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Sew What?

January 24, 2023 - January 5, 2025
The Museum of English Rural Life, The Museum of English Rural Life, Redlands Road
Reading, Berkshire RG1 5EX United Kingdom + Google Map
Model wearing a cape that is part of the Sew What exhibition

We are all starting to ask more questions about fashion. Where do our clothes come from? How environmentally sustainable are they? Should we be making more and buying less? These questions are not just relevant to our modern society. The history of garment making is one deeply intertwined with British culture, both rural and urban. […]

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In Conversation with Bill Hooks

January 31, 2023 - May 7, 2023
The Museum of English Rural Life, The Museum of English Rural Life, Redlands Road
Reading, Berkshire RG1 5EX United Kingdom + Google Map
A small bill hook with a wooden handle lying on top of a larger blade

This display in the Digging Deeper gallery at The MERL links to a collaborative recent project between artist Alice Blackstock and designer/maker Philip Crewe that investigated a bladed tool called a billhook. The 2019 collaboration was initiated by a visit to the extensive collections of The MERL and developed into the creation of five object […]

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5:15 pm

A History of English Georgic Writing

February 2, 2023 @ 5:15 pm - 6:15 pm
The Museum of English Rural Life, The Museum of English Rural Life, Redlands Road
Reading, Berkshire RG1 5EX United Kingdom + Google Map
Free
A black and white photo by John Tarlton showing a man riding two white heavy horses across a field with a hayrick in the background

This event launches A History of English Georgic Writing (Cambridge University Press, 2022), a historical survey of the literature of rural working lives and landscapes. This important new book argues that the skilled labour of people and animals in farming communities, and the land as it is understood through that work, is one of English […]

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