When I introduced this exercise in class last week, the heirloom I used as my example was my grandmother's mirror which I remembered with a signifcant amount of detail. What I didn't recall was that it is no longer in my possession. In fact, a couple of years ago I gave it to my sister because she had very few objects that had been passed down from my grandmother's generation and the mirror was designed for a woman's use. In addition, I also owned a jewelry box that had belonged to the same grandmother and its dark carved wood in simple and repetitive design seem more "masculine." For me this underscored the aspect of inheritance that is influenced by gender of both the donor and the recipient. In families in which the surviving generation is one gender, what happens to the material culture of the decedent of a different gender. Does the material of one gender stand a better chance of survival?
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