United States, New Hampshire, Irma G. Bowen Historic Clothing Collection, University of New Hampshire

Professor Irma G. Bowen began collecting items in 1920 as a hands-on teaching tool for students in the Home Economics department at the University of New Hampshire. The collection was named in Bowen’s honour after her death in 1947, and by the time it transitioned to the University Museum in 1969, the Bowen Collection had gained new significance. With most of the objects donated by local colleagues and families, the preserved items were recognised as an unexpected archive of New Hampshire heritage on a personal scale, a glimpse of lives otherwise invisible to the historical record.