Playing at Farming: A Journey
This online exhibition draws on the Peter Wade-Martins Collection of Farm Toys. The collection of toy farm vehicles and implements was assembled over the last 20 years by Peter Wade-Martins. This small selection of many hundreds of different British-made horse– and tractor-drawn implements shows the diversity of equipment, manufacturers, materials and age range within the collection. As this display […]
Landscapes of State Industry
Shoulder to the Wheel
There is no point, the old adage goes, in reinventing the wheel. Whoever first said that must not have met a wheelwright. The four wheel components – hub, spokes, felloes and rim – have been constantly refined over the centuries. Shoulder to the Wheel is a collaborative exhibition between the Crafts Study Centre and The […]
Artsmark Journeys Between The MERL and Reading Museum
In this exhibition, Reading Museum, The Museum of English Rural Life and The University of Reading’s ArtLab invited pupils from two local schools to create their own artistic responses to objects in our collections relating to the theme of food. Both schools are currently working to achieve the Arts Council England’s Artsmark. Below, we invite […]
Farming: The First 12,000 Years
For the majority of the last 200,000 years, modern humans obtained food by foraging for plants and hunting wild animals. Since farming emerged some 12,000 years ago, it has become the world’s main source of food. It has contributed to the emergence of political movements, social inequalities, land disputes, and even urbanisation. In recent centuries, […]
Smocks, Smocking, Smocked
Welcome Case
Our Welcome Case holds a cross-section of what we have in the collection. Tap on the yellow circles to find out more about individual objects..
Sire.
Maria McKinney’s Sire. is an innovative exploration of selective breeding and genetics in contemporary cattle farming. The series consists of nine large-scale photographic portraits, taken at an Irish stud farm, that depict bulls wearing eccentric, multi-coloured sculptures mounted on their backs. A ‘sire’ is a male parent of an animal. The exhibition is on display […]
Design for play
Explore children’s playgrounds, their history and how we design for play in this online exhibition. The 2019 FOLAR symposium coincides with the 90th anniversary of the Landscape Institute, the archive of which is held at The MERL. The images in this exhibition include drawings and designs created by eminent British Landscape Architects, members of the Landscape […]
Stakeholders
The Museum of English Rural Life at the University of Reading has one of the most significant collections of British basketry in the UK, with over 620 baskets, basketwork objects and basketmaking tools. The Stakeholders project encouraged knowledge and skills sharing between established and up-and-coming basket makers. Each of the participants was commissioned to make […]