Back to the Work

Back to the Work: Tom Bouckaert

Back to the Work, our project with Lippitt House Museum, aims to reveal the human fingerprints that cover our world, specifically because of work concerning construction (read: houses), manufacturing (read: textiles), and maintenance (read: cleaning). We are also connecting the past to the present by revealing history to be the accumulation of practices that have brought us here, rather than a tidy timeline of isolated events. In order to do all that, we're both researching who labored in the house at the time of its construction in 1865, and interviewing the people who labor in Lippitt House today. 

On Monday we had the distinct pleasure of talking with Tom Bouckaert, Vice President at Bouckaert Industrial Textiles. We found Tom through Ann Conway, the Director of the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonsocket, which honors the industrial history of Woonsocket, historically centered in the French Canadian culture. (For more on the Museum and our interest in it, you can read an older blog post here.)

We met with Tom on a Monday afternoon in the Museum, which is closed on Mondays, allowing us to have a cozy chat in the display of a classic triple decker.

Tom spent years on the floor of textile mills -- first his father's in Chicago and eventually his own in Woonsocket. Along the way he teamed up with Northwest Woolen Mill, which is one of the last textile mill in Rhode Island.

Talking with Tom for this project was a treat. Just like Marie and Dave, Tom is passionate and articulate about his work. He had incredible things to say about listening to the machines, mentoring future generations of American workers, and seeing the textiles -- made by humans! -- everywhere. From dollar bills to Kleenex, textiles are in more places than you can imagine. Though he hasn't officially worked on the floor for a long time, it's clear that his never-ending curiosity about how to improve and tinker and make better these sophisticated pieces of machinery is what keeps him going. Not surprising for a guy who went to school for aerospace engineering. . .

What struck me most in the interview is how specialized our lives are; how expert we become in things if we work at it. Sharing this expertise changes the way I see the objects all around me. I hope we communicate that to all the people who come experience the final product. This built environment was made because of people like Tom who have devoted their lives to the tireless work of figuring out the next solution.

Back to the Work: Marie Alfred

It can feel so good to be ambitious. Three months ago I was sure I was going to write a blog post every week about all the progress we were making on this project -- because indeed, every week we were progressing. 

But alas! Living life and also writing about life is harder than you think. And so, this love overdue blog post details a very important aspect of the work we've been doing on Back to the Work. 

Should be dated, early December 2017 ish.

Meet Marie

Back to the Work, our project with Lippitt House Museum, aims to reveal the human fingerprints that cover our world, specifically because of work concerning construction, manufacturing, and maintenance. We are also connecting the past to the present by revealing history to be the accumulation of practices that have brought us here, rather than a tidy timeline of isolated events. In order to do all that, we're both researching who labored in the house at the time of its construction in 1865, and interviewing the people who labor in Lippitt House today. 

The woman who cleans Lippitt House Museum is Marie Alfred. She runs her own cleaning business, as well as a dog walking business called Dog Troopers -- which she says you can always remember if you're a Star Wars fan. She's only been cleaning the Museum for about a year. Before that, the small staff took care of the cleaning themselves. When the current director, Carrie, took over she reorganized things a bit and created a staff position who would be in charge of events. Once Lippitt House Museum started hosting events, the clean-up became too much for the staff and there was enough extra income to necessitate hiring Marie and her team. 

 

 

Marie has gotten a reputation for cleaning historic homes specifically. Like Dave Painter, she is self-taught, very passionate and incredibly knowledgable. In our hour-long chat about her work and the house I learned more about what it takes to clean a historic home than I thought possible (Biggest personal take-away: stop using Murphy's Oil). She is ambitious, industrious, and kind, and talked about how she's in the process right now of expanding both of her businesses and hiring more people. In listening back to our conversation, I was hit with the way she described the sensitivity needed in a house like Lippitt; that in older homes you have to take greater care. I'm sure that all of the people she hires next will be trained to be great caretakers of great spaces.

Marie was also gracious enough to agree to lend her voice and perspective to the project, which we'll edit together into something you can hear when you come. Marie isn't someone who craves the spotlight, and so we are extra honored to have her take part, and are sure you're going to learn a lot by listening to her talk about her life and her work. 

A Trip to Tomaquag Museum

It can feel so good to be ambitious. Three months ago I was sure I was going to write a blog post every week about all the progress we were making on this project -- because indeed, every week we were progressing. 

But alas! Living life and also writing about life is harder than you think. And so, this love overdue blog post details a very important aspect of the work we've been doing on Back to the Work. 

Should be dated, late November 2017 ish.

A Trip to Tomaquag Museum

Following our journies to Slater Mill and Woonsocket we took a trip to Tomaquag Museum in Exeter, RI. We weren't sure exactly how visiting Tomaquag would inform Back to the Work, but we know that tracing any kind of history on this continent is impossible without first acknowledging how people lived here before colonization. This hold true for investigating material culture and manufacturing. We wanted to be reminded of the kind of manufacturing that was happening in this region for thousands of years before Slater built his mill in Pawtucket.

Tomaquag is a space dedicated to the Indigenous history and present-day lives of the people who have always lived in what we today call Rhode Island. It was the perfect place to learn more.

The interior of the Tomaquag Museum

We happened to choose a Saturday where Tomaquag was showcasing a Narragansett artist, Yolanda "Yani" Smith who was doing a live demo of traditional quillwork. Watching Yani's painstaking work to create beautiful barrettes, baskets, and earrings with porcupine quills put a whole new lens on what it would mean to own something that was made with such human skill and attention to detail. She described how her relatives would gather quills traditionally by throwing a blanket over the porcupine and then collecting the quills, but said the ones she was using were store bought. She also hasn't gotten into hand dying them yet, but is curious.

Yani working at Tomaquag

Some of Yani's work.

Tomaquag is a relatively small, but dense museum and we were lucky that the director Lorén Spears was there that Saturday, and ended up giving us an impromptu tour.

Most notably for this project, Lorén talked about traditional basket-making and what an immense process it is from start to finish. She is a basket-maker herself, but says she usually buys the already-processed raw materials because otherwise she'd have to charge $500 for a basket due to all the extra labor. She said people always want her to say she did all of it -- the harvesting, the color dying, and the weaving -- but that no one wants to pay for that extra work. It's pretty easy to see how we have come to devalue the labor that it takes to make objects because of industrialization. I thought of all the random baskets in my house that random gifts and things appear in. I don't even think about the baskets, but if it took me a week's pay or a month's work to make one I probably would. And if I couldn't have a basket without that kind of labor, I would surely care a lot about the basket I eventually acquired.

And here, just because it's rad, is Lorén with Michelle Obama.