She loves the artful style

"It's fascinating not only with the objects and what they could do but what was going on in people's lives as they used them," Hill said. "The cultural part is what interests me."Hill wonders about the social standards of the day when a well-coiffed and "airbrushed" housewife smiled from the package of a vintage cooking thermometer set from Westinghouse."Summer tea features affordable clothing, accessories," Hill said. "It's the hunt for the stuff and the hunt for the information."Hill did detective work using her research skills, finding histories on most everything in her collection. She wrote the catalogue for the upcoming museum exhibit, with photography by her son, G. Mack Hill.

"I discovered I have the first pop-up toaster ever made," she said. "And I discovered newer isn't necessarily better. None of this stuff is falling apart in 100 or 200 years."Hill's collection includes everything with a kitchen use, and obscure items with little purpose."I'm looking for the thing I don't have. I don't look for the value," she said.Hill has spending limits, which she rarely exceeds. At first it was $3, raised to $8 nearly a decade ago. She's perfected the art of negotiation but spends more for something especially extraordinary, but that's a hard call with Hill. To her, most every kitchen item is rich with beauty and intrigue.

She loves the artful style, design and function of many items, particularly cheese graters. A standing model from the late 1800s topped with a French fry cutter is Hill's very favorite piece.She also points to the potato mashers of long ago, each one with a different design: curves, lines and circular styles introduced before electric mixers and instant mashed potatoes hit the grocery shelves."They're of various cool designs in my view," she said. "I kind of have a memory of which I have so I don't buy duplicates."Even her egg beaters are intriguing."I have egg beaters and egg beaters and egg beaters, all different," she said of the more than 80 in her collection.