The Lost Experience of Urban Sledding

Across its various collections, the Museum of Ethnography owns a total of thirty-nine different sleds, each representing something different in context: a tool used for gathering or fishing in winter (the Fishing Collection); a means of moving goods or people (the Transportation Collection); a child’s toy (the Customs and Toys Collection); or an international counterpart to the typical Hungarin sled (the Asian or European Collection).  Only one of these is made of plastic, the others all having been hand crafted from wood.

Acquired in 2006 for the exhibition Plastic, this red ‘bob’ from the Customs and Toys Collection is unlike any other sled in the museum.  Its closest relative might be, say, a baby’s bathtub.  Of its original owner or life, nothing is known—though in fact, with contemporary museum procurements, it is precisely such personal experiences and narratives that are regarded as the key information.  Without them, what excitement or use can such an object even hold as a museum piece? What stories can it be used to tell?

The bobsled—from which the Hungarian name ‘bob’ derives—consists of a plastic shell, usually fitted with a steering wheel and/or brake.  The actual sport of bobsledding—so named for the forward and backward ‘bobbing’ motion by which sledders launch their vehicles onto their snow-and-ice courses—was born in Switzerland in the late 19^th century.  The first competition bobsleds were made of wood, materials that would later be replaced with metal and special polymers.  This ordinary version of the bobsled is considerably simpler, while also representing a complete departure from the traditional sled made of wooden slats on skis.

Made of flexible red injection-moulded polypropelene, this particular bobsled was featured in the section of Plastic that dealt with manufacturing processes in illustration of the concepts of folding and ribbing:  it is, in fact, its folded rim that gives it its special durability and the ribs on its underside that make it slide so beautifully.  Its design, therefore, serves not only aesthetic, but also practical purposes, including that of its black seat, which is both ergonomic, and comfortable.

The road from the curbside or dumpster to a museum’s collection is not necessarily a straight one:  though junk day foraging is by no means a regular feature of the ethnographer’s tool kit, there is nothing that actually prohibits it.  At the same time, the collection of objects on the verge of obsolescence is a widely accepted practice:  ethnographers frequently happened upon such things in the attics of rural homes.  In such cases, too, little to nothing is known about how objects were used:  all that is certain is that they are not used anymore.  It is this precise fate that has fallen to our red sled.  But why?

In fact, global warming and climate change have radically reduced both overall snowfall, and the average number of days in Hungary with snowcover, and as a result, our experience of winter has changed.  Already today, many have grown up without the experience of having been pulled to school on a sled, without knowing how wonderful that felt.  Of course, people still seek out snowy places for the purposes of recreation, but must travel to do so.  Family photo albums still feature images from the ’70s and ’80s of parents cutting corridors through waist-deep snowbanks, hauling their children behind them—scenes that no longer feature in photos from the ’90s or 2000s.  In just a mere decade or two, urban sledding has virtually disappeared.  A generation has reached adulthood in homes that did not even have sleds in them—for good reason.  As for our red bobsled, trendy and modern as it may appear, given recent changes, it must now be seen as a contemporary object without a contemporary use; yet its presence in the museum may not only evoke a bit of nostalgia for snowy winters past, but also shed light on contemporary phenomena:  global warming will have a direct effect on many such objects and their uses, shaping as it does the relationship between design and daily life.

Written by Zsófia Frazon
Photoes by Edit Garai

NM 2021.34.3
Year of manufacture: 1984; Period of use: 1980s-1990s