As I recall, in one of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, her  mother lovingly 
carries a figurine from one new home to another newer  home.
Nancy
 
In a message dated 10/8/2010 7:04:00 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
[log in to unmask] writes:

I have  some citations relating to the social context of bric-a-brac, culled
from  works by Dickens, Orwell, etc.; would that be helpful?

-----Original  Message-----

Folks,
I am looking for some comparative data from  late-19th century and 20th 
century sites and hoping that folks on the list  might self-promote or 
suggest some work by colleagues.  I'm  interested in bric-a-brac, an 
ambiguous category of things that in  archaeological sites most often 
takes the form of mass-produced figurines  that most of us bury in our 
artifact catalogs, partly because we do not  find all that many of these 
things and partly because we are not always  sure what to make of them