What makes something an heirloom?
putthison.com
putthison.com
Maybe an heirloom is an object that is simultaneously priceless and worthless.
I'd say an heirloom is any object that has a much greater value among a small group of people who are related to each other.
On the flip side of that, today's tradesmen usually just leave their tape measures out in the rain and mud. Seen it twice now just in my own garden (garden office built in January, and home extensions now in July). Disposable culture!
For anything else it's trivial to check if there's any discrepancy, and for casual use it might not even matter.
Slide rulers are pretty easy to use, and make.
This Illustrated Self-Guided Course On How To Use The Slide Rule [1] seems reasonable.
After cleaning the Minolta, I purchased some Kodak Portra 400 film and then took it on a vacation to Albania and Greece. I had an incredible time lining up shots patiently and deliberately since every shot cost $1.50, and I could not review the results in the moment. The feeling of using a camera that my grandfather had used to capture moments from his trips four decades previously is hard to put into words.
When I returned home from my trip, I had the film developed and digitally scanned. I thought the pictures turned out pretty well for being as inexperienced as I am. I built my own gallery on my website to host them because they hold a much more special meaning to me than all of the photos I have previously taken on my iPhone. After curating the photos, I went to visit my grandfather. When I showed him the photos, he really enjoyed them. My grandparents shared a few stories about traveling with that camera and how they had the prints of the animals on their wall made.
Nobody else in my family wanted the film cameras. I am very glad I acquired them, and I plan to maintain them and eventually pass them on. To me, these are absolutely an heirloom. They are high quality, still functional, were revolutionary when they were released, and came with valuable stories and experiences from my grandfather. I couldn’t have asked for a better object to receive from him. I plan to take these cameras on all of my future trips and hopefully visit places he went to and recapture them half a century later.
You'll like it, its much less grainy than the Portra with better color registration.
Ektar is.. wonderfully forgiving to under or over exposure, it'll look pretty in either case.
It looks like a 5-pack of Provia 100F is really expensive from BH, and my local film studio charges a bit more to process E6 compared to developing C41. Ektar seems to have a much more reasonable price. I'm not good enough yet to justify spending too much.
For photographing nature, would you generally recommend using 100 ISO film? I'm not planning on using a tripod since I don't want to carry one around while traveling. I'm looking for vivid colors akin to the National Geographic of old.
My lenses for the Nikon F4 are:
- Nikon 28mm f/2.8 Series-E
- Nikon 50mm f/1.4 NIKKOR-S Auto
- Sigma AF 50mm f/2.8 Macro
- Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 AF NIKKOR ED
- Tamron AF 200-400mm f/5.6 LD IF 75DN
Ektar is really forgiving, and you an over or under expose it by a couple stops and still get decent pictures.
And yes, for nature in good light, 100 is more than enough, consider that most of the classic Nat Geo stuff was shot on Kodachrome ISO 64 (or slower) film.
I'd also tell you that one of the things that looks really really cool on film and is much harder to do without a much more expensive digital camera is long exposure low light stuff (IE, stop the lens all the way down to its smallest setting, and expose for 30 seconds or longer) - but it requires a Tripod. https://leho.blastpuppy.com/~aloha/photos/carls.jpg is an example of this technique.
You can get a better idea of the look, breadth and capability of film by taking a peek at my Gallery - https://leho.blastpuppy.com/~aloha/photos/
Film to me is much easier to make good pictures with - because other than light exposure correction, what you get is what you get, and the color profile and many other details are decided by just what film you pick to expose.
Its a matter of opinion, but I dont think any (currently produced) slide film looks better than negative films do, Kodachrome is the exception, and if it was available again, I'd be looking for another EOS-1 to go shoot it with.
Also yes I'm a Canon guy, but like, its personal preference really - and the first SLR I shot with was a Cannon AE-1, and I really like the Cannon EOS series cameras. I'd also strongly suggest shooting in Program mode - the Zone System was great for the B&W file when introduced, but it doesnt really make for great color photos - and frankly the engineers at Nikon or Canon are smarter than you or I, and you'll get fantastic looking pictures on Program Mode, allowing you, the photographer to focus on the thing that takes real artistry - image composition.
