This thesis examines the snow globe's resonance and endurance within the larger framework of material culture. The snow globe's ice, glass and snow invoke the trope of the quest, both secular and religious. It follows the snow globe's trajectory from three-dimensional metaphor of memory and places in a two-dimensional symbol of the snow globe itself.
It shows that the snow globe as a material object is wrongly seen as an outgrowth of the paperweight. Using this 'corrected' analysis of the snow globe – it is not a paperweight but its own object – Chapter II documents the role of the globe both in fueling personal memories and in preserving a broader Western cultural memory. It shows how the viewer interacts with the snow globe in its original form as a specific object.
Mass marketers target collectors and tourists who use it as a personal identifier; subversion and terrorism have also influenced the cultural meaning of the snow globe. The cultural history of the snow globe offers a biography of a material object that has been degraded or corroded by cultural change.
A MATERIAL HISTORY OF THE SNOW GLOBE
This misconception has limited material analysis of the snow globe and thwarted appreciation of viewers' interactions with it. This misconception also links the appearance of the snow globe to that of the paperweight, almost fifty years earlier. The link between the snow globe and the paperweight likely had its origins in the 1878 commissioners' characterization of the globe as a "paperweight," a solid glass object, even though they specified that the glass was "hollow." After the commissioners.
224 in the Bergstrom catalogue, but omits mention of the globe paired with it, the facade globe of the castle, No. She presents the snow globe as "fulfilment of the mission of the paperweight".41 Olalquiaga's statement questions whether the globe. Relying on the history of the paperweight for the history of the snow globe ignores the significant differences in glassmaking that produce them.
Collector Nancy McMichael describes the snow globe as "a logical, if less appreciated, stylistic extension" of the solid glass paperweight, citing the description by the US. The characteristic elements of the snow globe remain definitive of its shape, although the materials of those elements have changed over time.
THE SNOW GLOBE AS OBJECT OF MEMORY
The interactions of the snow globe's primary elements, along with human touch, gaze, and thought, present visual contradictions that demand resolution. By the end of the seventeenth century, the miniature had become commercially and culturally important in Western Europe and England. The identification of the miniature always requires reference to the real, but it is by definition inherently artificial.
The fear of the unknown inherent in examining nature's magnified object opposes "exhaustion." Both the content of the accompanying miniatures and the use of the globe indoors only increase these dissonances. As a sensitive object found indoors, the snow globe and its snow similarly challenge the warmth of the domestic interior.
Polar explorers can also lose real-time markers in the way Stewart describes working with the toy. For the nineteenth-century polar explorer, the Arctic landscape also represented the trope of quest—or success against adversity. If the power of the snow globe can be explained by analogy with the fairy tale, it also benefits by analogy with the religious quest for resurrection and eternal life.
Although the use of the snow globe as a lens has been called a reference to Citizen Kane, this reference does not limit the globe's use to the wearer. The essay as a form consists in the ability to consider historical moments, manifestations of the objective spirit, 'culture', as if they were natural. For Benjamin, "kitsch" holds optimism for the machine-age masses, as does the snow globe's invocation of the unconscious memory of a lost paradise.
The material of the surroundings, air, glass or liquid, is crucial to the cultural meaning of the enclosed objects. The toughened glass is a protection for those outside from the escape of the object inside. In contrast, the internal liquid space of the snow globe and the lack of solid glass magnification limit the scene inside to an incomplete representation of the miniature.
This suggests that the Arctic landscape could provide the same answer as Edmund Burke's description of the. The snow globe's casing allows for an unfolding of thoughts and time, while protecting the viewer from the harsh demands of human survival.
THE COMMODIFICATION OF THE SNOW GLOBE: COMMODIFYING, COLLECTING, SUBVERTING
In these new roles, the snow globe does not become the agent of the viewer, but of third parties. While the power of the snow globe as an object of narrative is central to its longevity, its transformation into collectible is. The snow globe's move to collections provides a glimpse into the process of conversion from use to commodity value.
The donor, Cecelia Miller Horwitz, went to Hong Kong on business for Kodak in 1987, a background that may have given her a particular sensitivity to the visual images of the snow globe. Disney's use of the world demonstrates a commodified tourism, a replacement of brand with the authenticity of place. Disney's globes also illustrate the frequent improvement of the globe's image with the addition of text on the globe's base.
Martin and Muñoz play with the suggestion of those myths with the shape of the snow globe: the expectation of benign content is immediately destroyed. Before Martin and Muñoz's widely publicized work, indoor globe miniatures had not changed the meaning of the snow globe. The display of the ominous scene within, however, poses a major visual question, or subversion, of the snow globe as object.
In addition to the changes in size and effect of the snow globe, unfortunate travelers unaware of the restrictions must hand the globe over to the TSA, adding to the humiliation and frustration of transporting the snow globe. Each of these actions, whether more broadly a cultural event of collecting and burning snow. This conclusion argues that snowball commodification has paved the way for a truly physical transformation of the world, or "hypercommodification."
The snow globe's parody takes two forms: replacing the miniature inside the globe with text or replicas that are by definition not "miniature" as defined by. Theories of material culture explain that this disconnect represents the maturity of the snow globe in the push-pull of consumer desire and producer marketing. In the winter world of the snow globe: A museum in Vienna reveals the history of a beloved souvenir." Los Angeles Times, Dec.
History of the original Viennese snow globe.” Original Vienna Snow Globe, http://www.viennasnowglobe.at, last accessed 29 September 2013.
