Samuel Crompton’s Threads

Found in the letters from Mary Greg to Mr Batho

This project has taken me down lots of  fantastic  new avenues of exploration, but when it comes down to it I still find myself  inspired by the small, banal  looking objects in the collection, which on the surface look unimportant and yet hold so much history. The Samuel Crompton threads being the most excting for me, especially as it was Sharon and I who discovered them nestled in the pile of letters sent from Mary Greg to Mr Batho. How can such a small piece of thread have such a strong presence? It makes you feel as if you are touching the beginings of the industrial revoloution (or am I being too romantic!).My favourite exhibit at the War Museum North is the small piece of wire from a zeppelin which was sold attached to a crude pin and sold to raise money for the war effort..owning a small piece of something so immense is owning a small piece of history. My love of string isn’t a secret..I think it all dates back to being a Brownie and having to have a piece of string in your pocket for emergencies (I never did have a suitable emergency to use it)..I still collect party popper string from significant events too.

I read in a book about Russian cosmonauts that they tied their cutlery to the hull of the space ship with string to stop it floating around..now that is one piece of string I would like to own.  There are many items in the Mary Greg Bygones Collection that have a real sense of history of everday life too, used spoons ,small keys, matches and padlocks, and much more to discover according to the records. So I sum up….that is what I love about being allowed to spend time exploring this collection, the hidden gems, keys that on the surface look like clock keys but turn out to be from the Weeks Museum and might have wound a diamond encrusted elephant for an emperor of China. (now my imagination is running riot.).

It can be seen on the BBC History of the World in 100 Objects

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/5mtwLXKHSi-vx6-rENLiFA

Hazel

New Kiln

Not quite what I hoped for.

…I chose the hottest day this year to switch on my new kiln for the first time, and the workshop became VERY hot. I wanted to show you all my first awful attempt at enamelling as it can only get better..I really hope it doesn’t get worse.  I hope to add dashes of colour to my work. Although I am unsure how I can do this, you can not enamel work once it is soldered..or solder work once it has been enamelled…so I need to find ways to get around that…but first I need to learn how to get the coating even…and work out how hot the kiln needs to be..and how long it should be in there..this is harder than cake making.

Hazel

Keeping a good record

A1 Scrap Metal Record sheet

Hazel's alternative workbench

During term time, getting into the workshop to do any metalwork is quite hard, so I decided to carry on with the side project which can be achieved in a spare hour here or there. Inspired ,of course ,by working alongside curators and seeing first hand their use of recording the collections, but also after seeing Mary Greg’s Nature Diaries in Sheffield..I can’t pretend for a minute I have the same delicate touch Mary had with her paint brush. She had painted some tiny bugs and daddy long legs with real skill. I am steadily working through my collection, trying to remember where some of these things came from and looking at them more closely. Doing this has also inspired me to try adding colour to my metal work and I ordered a kiln last week to do some enamelling. Very excited about that.

Hazel

List Capsules

List Capsules

Having the deadline for the Glasgow conference encouraged me to finally finish off these list capsules, they have been sitting half done on my workbench for weeks. It took me a while to figure out how to seal in a paper roll…and not need to do anymore soldering afterwards. I was very inspired by the chatelaine lists, the roll of paper in a metal tube that we couldn’t read and the beautifully made tape measure in the sewing box.

List capsule showing printed paper strip.

I plan to make more of these and different versions, the printed numbered strip is only 1 to 0 …I want to make a longer one next…Letterpress room willing . The one I made for Glasgow is on the right and has a list of all the things I needed to prepare for the trip..I have cut off the end and let it get trapped inside like the roll of paper in the metal tube in the bygones collection, no one will ever know now what I did..unless some is patient enough to tease it out.

Hazel

AAH conference…

No planes on the flight path at the end of my garden

Very sad that we had to cancel the AAH conference today, the ONLY day in aviation history that all of UK airspace has been closed down…and the only day Alex and I were due to fly to Glasgow….Never mind..we are both well prepared now for any conferences or talks on Mary Greg…and my bag is still packed.

Printed Lists

Test print next to type.

18 Point Baskerville Type

As I have said before, this project has allowed/encouraged me to try other things.

The hand printed books in the Mary Greg collection enticed me to try out the letterpress room at MMU. The room was “downsized” recently but there is still a good selection of different sized and styles of letters. A wonderful technician called David has lovingly sorted all the type and keeps it all in order.

Setting type is harder than you imagine, to begin with you have to try and work out which way to set it so it doesn’t come out backwards, and the 18 point type I chose is quite tiny to keep in place..I tried to do the number 10..but it was beyond me in the time I had. The letters are kept in place by strips of metal held in place by long magnets

The trays are all set out, with a plan were each letter and space is, so that bit is easy (Thank you David). I decided to put a gap between each number to make the list easier to write on.

All I need to do now is try and finish the metal cannisters that these lists will be stored in.

Hazel

Work in progress

Some test prints of the LIST strips for the list capsules.

I spent my lunch time in the letterpress room trying to print a thin strip of numbers to put inside the list capsules I am making. I used 18 point letters, Baskerville type, and they proved very hard to set.Ideally I would have liked to put gaps between the numbers, but that proved beyond my skill.

I love the lists of objects Mary includes in her letters and the letterpress printed books in the collection. I still hope to print some cards on the printing press of one of Mary Greg’s lists. I think that might take me a while to set up.

Hazel

Mary Greg’s Threads

Sharon arranges her work on base of cabinet.

Along with the Samuel Crompton threads we have displayed a small selection of Mary Greg’s bygones collection.

This is a photo of Sharon arranging some of the work she has started to develop  in response to the objects.

Threads on display at MAG

Quick sketches of ideas for cabinet.

Friday 29th January Sharon and I joined Alex to put the Crompton Threads on display to the public for the first time in history (they where hidden away in Mary Greg’s letters).We have also been able to put a few of our other favourite objects to sit alongside them. We could have filled another cabinet easily. We also have also displayed some of our responses to the collection.

Photos are of of the quick sketches in my train note book..variations on how we could display the objects.

“String too small for use”

GOOD NEWS

The Samuel Crompton threads which Sharon and I found in the stack of Mary Greg’s letters has been chosen by MAG for the BBC HISTORY OF THE WORLD series.

Sharon and I are putting some of our work alongside the threads from the mule into a cabinet at MAG.

I am also going to exhibit my box of “string too small for use” which was purchased from a market in London many years ago for 50 pence.

The box is full of off cuts of string, some so tiny it would be hard to find a use for them and it inspired me to make a set of work to give them uses, some of which I will also include in the cabinet at MAG.

Finding the Samuel Crompton threads was such thrill for me. My work has always been based on starting with something like a bit of fluff or a scrap of paper or a lonesome pine needle and upping its status by giving it a story..or history. So finding the first threads from Samuel Crompton’s mule amongst the letters was magical.

You can find the full A History Of The World article here.

Hazel