My Favourite Object #4: 'By the Roadside' cigarette cards
written by Felicity McWilliams, Project Officer. Quite a few of my favourite objects in the museum were collected as part of the Collecting 20th Century Rural Cultures project. The project began in 2008, with the aim of acquiring objects for the collections which build a picture of the twentieth century English countryside. A wide variety of […]
Focus on Collections #3 – Baskets
written by Greta Bertram, Project Officer. Anybody who’s been following the MERL Projects Blog over the past eighteen months will know that I love all things basket-related. My obsession began three years ago when I was writing my dissertation about craft as heritage, and needed to choose one craft to use as a case study. […]
Research Tip #3: Easy as A, B, C
written by Hayley Whiting, Reading Connections Digital Content/Online Engagement Officer Finding out about what is held in the MERL Archive just got a whole lot easier! The A-Z index of archive collections is now available. This is an extremely valuable resource for users looking for information on specific collections and a great way to gain an […]
Picture of the Month #3: Steam-powered buses
written by Caroline Benson, Photographic Asssistant Anyone who has experienced public transport during the hot summer months may like these two photographs where air conditioning is readily available. They are both from an album in the archive of Ransomes, Sims and Jefferies Ltd held here at MERL. Both date from the early 1870s and show […]
My Favourite Object #3: Horse overshoes, or lawn slippers
written by Claire Smith, Weekend Supervisor/Learning Assistant. To learn more about Claire, see her previous post. Before the invention of the lawnmower in 1830, grass would be cut with a scythe, or animals would be allowed to graze on the lawn to keep it short. From the 1850s, horse-drawn lawn mowers were introduced. In order […]
Our Country Lives update: MERL goes to Stockholm
written by Adam Koszary, Project Officer for Our Country Lives. One thing I never expected from working at a museum of English rural life was the opportunity to visit Sweden. However, with some Erasmus funding me and five colleagues did just that, and went to Stockholm to see one of the world’s most successful open air […]
Is the future of MERL ethnographic?
written by Dr Ollie Douglas, Assistant Curator. My colleague Felicity McWilliams and I recently attended an ambitious conference at the Pitt Rivers Museum on The Future of Ethnographic Museums, which encouraged me to reflect on how the Our Country Lives project might begin to explore issues of nationalism, multiculturalism and even colonialism. MERL may seem […]
My Favourite Object #2: Ploughs are interesting (honest)
The second ‘favourite object’ has been chosen by Adam Koszary, Project Officer for Our Country Lives. Since starting on work at MERL, it seems he has developed a particular interest in ploughs. Read his personal reflections on the merits of the plough… It is worth pointing out that before I started at the Museum of […]
Research tip #2: a secret MERL library resource …
Although they are known as the Classified Information Files, the MERL library’s collection of cuttings does not contain top secret information and is not kept under lock and key either, but is freely available for readers to browse in the Special Collections Service reading room! The collection contains articles and cuttings from local and national […]
Focus on collections #2: Collecting your #muscake (and eating it!)
Sit back with a cup of tea and a piece of cake (of course) and take a few minutes to read this fascinating post by Assistant Curator, Dr Ollie Douglas, on the little known cake-related collections at MERL (and elsewhere)… Here at the Museum we’ve been eating rather a lot of cake. The frenetic activity […]