Both cameras are well respected, especially the Nikon F4. Your grandfather was a man of taste!
I have a giant 40 pound ball of elastics she made. It was an extended dad joke as she asked me if I could get her some elastics one day and I didn't look up from my work and just said yeah sure. Mom wasn't impressed when she found out what was in the beaten up heavy box that was dropped shipped all the way to our post office. She kept it in her locker at school and lovingly tormented her teachers by 'bouncing' it in the hall from time to time.
With her gone now it doesn't feel like these are heirlooms, it actually hurts a bit to have things like this around that are returned back to the previous generation. Same thing with her race skis that fit me and I used one day last season.
The stories these tell remind me of her best times but also tell me they weren't enough. So there's bittersweetness in all of it that's left behind.
Oh, I'm so sorry...
In the last few years, I've lost my sister and my mom, and very recently my dad. We all miss him so much, it hasn't been a week yet; nevertheless, I can't be too sorry that he left, because he has stopped feeling the constant pain of the missing daughter and the departed adored wife.
Losing one's parent is painful, but losing one's children is so unnatural that nobody should ever know such a deep horror.
I do find mementos from lost people to be quite sad. But also kinda fun.
Bloomberg: "Rolex Prices to Drop Further as Supply Surges: Morgan Stanley. Pre-owned watch market flooded with Rolex, Patek and AP"[1]
Rolex is a strange business. One of their CEOs once said "we are not in the watch business, we are in the luxury business." The price of Rolex watches has increased 5x over inflation since the 1950s, for much the same models. Rolex was at one time what you bought if you needed a rugged watch. Today, that market is covered by the Casio G-Shock, the choice of US soldiers.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-14/rolex-pri...
Advertisers know we block ads, so the content is becoming the ad.
It's one reason why I went off FB though; there was the ads, but then most posts of the people I followed were talking about a product, a (streaming) TV show, or an experience like vacation or food, all of which can be considered advertising or trying to sell me something. But it flies under the radar because it's from friends, whose opinions I'm more likely to follow than ads.
It's a lot more suspicious that you say the Casio G-Shock is the choice of US soldiers.
I thought it was a good article, and the good point it made is that things without commercial value make better heirlooms.
It was an epoxy encased hedgehog that sat on a mantleshelf. Unbeknownst the owners it was slowly rotting and the gas pressure was building inside the block of resin. Eventually the pressure got too much and the resin block exploded, covering the room in bits of hedgehog and resin.
look for resin casting or similar
The other is a beautiful gold pocket watch given to him by a friend who (literally) owned a bank. He never carried it, and neither do I.
Some relatives apparently gave my father a silver spoon, with great ceremony and seriousness, because he was the last carrier of our last name. It was not a very pretty spoon, and it was more than a little odd, since I've since done some genealogy research and found out that we have plenty of relatives with that last name (admittedly they mostly converged on a slightly different spelling, our common ancestor living before that sort of thing was standardized).
There are so many things I would have more loved to have from those ancestors than a spoon.
From another ancestor, we have a chest, an "America suitcase". This ancestor, my great-great grandmother, was supposed to go to America with her parents, but they changed their mind at the last moment and went to Northern Norway instead. It's dented and worn, and it probably wasn't a very nice chest in the first place, since they were poor. But I think it's a much better heirloom - it is something signifying a very important crossroads in my family's history, and it even documents it to some degree (there's a year and initials painted on it).
A piece of furniture a grandfather made feels more like what I think of as an heirloom. Something one-off, made by the person you are remembering. But also a letter my mother wrote, her handwriting, is more valuable, more heirloomish than whatever the most valuable thing is that she owned.
It just occurs to me that I'm sitting in my grandfather's recliner chair right now, a very early model, from a local factory, of what would eventually become a fairly well-known piece of industrial design worldwide. I should probably have it repaired a little.
Going by these criteria, the main heirlooms that I've inherited and still have are some of my father's tools. I still use them when I can, even when they aren't always the most convenient. Back in the early 90s, I also inherited a Vauxhall Victor [0] as my first car from an uncle who died young. It was 17 years old and amazingly had less than 5000 miles on the clock. It was quickly christened 'Old Vic' and kept me going until I got a job with a long commute that required something more reliable. Old Vic had some interesting quirks: i.e. windscreen demister, windscreen wipers, headlights, choose two. But it also had a 2.3 litre engine so once it got up to speed it was quite pokey.
