Folk art, mass produced souvenirs, tacky tourist remembrances, questionable tributes or hand made one offs.

The act of immortalising a place in an object, a trinket, with a view to having that displayed somewhere is kitsch … though some objects are more kitsch than others.

Ultimately, those trinkets hold more memories for the owner than the viewer.

Perhaps they depict places where the owner found love, romance or just had a great time. Perhaps they are places the owner visited when they were young and unburdened with the realities of life. Perhaps the places are so vastly different from the owners home or, perhaps, the places were home, before the owner migrated, and has subsequently visited as a tourist with roots.

Or, perhaps more cynically, the trinkets are a statement to the world that the owner of the trinket has “travelled”.  The owner displays the trinket to say “I am worldly and have travelled. I did a coach trip of fifteen countries in fifteen days and I know and understand fifteen cultures because I have fifteen trinkets to prove it”.

Perhaps, the trinkets existence are mix of all of this.

Some trinkets are simple, some elaborate, some cheap and some expensive but they all, regardless of size, shape or cost, seek to do one thing, and that is, to evoke future memories in the purchaser of a place they had visited.

To the place depicted in the trinket there is the statement, “this is who we are”. Or perhaps if the place is small, “this is all we could afford to get made, but, we are proud”.

If one is cynical then perhaps the trinkets raison d’être is to evoke memories in the purchaser in the encouraging them to a return to a place they were fond enough to buy a tourist trinket.

Or, even more cynically perhaps, the objects are just a form of free advertising to be displayed in another place to encourage viewers to come and visit, and spend money.

Either way, what is depicted is how the place sees themselves and perhaps, how others see them.

But time plays tricks. Sydney has had many tourist icons but at various times one was more fashionable than the others. From the untouched beauty of nature (the Harbour), to a centre of industry (the Harbour Bridge) to a place of the Arts (the Opera House) to modernity (Sydney Tower) Sydney seems  to be saying, we are moving ahead, from  wilderness to a metropolis.

The depictions says much about the people, or perhaps, it says something about what the tourist wants to see.

Perhaps, global capitalism is at work, making everything the same. At one end we have the locally produced item, handmade or not, perhaps the truest example of  how a place sees themselves. At the other end we have the commercial realities of overstock. Dutch wooden clogs trinkets have ended up in all sorts of places that have nothing to do with Holland, pacific shells have ended up holding thermometers for all sorts of places no where near the ocean.

The once popular wooden and stone crafted trinkets of poorer European nations are less prevalent now as they seek to show themselves as modern nations with modern production mehtods or importing ability. The subject matter remains the same (“this is how we see ourselves or our past”) but we are beyond stone and wood, we are plastic and  resin.

One day, perhaps, everything will look the same as the trinkets become more and more generic but there always has to be a sliver of identity in the object. There is a definite kitschiness in having a souvenir of Australia being made in China but that item was specifically made for Australia so there has to be some Australianness about it. An Eiffel Tower with an Australian flag atop of it would sell poorly in Brisbane I suspect, though, I would buy one, for that is the ultimate in supreme cynical kitsch.

Anthropologically, historically, or sociologically this is all very interesting but I leave all that to someone else to analyse in-depth.

For me, the taking home of one of these trinkets, regardless of material, and putting them on display, regardless of motive, is incredibly kitsch.

Let us, then, celebrate these travel trinkets.