These are family heirlooms. Art, jewelry, tools. Things handed down to me, and things I asked to be the custodian of. These items are held in trust, not owned.
Every one of them has a story. The goal is to get that story recorded before it’s lost, so my descendants have it.
The photographs sit somewhere between product photography and personal portrait.
The end result will be a printed catalog. Every item photographed, catalogued, and its history written down.
Elgin Wrist Watch
This watch belonged to Detective Sergeant James Thomas “Bud” Gaughan of the Indianapolis Police Department, badge 634. He was killed in the line of duty on September 8, 1951, at thirty-eight, after nine years of service. He left a wife, an eleven-year-old son, and a seven-year-old daughter. The watch is an ordinary Elgin of its period, silvered dial, engine-turned, applied numerals, the kind of thing a working man wore every day without thinking much about it.
It passed to his widow, Kathryn, who entered the Indianapolis Police Academy the same year he died and became an officer for the City of Indianapolis. She went on to serve as a Marion County deputy sheriff and later as a jury commissioner, retiring in 1975. She kept the watch for sixty-one years. After her death in 2012 it came to their grandson, who photographed it as found and opened its record.