Ancient Web: John French Made a Moist Towelette Museum With Donations by Mail

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Some people collect coins. John French collected individually wrapped moist towelettes, then built a museum to give the tiny packets their due.

Visit the Moist Towelette Online Museum.

The site does not merely display a joke. It catalogs photographs of wipes collected from airlines, restaurants, motels, medical offices, and other unlikely sources. The labels include Lufthansa, British Airways, Aer Lingus, Red Lobster, Hard Rock Cafe Beijing, and an American embassy in Sweden.

The homepage also thanks contributors by name. Tom in Sweden, Laura, Linda, Irene, Jeff, and many others sent examples or photographs. Each wrapper becomes evidence of both a commercial design and an old-fashioned collecting relationship maintained through correspondence.

The museum really has a room

The original collection page identifies French as its curator and places the physical museum in room 100 of the Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University. That is the site's stated location and visitor information; hours should be checked separately before arranging a visit.

Its photographs show the display cases at different stages. The page warns that donations arrive faster than the curator can photograph and upload them, but assures contributors that newer specimens have still been displayed in the physical collection.

Some entries deserve their own small comedy routine. The Star Trek-themed towelettes get a playful caption about wiping a Klingon off the starboard side. A lens-cleaning wipe from Zeiss becomes an opportunity to mention the company's planetarium-projector history.

There is also a brief do-it-yourself recipe and, unexpectedly, downloadable planetarium-sky graphics prepared with Digidome. The author describes these as large files by the standards of 1990s technology—approximately 1.6 megabytes each. The page is evidence of an overlap between an unusual hobby and the curator's technical environment.

The site's latest visible update is March 7, 2024. It does not supply a precise original launch date, so the age of its earliest design cannot be established solely from that notice.

What makes the museum a wonderful independent-Web artifact is that an ordinary disposable object has been given a permanent catalog, and strangers around the world helped make it possible.

Explore the photographed towelettes and donor notes.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.