Heritage et AL

The latest blog post from Walter Cook at the advent of his retirement from The National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga O Aotearoa is a fascinating read. He divulges the 'tricks of the trade' used to date photographs. I was so interested in this idea, that I decided to test out his 'taxonomy of fashion', which is based on women's fashion and hairstyle trends of the day. I used these dated headings as a framework to search for complementary photos in the Sir George Grey Special Collections, using the Auckland Libraries Heritage Images database. You can see from what I found below, that it was quite a success! In a few cases where we don't know the exact date the photograph was taken, the taxonomy can be used as another tool in helping us to pin this down the date to a narrower time period. So enjoy and thanks to the National Library for the inspiration and what turned out to be a very fun exercise! The full crinoline, 1856 to 1865. Characterised...

Ah summer .. long days of sunshine, trips to the beach and of course, the all important picnic. Summer wouldn't be summer without at least a few picnics. Despite the sand in your food and the insects buzzing around, eating food outside never fails to bring a sense of excitement to a meal. From simple sandwiches to grand affairs, picnics are always popular with everyone, whatever their age. Ref: 4-7028, group picnic, no date, Sir George Grey Special Collections Take a look through these heritage images from the Auckland Libraries collections and see how people went picknicking in the past!