Collections Report -October 2005
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Acquisitions: May - October 2005
Over the summer months the museum has continued to receive a high number of donation offers (see Appendix 1 for full list), building on the high numbers received during the winter of 2004/5. Plotting the donation information which has been collected since the opening of the Gridshell and artefact store, the numbers of acquisitions definitely seem to be moving on an upward trend (see graph below); I am hopeful that this is a result of a consistent increase in the publicity and general awareness of our collections among our visitors, which will continue to grow from now on.
Offers and acceptances have again been extremely varied although acquisitions over the summer months seem to have been of a generally higher standard in terms of physical quality and interest; a number of items are of particular note:
 | Plough from Jan Wyld - this belonged to a neighbour who was quite a local character who sadly died earlier this year; he had been a farm hand and keen artist who had appeared in the local press on a number of occasions. We accepted the plough with a view to using it here at the museum, and as such we invited the press to photograph it along with Lee and one of the heavy horses. The plough is now conserved and available to be used. |
| Treadle Lathe from Mr Whitefield - this carpenters lathe was also accepted with a view to it being used on the museum site. It required very little conservation work, and has been installed in the Woodyard where it will compliment the many other items being introduced there as part of the main project. |
| Centrifugal Bench Drill from Geoff Busbridge - although we have other bench drills in the collection, none are quite as intriguing and dangerous as this example! The drill employs a centrifuge, rather than a system of gears, to drive down the bit into the timber; unfortunately the centrifuge is somewhat over-powerful for the size of the drill and the spheres also have a tendency to spin just at forehead height when on operation (see below) |
| Seed Winnower from Mrs Elphic - this small but complete winnowing machine was used by the Elphic Seed company from Lewes until their unfortunate closure a few years ago. It is extremely similar in appearance to other, much larger barn winnowers we already have in the collection and will provide an interesting comparison if we are able to display the items together. |
| Churn Stand from Mr Boam - although once a common sight at the front of farm buildings, such timber framed stands with their tiled roof and extending platforms, are now unfortunately very rare. We accepted this offer with a plan to conserve and display it immediately on the museum site, rather than store it for any length of time. We are currently about half way through the process of conservation and renovation (the front platform being absent), and once this is achieved, we will be looking to site the stand in one of a number of possible locations, towards the museum entrance. |
Centrifugal Drill from Geoff Busbridge
Churn Stand from Mr Boam
There are a number of other, imminent acquisitions for the museum, the most notable a Sussex Wagon from Tony White of Yapton; he has previously donated a number of other items to the museum and although we already have examples of Sussex Wagons, his has excellent provenance, is in relatively good condition and will be of benefit to the collections.
Collections Management Overview
The Cutting Project
Work has progressed extremely well during the summer months as the team make the most of the favourable conditions. To date about 300 artefacts have been treated, recorded and photographed, which is virtually double that of 6 months ago; this leaves only a relatively few items left to process with the majority of those being stored within the Cutting Building itself, meaning they can be dealt with fairly comfortably whatever the weather conditions.
Most of those artefacts still left to process are either pieces of internal furniture or items which may be candidates for disposal in the near future; it is important to collect information and images of these items in order to help us make informed decisions regarding their future place within the collections.
The CALM database system is now fully operational with the information and images captured so far, being added to the existing artefact data; this will take some time but will certainly be completed before the project ends.
Unfortunately, at the end of October, Katy Elliott who had been the Collections Assistant responsible for the success of the Cutting Project, left the museum to take up a post elsewhere. The work she has completed has been of the highest standard and the museum has benefited greatly from her being one of its staff, and although she has left a number of months before the project is due to finish, by far the lions share of the work has been completed, leaving myself, Guy Viney and Ben Headon to fit the remainder of the tasks into our workload. I cannot see that the relatively early departure of Katy will be detrimental to the successful completion of the project on time.
Conservation
Timber Crane:
Earlier in the year we managed to secure funding from the PRISM Fund (Preservation of Industrial & Scientific Material) for the renovation and re-erection of the museums timber crane in the woodyard.
Ben Headon together with Paul Pinnington are carrying out the work which involves stripping all the ironwork from the existing frame, cleaning it and preparing it for reassembly; all the ironwork is reusable.
All of the timber will have to be replaced since it is going to be a working artefact; replacement timber has been acquired from Covers and this work is due to begin in the next few weeks.
Dismantling the timber crane
Churn Stand:
As mentioned earlier in the report, the recently acquired churn stand requires some remedial work before it can be displayed on site; myself and Guy Viney are completing this work now and the stand should be completed during the next week or so.
Work in progress to the Churn Stand (lying on its back)
Carpenters Shop:
Using the help of new and existing Collections volunteers, we are currently conserving all tools within the Carpenters Workshop on site, clearing debris and reorganising the artefacts to give a more accurate picture of the working space of a village carpenter; Joe Thompson will provide additional input and advice regarding its content and layout.
New volunteer Lisa Moore conserving some of the Carpenters Shop tools
Other. ongoing projects include continuing work to the Reading Van, the redisplay of Whittakers Outshot and some minor remedial work to another recent acquisition, a haypress, currently on display in the Upper Gridshell.
Documentation
The task of adding previously unaccessioned items to the core collection which I mentioned in the previous report has been completed over the summer months by collections volunteer, John Hurd. Although minimal provenance was available for these 200 or so items, they were deemed sufficiently important to be formerly accessioned.
A new project which again will call upon the efforts of the collections volunteers is to scan onto our database, all the detailed sketches which have been added to the artefact catalogue cards over the past years, in particular by Bob Powell and Ray Ashdown. Theses sketches show superb details which photographs alone would never pick up and provide an excellent addition to our database records.
The main problem, apart from the huge number, is that they are all pencil sketches and therefore quite difficult to capture (see below), however with sufficient experimentation I am sure quality images can be reproduced.
Scanned image from catalogue record card
Julian Bell
Curator
October 2005
Appendix 1
Artefacts collected by the museum since May to the end of October 2005:
|
horse drawn hay tedder & grass cutter from Mrs Tidy |
|
daub panel from Steve Taylor |
|
plough from Jan Wyld |
|
woodpecker-damaged shingles from Mr & Mrs Hawley |
|
nails from church spire from Ray Ashdown |
|
barn scales from Mark Barrett |
|
leadworking moulds from Mrs Roberts |
|
carpenters treadle lathe from Mr Whitefield (now situated in museum woodyard) |
|
decorators ladders from Mr Kipps |
|
insurance mark Ray Ashdown |
|
centrifugal drill Geoff Busbridge |
|
plaster panel Caroline Martin |
|
seed winnower & barn scales from Mrs Elphic |
|
collection of rat traps from David Drummond |
|
churn stand from Mr Boam |
|
dairy skimmer from Alasdair Paterson |
|
wagon plans from Mr Eldridge |
|
hay press from Peter Hall |
|
christening dress Mrs Stubbs (collected by Interpretation for the handling collection) |
|
collection of hop tallies and tokens from Horsham Museum |
|
order rack from mill from Andrew Ferrier |
|
seed fiddle from Mr Pont (handling collection) |
|
grain crusher/grinder from Mrs Frodsham |