The Casket of Magic: Home and Identity from Salvaged Objects

Abstract

Frequent contact with objects and retelling of stories associated with them serve to construct and maintain travelers' identities and connections with the world. In this article I examine the role of collections of salvaged-object souvenirs in identity construction and home-making using the work of a little-known travel writer, journalist, and geographer, (George) Bassett Digby (1888–1962). Firstly I explore a section of his text with a view to demonstrating what this text about possessions tells us about Digby and his connections with people, objects, and places. This examination will illustrate how the role of objects in this one individual's life is linked to practices and objects in other cultures including Maori meeting-houses, Indian masks of the Pacific Northwest, autobiographical use of objects by the Kodi tribe in Indonesia, North American quilters, and stories of objects and home by other writers. Secondly, I show that objects are used to conjure to their owner both a familiar, nurturing hearth and the wider cosmos; that is that objects can be mobilized to make a home in unfamiliar surroundings. For mobile people in particular, both in the past and today, this linkage of collections of salvaged-souvenir objects and their associated stories to processes of homemaking functions to counter emotions of homelessness. Thus, performances involving objects and placement of objects are potential aids to the successful rehoming of displaced persons.