Collection Highlight - My Darling's Dollcraft

This doll belonged to a Castleford girl called Edith Wyatt, who sadly died aged twelve in 1944.

In the middle of the 1900s, most dolls played with in Britain were made in Germany – a supply that stopped when the Second World War started (1939 – 1945). This one was made in Britain. What is particularly nice about it is that the clothes, hair and face had to be stitched on by its owner. This shows the wartime attitude of learning new skills and doing it for yourself.

Wakefield Museum: The 'Place'ment to be!

Our names are Charlotte and Naadiya, we are students from Leeds Trinity University and have been undertaking a two-week placement at Wakefield Museum to support our course.

Naadiya

Charlotte

We are Studying Primary Education and are here to experience education in an alternative setting. During the course of these two weeks, we have been able to see the ways in which museums contribute to education, and the fascinating methods that they use when carrying out their workshops. We have been lucky enough to observe and support a variety of workshops, including outdoor tours at Sandal Castle, World War One and Ancient Egyptian Artefacts workshops. Not only was the content of these workshops extremely interesting, but we had the opportunity to handle some of the original artefacts, such as an Ancient Egyptian Shabti dating back to nearly 3000 years!

Ancient Egyptian Shabti

Carrying out our placement at Wakefield Museum allowed us to see how they make their workshops cross-curricular, not simply focussing on the history aspect that many museums specialise in. For example, delivering a workshop on World War One where the children created a diary entry, rather than just focussing on the history.

Pupils from Wakefield Methodist (VC) J. I. and N. School examining WW1 artefacts

During our time here, we had the opportunity to prepare our own workshop on World War One posters. This enabled us to experience the process that the education staff at the museum go through in order to create their workshops.  We found it was a long and lengthy process but very interesting, especially carrying out the research to support the workshops. By assisting in this research, we were able to look at ancestry websites and create links to the local area – this definitely made us feel like detectives!

WW1 Recruitment Poster

We ran two sessions of our workshop and although the content was the same, the sessions were slightly different. This highlighted how flexible you have to be with workshops as no two classes are the same, and each session has to be tailored around that group of children to meet their individual needs. The feedback we received was positive on the whole and we were told that the museum is going to develop and use our workshop in the future which we are both very proud of.

If you ask us what our favourite part of this placement was, it would have to be the WW1 workshop when we saw a reading of the diary of George Kellett, an army solider from Wakefield during WW1.  The actor playing George adopted his role well to engage not just the students, but the adults too.  This session was not only interesting and informative, but also entertaining.

Pupils from Wakefield Methodist (VC) J. I. and N. School meet 'George Kellett'

It’s safe to say we have lost count of the amount of times we have said ‘Wow!’ in these past couple of weeks! We are grateful for this opportunity and to all the staff who have helped us and would happily bring our future pupils to this museum. We would definitely recommend a placement here!

Bonfire toffee, or toffee apples?

Reflections on Bonfire Night have caused a bit of a dispute between museums and libraries this year.

No arguments over sparklers:

Child with sparkler  - 1950-1970 from Maud's Photographic Studio, Pontefract

Or indeed over the size of  the bonfire:

Bonfire Stack at Sandal Castle for the Coronation of George V  - 1911

The discussion (as usual!) was entirely about food.  

What is your traditional bonfire night treat?

A cup of hot soup, pie and peas, parkin...

A toffee apple perhaps? 

Children eating toffee apple and banana,  1930s

Or the real contention - the merits (and failings!) of Bonfire Toffee...

Silver toffee hammer used in a window display in a sweet shop on the corner of Northgate and Rishworth Street, 1930-1950

 What is your preferred treat?  We'd love to know!

George Kellett's World War One Diary: October 1918

Throughout 2014 have been tweeting entries from a World War 1 soldier’s 1918 diary. You can follow George Kellett’s diary entries on Twitter @WW1_Diary.

We will also post the full month’s diary entries on this blog.

For George Kellett's September diary entries please see our previous blog: September 1918 

6 October 1918
Emma father Harry and I went to church this morning to our Harvestineal 

11 October 1918
Left home about 8:45pm left Kirkgate at 9:15.  Stayed at Normanton for an hour with  Emma’s cousin 

17 October 1918
Passed the Batt at Rurmelly 

18 October 1918
Working on the roads at [?] 

20 October 1918
Moved today to St. Vaast through St.Hilare 

21 October 1918
Out working on the roads 

23 October 1918
Moved into new billet in St.Python 

25 October 1918
Moved to Vertain

A Day in the Life

A lot goes into making our museums wonderful places to visits and caring for our collections. This series of blogs invites staff at Wakefield Museums to tell you about their day. 

John Whitaker
Museums curatorial and collections officer

Well the pressure is on here. I have been asked to write about a day at work for the blog and I’ve just read Ali’s entry Alison Creasey Day in the Life from last time. How do I compete with rainforest day?

8:40am

Get into work at Wakefield One, quickly check emails, have coffee, spring into life

9:00am

Meet artist Harriet Lawson and drive over to our off site stores.

