Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

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There is a fairly detailed set of rules about restoration vs replica vs original. Things built with the same materials using the same tools and techniques are "originals". I did a bit of research on this when trying to buy an original Scottish Claymore sword. I had a great discussion with a curator at the British Museum (which has an excellent arms and armor exhibit) about my conundrum and he suggested having one forged, in the same way and with the same materials, was in fact getting an original. The difference being that it didn't have a "past" or sets of stories to go with it, but as I was looking for something that would have its own stories that wasn't the important bit. He referred me to a craftsman that I commissioned to make one, it took about 9 months from start to finish.

Then there are "restorations" which are original parts with non-original parts. The Hiller Air museum had a docent who was working on restoring a WWII P-40 which had the original number plate, firewall and seat frames, but the rest was fabricated using more modern means. The plane would still be a P40 but as a restoration it would be a mix of older and newer parts some of which had been manufactured using techniques or materials that were unavailable during the war, so not "original".

Strange choice of language. What word do they use for things that are "original" in the ordinary sense of the word? Surely there's something less awkward than "original with a past"?

There are "historically significant" artifacts which are things that are both original and something about them was also historically important or interesting. And of course artifacts that are historically insignificant but original and so sometimes good examples of items from the time. The Steamboat Arabia museum has a lot of stuff you would find in the 1850's version of WalMart, none of it is historically significant but the items are great examples of what the stuff people were talking about when they wrote letters and books probably looked and felt like.

The key is separating the item (which can be an original, a re-creation[1], a restored original, or a replica) and the context (the item's history)

[1] I believe, but am not sure, that this was the term for something made with the original materials but using different techniques. Some things like Samurai swords have a gap where it was lost how they were made, and so all you get are recreations of swords of that type rather than new original swords. And yes, I know, its all semantics really, but archivists are nothing if not sticklers about details.

That's not the distinction I'm talking about. I'm talking about the distinction between an object that actually was created at the relevant time period, and one that was created later to mimic one (perhaps indistinguishably so).

That is the thing though, there is no distinction. Try the following thought experiment, "Hagar the shipwright makes a boat for Eric the Red, then trips and falls into a frozen lake where he is frozen for 1500 years, when he is discovered he is thawed out, whereupon he goes to the same forest he always goes to, cuts down the same kinds of trees he always cuts down, and builds another boat." Both boats are original, one is "old" and one is "new", but their time of creation has no impact on their originality.

You are perhaps seeking a distinction that does not exist.

No. We have a continuum of examples connecting almost all distinction we draw. The existence of continuums is not evidence against the supreme usefulness of identifying extremely bimodal distributions. Ring species do not negate the meaningfulness of species. "Number of parts replaced" interpolates between restorations and original, but it doesn't invalidate the distinction. Hypothetical time-traveling vikings does not invalidate the distinction between "original", as the word is commonly understood, and "original", as you've insisted it should be used.

That's cool. Do you have any pictures of the sword or process?

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