In 1718, Mr. Elihu Yale, a former governor of Madras under the East India Company, sent a gift to a struggling school in Connecticut in order to establish Yale College. This donation, consisting of books, a painting, and “goods,” was the largest the University would receive for over a century. The 300+ volumes sent by Mr. Yale can still be accessed in the Yale University Library today, while the painting of King George I of Great Britain and Ireland has been carefully conserved by the Yale University Art Gallery.
  Despite being the most valuable component of the donation, scarce records were made or maintained of the “goods.” The records that do survive clearly indicate that they consisted specifically of 1 case of soy sauce, 2 jars of mango chutney, 1 jar of nutmeg, and 3 bales of various textiles handwoven by weavers in India. A majority of theses items were sold in the port of Boston by 1721, likely to slave traders who went on to exchange them for captives in West Africa. The money from their sale was used to secure the future of Yale University.
  This body of work attempts to recreate the donation that founded this University, with a particular focus on the parts of the gift that have not been discussed, studied, or preserved. The process included extensive archival research, historical contextualization, masturbation in the library, and re-weaving, by hand, the various types of cloth which formed the bulk of Mr. Yale’s gift.