Like the author, my inspiration for doing this work had come from a vintage watch I received from my dad!
Turns out, there’s a rich literature in design and psychology research on the heirloom status of objects. And more generally, on why and how people imbue things with value.
Here’s a link to the page from my academic projects archive, with citations: https://www.baytas.net/work/computational-heirlooms
We even went as far as to apply for (and receive) a grant for UX design research, exploring how to create for heirloom value in the digital world. I’ve moved on from academia since then, but AFAIK our PhD is working on it at KTH in Stockholm: https://www.baytas.net/work/digital-preciousness
My father received of his aunt, one of the last relics of his mother's grandfather, the family patriarch, a stoneware milk jug. He then gifted it to my daughter, and it's been kept safe, awaiting her getting a home of her own for it to be placed in.
I also have my grandfather's cast-iron reel mower, which I replaced the handle and roller on --- still works fine, and does a good job of cutting the grass, but I use a more modern Fiskars out of concern of the possibility of breaking a part which can't be readily repaired/replaced.
That said, I'm never forgiving my father for selling his father's anvil.
The first is a Plankowner belt buckle he received from the SSN USS Olympia. He was not in the Navy, but, rather a contracted engineer along for the maiden voyage doing things he could not talk about.
The other is a yellowed, framed poster. It has a sketch of an astronaut doing an EVA along with the signatures of the team that worked on the project.
The project was a biological experiment that took place in cislunar space on the way back from Apollo 16s moon landing. My Dads signature is there along with Ken Mattingly’s (the command module pilot who performed the EVA).
I have this hanging above my computer in my home office.
I have an image of a photo of my dad in front of the NASA Crawler, but it was lost in a flood. He did navigation systems and the photo was from the launch of Apollo 8.
Now, I do have some items such as the 1st gen iPhone, 1st gen iPad, the MacBook Air that came out of an envelope, amongst many others. Not yet so interesting at this time but imagine this after 2050s, 60s, or 70s or after I'm gone. Future family members, seeing them would definitely have a kick out of it.
They both wanted me to go through their homes and make a note of all the things I wanted and I never have. Unlike them, I don't really feel sentimental about most physical items. If they left me something old or valuable, I wouldn't think twice about selling it or giving it away if it isn't something I want. It should go to someone who will actually love or use the thing for what it is, not sit in a storage locker.
I have two siblings and as of a year ago, they feel the same about it all. I'm pretty sure my kids feel about the same with respect to the things I own. I do have an expensive watch that I wear everyday and I know they will sell it and I'm okay with that.
I think it would take a dedicated person who has a child very young so that they could influence grandchildren and potentially great grandchildren who also has an item that has some value but maybe can’t be sold for equivalent amount and that person has to build this item up like it’s magical. Yeah it would take a lifetime dedication of one person to create an heirloom so they are pretty special actually.
1. A painting he created, landscape with a deer. He wasn't very good at painting deer, it looks like a pig. :-)
2. A set of chess pieces. Very well made, with lead inside the pieces to make them balance better. Really, really nice. They went to a different son than my grandfather, but I managed to /almost/ beat the one that got the chess pieces as a 10 year old. He was the county champion. He willed the chess pieces to me.
The only things I can think of my friends having that are valuable enough to pass on without feeling "expensive for the sake of being expensive" are Patagonia jackets, and even then it's hard to imagine one of them becoming an heirloom - while they are well-made, the price is partly because of the cutting-edge materials which will likely become cheaper and more effective over time. (And Patagonia specifically seems to be headed in the Rolex direction of becoming a luxury brand).
That, or another piece of jewelry is an obvious place to start. Essentially, anything that has utility, and you use it for that task.
I don't think you should worry about usefulness at all. It's impossible to say what you have that will be useful to your grandchildren, but probably not very much.
My mother has some old glass-ware she has kept in the cupboard for decades that were her inheritance from her grandmother or something, but we've checked and it is not worth anything it is just set of old cups and have definitely not been used for decades.
