For centuries, cultures around the world have turned this gift from nature into water dippers, bowls, masks, baskets, jewelry, and musical instruments. The Museum offered workshops using gourds as a canvas for creative projects.

Having outside experts use our collection to research their own projects is a great thing because even though it’s sometimes inconvenient and frequently time consuming it ALWAYS yields some new information about an object or image in our collection. This was especially the case in November when two researchers, Kevin Foster and Emir Yener, showed up to research Civil War era blockade runners and nineteenth century warships.