Ma’Cille’s Museum of Miscellanea
An incomplete catalog of the collection
Drawings by Glenn House, Sr.
Gordo, Alabama: Paper Souvenir Press, 2012.
This book is an attempt to catalog Ma’Cille’s Museum of Miscellanea ten years after it closed, based on the memories of the people who visited the museum and newspaper archives. Ma’Cille House, formal education stopped at 7th grade, began collecting for her museum in the 1950’s after she had raised seven children. She established her museum on a rural back road near Gordo, Alabama. By the time the museum closed 40 years later, it was a world famous, multi-building institution, visited by thousands of people. Before this book, the story of the museum was preserved primarily through the oral narratives circulating in the town of Gordo.
Ma’Cille’s Museum of Miscellanea is available as a deluxe letterpress edition and as a commercially printed edition.
Visit the Paper Souvenir etsy shop to purchase.
Deluxe edition, $400: Letterpress printed on textblock cotton rag handmade paper from Alabama clay colored t-shirts. Paper covered boards with exposed stab binding. Laid in a printed four-flap paper folder. 5.5 x 8.5 inches; 80 pages with five pull outs.
Laser printed open edition, $25: Laser printed with letterpress printed cover. One printed memento of Ma’Cille’s included (possible mementos: copy of Ma’Cille’s taxidermy ceritification, New York Times article about the museum from 1974, letter from game warden to Ma’Cille or Daddy Norman fishing poster.) 5.5 x 8.25 inches; 80 page