Harriet is a very talented artist who we have commissioned to create an art work in one of the showcases in the upper atrium of Wakefield One. She works mainly with pottery and textile and will be using the museums pottery collections to inspire her display.

9:30am

Rummaging through the pottery collections at stores

Our stores are a treasure trove. Museums tend to have more stuff than there is room to display and also some of the collection is very sensitive and will fade if on display for too long and so we need somewhere to store it. It’s a warehouse building and a bit like the end scene of  Raiders of the Lost Ark except I have not yet found the Ark of the Covenant in the collections (you never know though – I have not yet been in every box)

Anyway we have lots of pottery for Harriet to look through, the project focusses on everyday pottery rather than artwork so we picked out some pieces made in Castleford and Ferrybridge as well as plates and teapots from our social history collection, and early Roman and medieval examples. She is interested in getting a complimentary colour pattern so there is a lot of toing and froing. She photographs the chosen items.

Harriet Lawton selecting pieces

Harriet particularly like the pieces which are chipped and worn as they really show that the objects have lived a full life before they came to the museum for retirement – she does take this to the extreme though as she really liked a Chinese plate which is broken in two (broken and repaired BEFORE it came into the museum collection I should add, the old repair has failed!)

12:30pm

Back to Wakefield Museum for lunch – a sad sandwich today.

1:30pm

Back on the road this time over to Pontefract Museum

2:00pm – 4:00pm Meet the Curator

I’m covering Meet the Curator at Pontefract Museum this afternoon. The Meet the Curator afternoons are designed as an opportunity for visitors to bring in treasures they have at home to show a museum curator – to be dated, identified or offered to the museum collections. Our collection is built on generous donations from local people since the first objects came to us in the 1920s. Our criteria for collecting is that they are related to or can tell us stories about people who have lived and or worked in the Wakefield district – and we have not already got examples of them in the collection already. We are definitely sorted for flat irons, radios, mangles, dolly tubs and commemorative royal pottery!

This afternoon is as eventful as ever – an interesting Chinese blue and white pot for identification and Roman coin which turned out to be a copy this time.

In between enquiries I also help our museum designer Andrew Marsland display a First World War British officer’s  jacket in the foyer at Pontefract Museum. The jacket is quite unusual as it displays officer stripes on the sleeves, something which was toned down very early in the war because it identified officers to the enemy and made them a target. The display is part of the many activities we have developed to commemorate the beginning of the First World War. We have a Great War Trail at Wakefield Museum which includes a jar of pickled plums, a decorated biscuit and a watch worn in the trenches to time going over the top on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The subject of the war is difficult to balance. It is a commemoration not a celebration but sometimes it is important to finds the chinks of light in the darkness.

Andrew Marsland working on a First World War jacket for display

4:00pm

Back to Wakefield 

Collection highlights: England's weather vanes

A post for a windy day!

For generations England’s Ironmongers was an institution in Pontefract’s Market Place. 

Behind the ornate terracotta façade (that is now WH Smith) was England's “white” or tinsmith, who made ladles, boxes and even weather vanes.

Tin templates for weather vanes from England's, Pontefract. 

These templates were part of a range on offer to clients. The large tree stump used as an anvil is also been kept in the museum’s collections.  We even have a small pair of framed slates on which the tinsmith had chalked out a list of his day’s work not knowing that he would be killed by a heart attack on that very day.

In the liquorice works of the town “Spanish Lasses” (as the workers were known) used metal shovels to mix the different “allsorts” sweets. As the shovel wore away, work became a little easier. But when replacing the blade at England’s tinsmith could no longer be put off, the work became harder again, as the blade was its full heavy thickness once more.

Few ornate weather vanes survive locally. The one on Pontefract Town Hall is a modern replacement that is out of scale with the Georgian building. Pontefract racecourse and Nostell Priory both once had elaborate weather vanes. “Father Time” at Lords cricket pavilion is now a bit of a national icon and if you visit Whitby the gold salmon on the Georgian town hall is beautiful!

Collection highlight: Shoes from the 1700s

 

We’re not sure exactly how old the shoes are, but costume source books say that they were probably made between about 1714 and 1760. Like many shoes of the time, they are made of fabric (silk?). Shoes like these didn't last long as they were so delicate. Women often wore overshoes called pattens to protect their shoes. 




You can see how this patten fits this shoe exactly. The patten is made from hand-stitched leather as well as the same fabric as the shoe.

A fairly rich woman probably owned these shoes, and didn't wear them much at all! Wealthy women never had to walk far and wore restrictive clothes that made physical movement difficult.

In the 1700s, wealthy Britons’ clothes were influenced by French fashions. Corsets (stays) squeezed women’s bodies into fashionable shapes. Their pinched waists looked even smaller because their skirts stuck out over wide hooped panniers worn on the hips.

These shoes are currently on  display at Wakefield Museum in our Style Picks exhibition (until the end of January).












For an amazing view of another  of our Georgian shoes (1740-1740) see the image below created for us by Microform Imaging Ltd.




Click on the image and use your mouse to rotate the shoe!