Author: Cindy Lambert

For eight years I have been providing research and writing articles about artifacts in the Wine History Project’s collection. My quest has been to engage you, the reader, in appreciating the history of these material objects. One can refer to them as physical objects, material possessions, artifacts, cultural material but ultimately in the hands of a historian they are known as material culture. Material culture provides access to the past as it was experienced. Every object has stories to reveal.

The Wine History Project of San Luis Obispo County retains in its archival collection eighteen black and white glossy photographs. These professionally taken photographs include images portraying wine making from between the mid-1940s and early 1950s. The Wine History Project obtained these photographs from a collector who presented them to us. They appear to be promotional pieces from the Wine Institute for the wine industry.