Post contributed by Meredith Mobley, University Archives Intern for Student Engagement.
Duke’s University Archives (UA) houses many endlessly interesting artifacts from the history of the University. The collection that houses these materials, the Artifacts and Relics collection, contains everything from rolling pins and trowels to ESP testing cards and boxers with the library’s logo printed on them. As part of my role as UA Intern for Student Engagement, I interact with these and similar materials on a daily basis, but this collection in particular never ceases to pique my curiosity and send me tumbling down a rabbit hole.
These past few weeks I’ve been intrigued by a specific locket in Box 13 of this collection. The Artifacts and Relics collection contains a fair amount of jewelry, mostly having to do with student organizations, such as Tombs (an athletic honor society)
or various Greek letter organizations. The locket that I am writing about, though, seems to be a personal commemorative piece, perhaps meant to celebrate a person’s class and graduation from Trinity College, the predecessor to Duke University. The locket prominently features a woman with bat ears and bat wings, exemplifying the popular art nouveau style of the early 1900s. On the back of the locket the following is engraved: “Trinity June 1903.” Inside the locket a four-leaf clover has been lovingly placed.
Many of the objects in the Artifacts and Relics collection were collected by individuals or other organizations before being passed on to the University Archives. Documentation by these parties may not detail the history of the item or who donated it. This means that their histories are blurry, and we rarely have detailed information about who originally owned them or the story of their creation. This locket is no different. All the information that is available is found on the envelope that the locket is stored in, which reads, “Trinity College Archives, Locket, June 1903, Source unknown.”
I decided to try to find out more about the locket itself. Was it purchased from a local jeweler? There are ads for local jewelers in college publications from the time, could this be a piece they sold? I imagine a student in their senior year at Trinity, meandering down Main St. and seeing the locket displayed in a window, instantly enamored. Are there more of these lockets out there, or is it one of a kind? My search commenced by looking through online catalogs and finding aids of other nearby institutions’ university archives. Looking for something so exact, though, is a “needle in a haystack” endeavor. I was unable to find anything of note — no lockets to be found at all! It was time for some help from a colleague. Together, we reverse image searched the locket and found that it was indeed mass produced, but that the locket in our collections had been made unique through after-market add-ons. On the front of the locket, almost appearing to be held by the Bat-Woman,
is an equal armed cross with “T” in the middle, surrounded by engraved alpha and omega letters. The back features the previously mentioned engraving. The locket was made by Unger Brothers, who are most famous for their art nouveau silver sterling jewelry and utensils, produced in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
There are some things we likely will never know about this locket. Was it a graduation gift from the owner’s family? Part of a student organization’s welcome to new members? What was the experience of this student at Trinity College? Are there more of these out there, still being cherished by families? The life of whoever cherished this locket remains unknown. I think that is part of what makes the objects in the Artifacts and Relics collection so entrancing – their material histories are definite and simultaneously unknown to the viewer. They are physical embodiments of the personal experiences of those who studied and worked at Duke, yet the experiences that made many of these objects dear enough to survive until this point are “fogged over” to our present eyes. Imaginations (and potential research questions) flow abundantly.
If you are interested in learning more about how student records are preserved in the University Archives, please reach out to AskRL@duke.edu! Documenting the impact that students and student organizations have on Duke University is integral to the mission of the University Archives. More information about sharing student group records with the University Archives can be found here.
Citations
Trinity College Locket (front), 1903, Box 13, Artifacts and Relics collection, Duke University Archives, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.
Trinity College Locket (back), 1903, Box 13, Artifacts and Relics collection, Duke University Archives, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.