Collection: Industry and Extraction

For most of industrial history this family had no uniform at all. People wore their own worn-out clothes to work and ruined them, and the only thing an employer supplied was whatever the job would otherwise destroy: a leather apron, a pair of clogs, a helmet. The overall — a garment bought new, specifically to be work clothing — is a comparatively recent idea and a significant one.

What replaced improvisation was not fashion but regulation. Nearly every distinctive object in these six chapters is the residue of an accident and the rule that followed it: the hard hat, the steel toecap, the flame-resistant coverall, and the high-visibility vest that is now the most-worn garment on earth by area of retroreflective tape.

Six chapters. The contents are public; the plates and the inventory are for subscribers.

Sample

Up to five plates from each of the 6 chapters, in full, free to anyone. Every one is credited to the collection that holds it and links back to the record.

Manufacturing

Construction and civil engineering

Mining and quarrying

Oil, gas and offshore

This chapter is still being sourced. It is listed because the family is not complete without it, and an inventory that hides its own gaps is not an inventory.

Utilities

Waste and sanitation