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We are already over a year into the Effective Collections disposal project, and we have made some exciting progress to update you on! We have now found solutions for 1,500 items on our disposal list, with items being sent to 25 different museums, and 600 items having already been handed over to the recipient museums, freeing up invaluable space in our object store. Keep reading to find about out some of the items that have been transferred and their new homes.
We transferred 4 aquatints by J Farington to the Royal Academy of Arts.
Windsor and Eton by J Farrington
The aquatints depicted scenes of the Thames, none of which showed any areas of Elmbridge. We offered them to the Royal Academy as J Farringdon was a founding member, and the Academy were happy to accept them as they filled a gap in their collection. Aquatint is a print making technique.
Joseph Farington RA was an 18th century landscape painter who lived from 1747 to 1821. He became a member of the Society for Artists in 1765, at age 18, and joined the Royal Academy when it was founded 4 years later. He contributed works to the Academy’s exhibitions every year until 1801. He struggled to paint following the death of his wife in 1800. He spent time drawing landscapes in the Lake District and was skilled at detailed and accurate topographical drawings, which were popular amongst tourists to Britain. In 1794 he published a two-volume History of the River Thames with 76 aquatints.
James Sainsbury, Curator at Worthing Museum
We had a large amount of 1970s children’s toys with no strong link to Elmbridge. I got in contact with Worthing Museum who have a large and renowned collection of children’s toys to see if they would like any of the items. They were happy to take them, and the toys are now at Worthing where they will be much more relevant to their collection. Here is a picture of James, a curator at Worthing Museum, signing the object exit form before taking the objects away. This paper trail is important as it allows us to keep track of where items have gone which will be useful to future museum staff and researchers.
We have transferred a chicken coop and chicken feeder to the Rural Life Living Museum, Farnham, which they requested as they need props for a chicken display that they are assembling. We have a large collection of 20th century rural life items like this that were acquired from local farms.
The Rural Life Living Museum is a 10-acre open air museum which tells the story of the countryside through allowing visitors to explore historic farm buildings and implements as well as take a ride on the Old Kiln Light Railway. On various days throughout the year you can watch volunteers demonstrate craft skills, working machinery and bring to life characters through live interpretation. You can find out more about the museum on their website: https://rural-life.org.uk/
As well as approaching museums directly, we have also uploaded all remaining items to the Museums Association ‘Find an Object’ website which allows other Accredited museums to see what items are up for disposal and to request items that they think would enhance th
eir collections. Since posting our objects to this site, we have been approached by several museums. One of these is the Richard Jeffries Museum, a museum in Swindon about the Victorian nature writer, which is set in a mid-19th century farmhouse. They have requested to take some of our natural history items such as a pigeon skeleton, and some pieces of taxidermy such as a hedgehog and a fox. These items lack the local provenance necessary to make them useful to our collection but will be useful for the Richard Jeffries Museum who are creating a display featuring all the animals mentioned in Richard Jeffries’ writings.
