Time Capsules...............

Most everyone has heard of time capsule~ you take a box, fill it with neat things of the day, and bury or hide it away for someone to open years down the road. Those are GREAT fun to do...but I always thought they were a bit phony~ because people only put things in them that they want others to see. My favorite type of time capsule, is an accidental one... one that just happened. Above is a gorgeous c1863-4 pressed paper sewing purse, filled with treasures from its original owner, Edith Crary

Sewing purses like this were very popular during the Civil War era~ this one is constructed very much the same as daguerreotype & ambrotype cases of same period~ meant to emulate the more expensive gutta percha, but made of a pressed leather~like paper, which made them more affordable & available to most the working class. Its interior is padded and lined in red silk, with fitted compartments for its still present mirror, thimble, little red velvet pin cushion, and several slots in the lids for needles and hooks. The double handles are rolled leather.

Here is Edith's doe leather pounce, stamped leather thread winder, and sewing wax. I love this lump of beeswax~ look at all the grooves in it! I could sit and dream all day of what sort of threads she passed thru this bit of wax, and what all the threads were sewing on.......
This gem size tintype was also contained in her sewing box~ on the back it reads in period script "Edith Crary", and impressed in gold gilt on the top of her sewing box, "E. Crary"
Do you think she would have thought all those years ago, that just her ordinary sewing box would be such an important gathering of information? That from it, as well as its contents, we could take a very rare look back to her day, and its common utilitarian tools? To gaze into her mirror, and "know" that she herself once looked into it as well~ priceless!