Hey, all. It's been too long! The collection I'm working with right now spans thousands of years, so I figured I would toss it here in Pre-Industrial (though several of the items are squarely made in the industrial revolution or even post-industrial). A bit of background, or just skip to the end for the link to the Flickr Album.

In January of last year I was attending a conference in Chicago where I met the head of acquisitions for the Museum of Science & Industry. She happened to overhear me talking locks with someone and introduced herself. She told me that the museum had just been approached by a widow who wanted to donate her husband's lock collection, but that they didn't really know what to do with it, or if they should bother. All I knew at the time was that he was an employee of Yale & Towne. Being that I have a very specific interest in Y&T (distant relation to the T) I put on the best show I could to convince her to acquire the locks. Then, I heard nothing for a year. This January I was back in Chicago for the same conference when I received an email saying that the locks had been acquired, and it wasn't just Yale locks, but a huge collection of locks from around the world over the past couple thousand years, and would I like to come unbox them for a small audience.

It was probably the worst talk I've ever given because I was so engrossed in the locks themselves and basically ignoring the attendees. The staff at the MSI had done some early work to establish that this was only 1/3rd of what had been a massive collection assembled by the Yale & Towne company over the course of about 90 years. They knew that another 3rd was held by the Stamford Museum in Stamford, CT, and that the final 3rd was still in private hands, but they were trying to find it.

Since then I've been on the hunt for any and all information I can find. It's been going very well, and I can sketch out a rough picture of what this collection was like in the 1950s. The wife of one of the directors at Y&T was deeply immersed in the modernist art scene and approached her husband about doing a collaborative project with several prominent artists & Y&T. This became the "Style & Security" exhibit which toured the country at art galleries, museums, and universities. It featured the expansive Y&T lock collection, with commentary, and several examples of modernist art relating to locks. In particular, handles & escutcheons sculpted by the likes of Mirko and Fernand Leger.

Then, and I'm not sure why, yet, the entire collection was disbanded in the early 1960s (before the World's Fair in NYC, where Y&T had a booth. I was really hoping they had displayed the collection there.) The story goes that one third was donated to the Stamford Museum, where it was briefly displayed before being boxed & stored in an attic, and the other two thirds were to be discarded. Thankfully 2 gentlemen at the company instead decided to split the remaining thirds between them.

I was able to pop over to the Stamford Museum recently to photograph their portion of the collection, which, to anyone's knowledge hadn't been properly photographed before. I'm still filling in whatever details I can find as I go along, but am taking a break to make this post. I'll be back in Chicago in June to interview the Widow and photograph their third. I don't know what will become of all of these locks, but I think the curators at the MSI, the director of the Stamford, and I, would all like to see them re-assembled & touring again at some point in the next few years.

Here are the photos from the Stamford collection: https://www.flickr.com/photos/schuyl...57644157310684

This is an ongoing project that will likely take me a couple years to complete, but I'll try to update my progress here once in a while.