An image was created on an image grid vertically spanning the room with the help of additional (and partly-coloured) nylon threads. The image depicts a room with filing cabinets and a computer workstation – the room that in the museum is called ‘Documentation’. It is the line drawing of the room in which the object’s file with the inventory number V115 is in.
The photograph ‘Object with Inventory No. V115’ depicts three written notes on a white wall. After deciphering the words that have been written on the blue note with a quill pen, the viewer realises that Object No. V115 is ‘A fire striker and a silver tin with intricate niello work’ from Tula, Russia, made some time around the 17th century. It is 1.8 x 1.4 inches in size and was a gift. The computer-printed note states that no photograph of the object existed until the beginning of April 1940. And the red sticker certifies that the object went permanently missing from the museum’s collection.
Only a few competent archivists will be able to gather more information from these three notes: the fact that there is a blue card means that the object must have been given to the museum before 1896; the yellowed index card with pencil writing on it is from the 1950s and indicates that the museum was in possession of the fire striker at that time. When and how the fire striker went missing is unknown. The computer-printed white note was typed up in the 1990s based on information from a document in the museum’s archives dated 4.4.1940. The red sticker certifying that the item went missing was not placed over the blue sticker certifying that it was in the museum’s possession until inventory was taken in 2007 or 2008.
