Title: Making Ideas Stick: The Mullins Family Coal Mining Sticker Collection
Dates Showing: February 1, 2016 through at April 4, 2016 and June 1, 2016 through October 6, 2016
Location: Loyal Jones Appalachian Center, Longwall Gallery
Description: In underground coal mines, stickers on helmets, lunch pails, and equipment deliver messages, allow miners to personalize their environment, and increase safety. This exhibit displays nearly 100 stickers collected between 1970 and 2010 by the Mullins family, who for five generations worked in the mines of southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky
Nick Mullins writes:
“With the absence of any natural light, coal mines are extremely dark. This darkness combined with the monochromatic environment of coal and rock dust makes finding items a difficult task. Coal miners have long relied on reflective stickers and tapes to mark their dinner buckets, coffee thermoses, and hard hats, exponentially increasing their visibility when the beam of a cap lamp sweeps across an area. Equipment manufacturers, mine supply companies, and even the coal companies themselves began producing reflective stickers as a means of advertisement. These stickers were often collected and traded among miners spurring many companies to produce stickers in commemoration of production milestones and to celebrate holidays. Some mine suppliers produced limited editions.
“The stickers in this exhibit are from the personal collections of my paternal grandfather, George Herbert Mullins, and my father, Randy Mullins, and my own collection. They represent four decades of coal mining in the Central Appalachian Mountains, primarily in Southwestern Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, where five generations of my family spent many of their days in the damp darkness of the mines.”
Containing images of nearly 100 stickers and very large reproductions of 10 stickers, this colorful exhibition was quite popular with students and tourists. This exhibit may be available for showing elsewhere. If interested, contact the Center.
Curators: Kathryn Dunn and Christopher Miller assisted by the Mullins Family
