection of silver (flat, tea sets, etc) stored in Silver Room and used in the Pavilion when it is open”. Earlier records are similarly vague, referring to the silver but noting that it would be inventoried later. Later turned out to be the extensive inventory project that took place in 1994, creating over 200 records for the objects stored in the ‘Silver Room’ and providing a frame of reference to plan our modern-day cataloging push.
Over 900 individual objects were cataloged this week. Each object was numbered, described, photographed, rehoused, and given an official location in storage. As these records are completed, they will become part of the online collections database.
As work on the Pavilion collection continues, stay tuned here and on Fort Ticonderoga’s Facebook page for updates on the restoration of the Pavilion, new discoveries, and more from Fort Ticonderoga every week.