Collections by Name | Collections by Region
Packaging Collection
The Packaging Collection includes thousands of items that have been used to store, protect, transport, or market manufactured objects as well as raw or processed commodities. While the collection contains items from around the world and materials ranging in date from as early as the thirteenth century B.C. to contemporary life, the strength of the collections is in nineteenth- and twentieth-century, industrially-produced North American materials, with an emphasis on those used in the Great Lakes region.
The collection is an invaluable resource for tracing the historical, cultural, and economic contexts of packaging; the impact of new technology and materials on packaging and advertising; the basic construction, design and aesthetics of packaging; and how the design of packaging is an important aspect of understanding our visual world. The collections are regularly used by faculty and staff and especially by those in the MSU School of Packaging.
Packaging types include ceramic jugs, crocks and bottles; baskets; wooden crates and boxes; paper wraps, bags and paperboard containers; barrels wet and dry as well as the cooper’s tools used to make them; tin cans and containers; and glass bottles, jars and shipping carboys. Related collections include the graphic ephemera used in labeling and advertising the products.
Selected significant discrete collections include packaging for the following: toys, games, office supplies, fishing reels and tackle, sewing supplies, toiletries, beverages, medicine, tobacco products, spices, condiments, cookies, crackers, snacks, cereals, and various other foodstuffs.
Other discrete collections include flour, feed, and seed sacks as well as clothing and household textiles made from printed fabric sacks; glass bottles, cartons, boxes, cans, and other containers used for butter, milk, and other dairy products; glass jars, tin cans and stoneware crocks used in home canning; historic and figural flasks (molded bottles with famous people and events depicted on them); the Voigt Milling Company collection of paper bags, cloth sacks and advertising materials; the Warren Featherbone Collection of corset stays, corsets, and notions along with their original packaging; and materials generated by students and faculty associated with the MSU School of Packaging.
Donors and Fieldworkers
Various donors
Exhibitions
“Stanley’s Crossroads Store” (an exhibition of late 19th and early 20th century packaging on view as part of a re-creation of a rural general store), Michigan State University Museum, 1965 – ongoing [long-term installation].
“Packaging Christmas: International Holiday Containers,” Michigan State University Museum, East Lansing, Michigan, Nov. 24, 2001-Feb. 29, 2002.
“The Age of Packaging” (presented in partnership with MSU’s School of Packaging and in commemoration of the school’s 50th anniversary), Michigan State University Museum, East Lansing, Michigan, Feb. 24 – Dec. 1, 2002.
“Christmas Shopping in Lansing,” Turner-Dodge House, Lansing, Michigan, Dec. 6-22, 2002.
Pepsodent tooth powder tin, sold for 49 cents, c1950s.
American Lady coffee tin, St. Louis, Missouri, c. 1910
Packaging Collection
