Acknowledgements

Preamble

The research question

1: Introduction

Strange objects enough": miniature objects in working-class contexts

The value of miniature objects to archaeologists and historians

Serendipitous research: exploring virtual resources

The material culture of miniaturisation

Plaster of Paris

Mini-me: my involvement in this study

2: Encounters with miniaturisation

A Dinky dustbin lorry

The key

My mother

My sister

My brother

The Hucknall Miniaturists Society

A mantelpiece in Wales

Two transparencies

A tipper wagon from Ghent, Belgium

A girl with Staffordshire dog and parrot

Two ballerina clocks

Love letters

"A crude white porcelain figure": From Sandhills to Sandpoint

A Venus

3: "The importance of trifles"

Making sense of miniatures: an archaeological approach

Definitions: slippery meanings and small-scale things

Imaginary miniatures

The people from below: objects of delight in "working-class" contexts

"Images": what this meant in the nineteenth century

Nineteenth-century miniature objects as archaeological artefacts

Mass-produced miniatures as material culture

Scale

The potent miniature

Miniatures as things

Things with power

The social life of miniatures

Symmetry

Miniatures as memories

Miniatures as playthings

Miniatures in the ecology of the home

The symbolic home

"Precious, useless objects"

Absence: the archaeology of nineteenth-century working-class homes

Contexts of absence

Absence: the fragile materiality of "images"

4: Methods

Working with what is left of the past

Two-dimensional archaeology

Going beyond archaeology

Interrogating the object

5: Green parrots and spotted cats

The Working-Class Context

Working-class materiality — the parlour problem

Fictional realities

The working-class home

Materiality and mantelpieces

The materiality of the mantelpiece

The patron saint of lost objects

6: The archaeology of the Plumtree Court mantelpiece I

"Of No Great Note": the historical context

The archaeological assemblage

The source of the artefacts

7: The archaeology of the Plumtree Court mantelpiece II

The ubiquitous image-seller

Brittle distortions

Image sellers' lives, reality and romance

Leather Lane and Saffron Hill

L'hiver est dur, la bise est froide

Upsets

"As many heads as a Hydra": The Romantic Image-Seller

Culture, language

Missionaries of art

Did you ever sell any? Image-seller humour

What image sellers sold

8: The archaeology of the Plumtree Court mantelpiece III

The miniatures:

The cat connection

The cat conundrum

The feline race

Cats and the home

Once upon a time...

9: "Buy Image!" The archaeology of a ballad

"Buy Image!" lyrics

"Buy Image!" lyrics excavated

Deeper excavation

Hudson's "Buy My Images"

Come buy my pretty images

Celebrities and cupids

Le Petit Marchand de Statuettes: a voice from the past

10: The archaeology of the Plumtree Court mantelpiece IV

Absences: the material conundrum

The usefulness of "useless things"

Who, why and how?

Venuses

Napoleons

The Wally Dug

Taste and working-class images

Emulation, resistance and identity

"Lurking places": the threat of revolution

Identity: the miniature as “selfie”

Memory

Changing and enduring tastes

Power

Sentimentality

Bric-à-brac: objects of dubious virtue

Nineteenth-century bric-à-brac: "all monsters and dust"

Trash and trumpery

Gender

"The plaster of Paris man finds his harvest"

Landladies, chambers of horrors and mysterious animals

The love of art

Superstition

Eroticism

Such legs as these

Bollards — a mystery?

Figures of fun

The merry mantelpiece: a "museum in miniature"

Economy

Cost

Value: crime and the chimney-piece

11: Object Worlds

Things with which we live

Object worlds as reaction

Object worlds as collections

Object worlds in working-class homes

The rookery: fact or fantasy?

Parlours as phantasmagorias

Networks and entanglements

A stream of events

The network

12: Mantelpieces, miniatures and miniaturisation — conclusions

Speaking of what is: the power of common things

Value

Future work

Ethnoarchaeology: The mantelpiece project

Contemporary archaeology: the archaeology of charity shops

Conclusions

A delight in "intricate innovations"

A delight in "images"

A delight in the "classical"

A delight in "superfluities"

A delight in humour

A delight in group-consciousness

A delight in "art"

A worldwide delight

Flavour

In summary

13: Two Stories

The image-boy's tale

A tale from Plumtree Court

Afterword

APPENDICES

Appendix I: Images of images

Appendix II: Images in words

Appendix III: The broken cow and other stories

References

Last updated 1st February 2020