The 21st Century Interpretation

Other items in this box include a glass shard, an ivory watch, Sheldon’s own teeth, and a fork embedded in a cow. To say bluntly, these items are strange and even disgusting to an extent. Any person looking at these objects in the modern era, without the descriptions of what they area, would consider these as rubbish because they are dysfunctional and useless objects.  

Similarly, if a 21st centry audience were to look at the cup without the tag of Henry’s note, we will most likely come to the same conclusion as that of a writer who describes Henry Sheldon as a “local junk dealer” (Discover, 2013). While this may sound harsh, it is sadly almost certain that most of us will consider an old wooden cup as “junk.” In the everyday life, a cup like this is too small for us to drink out of and wood is definitely not the ideal substance. It barely serves any purpose and functionality in our lives so we lose interest. It is worth noting that the modern human intuition tends to automatically assume objects with less functionality as useless or valueless.  

With the help of Sheldon’s note and records, however, some audience may trace the wood from which the cup was made back to the Alden House. In that case, the smooth texture of the current state without any jagged edges is quite impressive. And to think that this is the current version makes it more extraordinary and boasts the cup’s high quality and its usefulness when it was created, perhaps in the 19th century.  

But the modern interpretations all have something in common in that they have to do with the functionality of the object itself. Whether it is defining it as valueless in our everyday life or commending its high quality, we care about how the object impacts human lives, but that only.