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Thimbles…who’d have thought?

October 24, 2012 The Collection No Comments

Box of various thimbles, mostly donated by Mary Greg.

After a long time away from the blog, but no time at all away from being inspired by objects from the Mary Greg collection, I am back on the blog. Liz kindly invited me to join her on her research day in the store rooms of Platt Hall yesterday. I had a lovely day re -aquainting myself with some of the wonderful objects in this collection. It was a very calm and reflective few hours that passed far too quickly. We started off opening a few random drawers with the help of Katie who was on a weeks work experience. The one drawer had this box of thimbles, which I had seen a few times before, but we started to explore the box one thimble at a time and discovered we had missed so much at previous viewings.

There were thimbles with simple adaptations, such as thread cutters and needle threaders attached, as well as “sewing kits” which used the thimble as the lid and one thimble which contained a tiny spool of thread, as well as the commerative thimbles and tiny childrens thimbles, and home made thimbles and tough utilitarian thimbles, ring thimbles, glass thimbles, one with a glass file in it that we were baffled by, …how did I miss all that before? It also made me realise how much more there must be to explore in that collection.

I also re-discovered a large set of skirt “grapplers” or grips for holding up ladies long dresses out of the mud, or out of the way whilst playing sports or dancing…these, Liz discovered, were donated by another lady called Mrs H. Carr, MORE on her later…I really wanted them to be donated by Mary, but I am intrigued to know more about Mrs H. Carr too.

Hazel

Thimble with built in thread cutter

Thimble with bobbin inside

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