My father has a collection of some coins, but they are just something he used to collect when he did traveling in the 80s. Not really an heirloom or something I will be keep collecting - maybe if it has some monetary value I might keep the collection intact since I am not scrapped for cash.
Anecdotally, the things that are most likely to become multi-generation heirlooms are things like woodworking tools. They last forever with moderate care, and woodworking as a hobby or profession can also be passed from one generation to the next so that the tools will continue to be useful.
Even though one of them is worth quite a lot of money, it's not like a watch where using it risks easily damaging it - it's mounted high enough on the wall that any visiting kids can't reach it, and while it's not quite as convenient as modern clocks I quite enjoy winding it every couple of weeks, and remembering to put it forward/back an hour a couple of times a year. Though it did cost a few hundred pounds to get it repaired a couple of years ago (which came with a side benefit of being shown around a local clock specialist's workrooms that must've had >100 clocks, some being built by him and his intern, some being repaired, some just being clocks).
And actually, I'm growing to slightly prefer the other clock which is the one my mum learned the time on as a kid - it's a cuckoo clock with two chains and removable weights, one chain needs daily pulling to power it, the other chain is usually not in use but when you hang the weight on it the cuckoo is powered and comes out / makes a noise once on the half hour, and on the hour it does as many as the value of the hour. Shame it runs about 5mins fast per day, but I'm too lazy to think about fixing it and it's a quirk that I don't mind.
A similar heirloom is a painting, which again has the benefit of being enjoyed (it's on the wall I face at my home PC desk) with minimal chance of damage. I'm lucky enough that it's got some real family history to it - my great, great grandfather (or was it 3x great, I forget) had it commissioned and it shows the ship he owned, at sea. Was very relieved a couple of years ago when a relative doing family research was able to finally confirm that the ship was never used in the slave trade which had always been a worry in the back of our minds (though given the world back then, it wouldn't be a huge surprise if some of the spices it transported between various parts of the world and the UK had involved slavery / other immoral acts to acquire, but still pleased my family were never involved in nor 'owned' any slaves.)
- an Ascham (archery case) for a Bear Custom Kodiak Takedown bow: https://www.lumberjocks.com/showcase/archery-case-ascham-of-...
- a reproduction of Thos. Jefferson's Lap Desk in bamboo
- a collection of woodworking and machinist tools which I need to make a nicer case for, probably one modeled on the H.O. Studley tool cabinet, though I've been debating making a nice set of drawings from the typo-ridden book and making a replica of that
- the Spellbinder deck box which has my first Magic: The Gathering deck in it, which includes a play set of Tropical Islands
- a collection of books on type and typesetting which includes some of the more interesting books I did the composition on, or assisted with in some way which warranted my being mentioned
- a collection of fantasy and science fiction books, including pretty much everything J.R.R. Tolkien wrote: https://www.reddit.com/r/tolkienbooks/comments/sfi4qp/over_4... (his translation of the Exodus poem really, really needs to be reprinted, ideally w/ a lengthy scholarly examination) as well as pretty much everything Michael Moorcock wrote in paperback, as well as some other authors, either in hardcover or paperback.
and as mentioned else thread, there are a couple of more traditional heirlooms I have of my forebears (milk jug, lawnmower, my father's Seiko which unfortunately has a broken date wheel and is too large for my wrist/taste anyway), and one which I don't have which I still rage about (anvil).
Most dinner plates aren’t heirlooms. But the fancy china that reminds your kids of Thanksgivings and their graduation dinner might be.
Or furniture. I actually have the dining room table my grandmother bought in 1960something. It’s not even all that fancy. But… thanksgiving. The crappy centerpiece I made as a 7-year-old kid proudly featured there for the next 2 decades. The best beef stroganoff I ever had. The table is a mid-century modern design and slightly clashes with the house it’s in. But I don’t care because it holds so many memories.
Other examples in this thread are often mechanical things. Like old cameras. I’m wondering if this will still hold for future generations. Digital stuff just doesn’t seem permanent enough to be passed down.
The Air King gets a lot of time on my wrist, it's small, and beautiful. A lot nicer than the modern AirKing designs with their colourful dials.