Curatorial anxiety – as promised

July 9, 2009 The Collection 4 Comments

Hmm. On the subject of Crompton’s cotton threads and their changing status. One minute they’re the first threads from the mule, a truly momentous find, and we’re speechless with discovery. Then the dates prove impossible and they’re still fab, still curious, but we’re slightly disappointed that they’re probably not what we thought they were. Then, hang on a minute, a curator from another museum provides a bit of information and we’re back on – they COULD be the real thing. I really want them to be, I’ll believe it to be true. A curator said so. Well, he didn’t actually, he just gave me a bit of info about Crompton’s grandson. The weight of curatorial responsibility. The source of curatorial anxiety. If I say it is so, then it is so. Museums tell the truth.

Mary?

July 9, 2009 The Letters 2 Comments

I have now carefully read twelve years of correspondence between Mrs. Greg and Manchester City Art Gallery staff and I have enjoyed the formal and polite language that they use. It is so much of its day, and you can tell instantly from the phrasing, as well as the layout and typography that these letters could not possibly have been written now… This extends to what they call each other. It is never Mary, or William – but always Mrs. Greg and Mr. Batho. She even signs herself M.Greg, never Mary…

Maybe we should rename the site!?

Photographs from the Mary Greg flickr collection

July 8, 2009 The Collection 7 Comments

Threads

July 7, 2009 Artist Responses 1 Comment

Inspired by Samual Crompton’s Threads
…a find on a boot sale this weekend.

Mystery Keys

July 6, 2009 Artist Responses Comments Off

Found on a boot sale in Cuddington.
The tag on these keys makes you wonder what on earth the appliance could have been!
My suspicions are that they are for a fridge…but my imagination conjures up a huge child snagging machine!!

Photographs on flickr

July 1, 2009 The Collection 1 Comment

Have a look on Flickr! I think Martin’s been uploading. Lovely lovely pics by Ben. For gorgeous surface detail look at this, especially the curve of the bowl, it’s breathtaking. Sharon, why aren’t you blogging!

An interesting object to the curious

June 30, 2009 The Collection 7 Comments

This key, seen in Hazel’s pics earlier, is inscribed ‘Weeks’ Museum, Tichborne Street’. It’s a little thing, something to wind up a clock maybe? With a curious inscription. So I idly googled it, thinking I wouldn’t get anywhere. Wrong. Here is some information about Thomas Weeks, ‘perfumer and machinist’ and his museum of mechanical models, founded in 1797 in Tichborne Street, London. Visitors paid half a crown to view the exhibits and could order examples of the objects on show, designed by Weeks and made in the workshops of leading craftsmen nearby.

The Picture of London in 1802 says: ‘This Museum, on the plan of the celebrated Mr. Cox’s(?), when complete, will form an interesting object to the curious. The grand room, which is 107 feet long, and 30 feet high, is covered entirely with blue satin, and contains a variety of figures, which exhibit the effects of mechanism in an astonishing manner.’

It seems the museum had not yet opened as it continues: ‘Previous to its opening, by way of specimen, two temples are exhibited, nearly seven feet high, supported by sixteen elephants, embellished with seventeen hundred pieces of jewellery, in the first style of workmanship’. These temples were in fact ‘two magnificent clocks, engaged for the Emperor of China, at nine thousand pounds’.

Other attractions included mechanical models of a bird of paradise and a tarantula spider; the latter was ‘formed of steel’ and ‘darts out by itself from a box . . . and, in fact, performs all the appropriate movements of the insect which it represents’.

A key to what then?

More info on British History Online

Bits of string, continued…

June 30, 2009 featured, The Letters 1 Comment

I have just found out that Samuel Crompton had a grandson who lived in Manchester, who was in correspondence with his grandfather’s most influential biographer. So it’s just possible our bits of string could be genuine! Am in touch with curators at Bolton Museum to pursue further… who was the lady from Lancashire?

A Bumper Find of Keys

June 28, 2009 Artist Responses Comments Off

Went to a Boot sale over at Cuddington today..found all these keys on one stall…Mary would be proud.
If you want to see them better go to Alscrapmetal Blog and click on any photo, which will take you to my Flickr page.

Mary Greg’s keys

June 26, 2009 The Collection 5 Comments

I was so excited at seeing the keys, I neglected to take many photos.
These are are amongst my favourites.