
A pair of porcelain lamps featured in "Saved: Objects of the Dead." Scroll through to see more images from the book.

"She was trying to preserve it but was also wearing and washing it," artist Jody Servon said of an interviewee who had kept her father's old boy scout shirt.

An amputee's prosthetic leg, kept by his daughter. "Now that Daddy's gone, she's thought of turning his leg into a lamp," reads Delaney-Ullman's accompanying prose, all of which was based on interviews with the items' owners.

"He never spoke of the forks his son found in the Bavarian apartment, though he loved to talk," Delaney-Ullman writes in the book. "Now they're not nearly as shiny."

This metal colander is among the everyday items that Servon's interviewees selected for the project.

"It's not an especially good scraper," reads this entry, before adding of its erstwhile owner: "His garage workshop held a trove of tools — with them, his grandson thought, you could fix most anything."

This item tells the story of a woman, Elaine, who sewed and sold star-shaped gifts prior to her murder.

A woman's high-school diploma, kept by her daughter after her death.

A religious garment, known as a scapular, kept by the offspring of a devout catholic woman. The book entry reads: "Mom became obsessed with Mary sightings; drove the family to see Nancy Fowler, the visionary of Conyers, GA, where the Virgin Mary sometimes appears in a farmhouse or sometimes as a sign in the sun."

"Saved: Objects of the Dead," published by Artsuite (Wilson, NC), is available now.



