Evocative Objects – 16/01/19

“Theory enables us, for example, to explore how everyday objects become part of our inner life: how we use them to extend the reach of our sympathies by bringing the world within.” (Turkle. S, 2011)

As part of our first session we were asked to bring in an evocative object, which we would then share and show to the rest of the class and explain why this object had meaning to us and caused emotion. The definition of ‘evocative’ means “bringing strong images, memories, or feelings to mind”, the object could be a simple ornament within the house that reminds you of a trip or funny memory, a piece of jewellery given to you by a family member or a toy from your childhood or something that was passed on to you by a special person.

My evocative object was a Hamleys snow globe given to me by my mum at Christmas. Hamleys is the oldest and largest toy shop in the world and one of the world’s best-known retailers of toys. It was founded by William Hamley and the first store was named “Noahs Ark” and was opened in London, in 1760. The story behind the the snow globe is that every Christmas when we would decorate the house I would always get to help get the decorations out and put them out and up around the house. Of course my favourite decoration was the snow globe, I enjoyed watching the snow and glitter dance around the teddy bear in the middle of the globe, so now that I’m all grown up and have my own flat to decorate, my mum gave me a matching snow globe to the one from my childhood and she had been keeping it for the past 20 years and waited until I had my own place to put out my snow globe.

Evocative objects remind us that we need to treasure the people around us before they leave us, to enjoy life and the experiences it throws our way, to cherish our time as children and the memories we make. It’s important to have these objects, important for us to feel these emotions, to remember those memories because these are the things that help shape who we are. What we feel and experience helps build our personalities and character, what we have been through change in a positive way they way we look and treat others, change how we see the world. We have a piece of those objects with us all the time and our objects have a piece of us, they make us who we are.

References:

• Oxford University Press (2019) Evocative, Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/evocative (Accessed: 16th January 2019).
•  Turkle, S. (2011). Evocative objects. 1st ed. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.