Blogtober -Day Twenty Four

 The Museum of Making - part two.  

 Assemblage

Here objects are grouped by the materials they are made of.  Stone, ceramics, glass, stone, textiles and so on.

 

The displays are made to look like a museum store full of objects which aren't on display but which need to be curated and cared for for future generations.  Objects which tell of past industry and enterprise.

I've worked in one or two museums over the years (before I retired) and all had different store rooms.  The first museum I worked in had lots of black Victorian cases full of taxidermy, beady eyes staring at you as you walked through.  Also lots of objects reflecting local industries like coal, ceramics and textiles.  The last museum I worked in we started almost from scratch and the storeroom was a little walk in cupboard as we had so few items.  This grew over the years.

In Assemblage you are asked to wander and wonder.  We did just that.  Above is a model of a steam traction engine built in 1965 by Walter Smith.  It's called Kitty

Lawn Mowers

 

An Ordinary or Penny Farthing and a Bone Shaker.

Street Signs

 

Clothes made from synthetic fabrics and materials.

 

On the floor above is a maker's shop selling works by local artists and designers and if you walk through a working area you can access the tower from where you can see a view across the city.  I did take a photo but it seems to be mostly of the riverside Premier Inn.

Blogtober - Day Twenty three

The new Museum of Making can be found inside the Derby Silk Mill.  The Mill is thought to be the world's first modern factory and is part of UNESCO's Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site.

Derby's rich heritage of making and creating is celebrated with displays and work areas within the mill.

There are three floors plus the ground floor and lots of stairs but also a lift which I had to use as the stairs became a bit too much for me.  On the ground floor are the Civic Hall, River Kitchen, events areas and makers' courtyard.

Up above the entrance atrium space is a new Toyota Corolla which was commissioned from the Toyota Company and made at their factory in Burnaston, Derby.  I took this photo from the floor above.

The first set of stairs take you up to the shop area above which is a jet engine.  It's a Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engine which was mounted on the 29th July 2019.

Photo taken from the viewing platform over the shop area.  You can see the Toyota behind as it hangs over the entrance and cafe.

 

Also on this floor are displays on  the history of the Derwent Valley Mills, the introduction of water power and the history of industry in the area. 

 

On the second floor is an exhibition called Assemblage.  It looks like a museum store and has the objects displayed by the materials they are made from but unlike a museum store many can be handled and studied more closely.  It was fun looking around this floor.

I'll show you more in tomorrow's post. 

Blogtober - Day Eighteen

Last week we visited the city of Derby, something we hadn't done since before Covid and lockdown.  The last time we were there we went to see Luke Jerram's Moon which was on display in the Cathedral.  This time we went to visit his  Gaia on display in the same venue.

 

The Cathdral is a lovely venue

Gaia features detailed NASA imagery of the Earth's surface.

The installation provides the opportunity to view planet earth floating in three dimension much as an astronaut would.

 It is hoped that it will give a renewed responsibilty for taking care of the environment especially after the Covid 19 epidemic.

The artwork is 1.8 million times smaller than the real Earth's surface.  Visitors were invited to stand 211 metres from the artwork to see Earth as it appears from the moon.

 In Greek mythology Gaia is a personification of the Earth.

 Back outside there were signs of Autumn in the trees.

Here is a - link- to the post I wrote about the Moon.
 

Angel and Moon in Derby

Yesterday we visited Derby to meet and have lunch with friends and also to visit the Cathedral where there were two things on display that I've wanted to see for while.

Outside the Cathedral is The Knife Angel

whilst inside The Museum of the Moon can be found.

The Knife Angel is a twenty seven foot sculpture made from over one hundred thousand bladed weapons.

The knives and other weapons used have come from  Police Forces all over the country who have had them handed in during surrender schemes and weapon amnesties.

In 2014 a campaign called 'Save a Life, surrender your knife' was started in reaction to the rise in knife crime across the country.  Clive Knowles the Chairman of the British Ironworks Centre at Oswestry in Shropshire wanted to find a way, through art, to highlight this campaign.

The weapons were collected, cleaned and blunted.  People who had suffered from knife crime were invited to come and engrave personal messages on the blades before they were finally put into place to create the angel.  The statue is a symbol of the pain of loss that the friends and families of victims of knife crime feel and the futility of these crimes.

The Angel can be seen until 30th October.

The Museum of the Moon is on display in the Cathedral until 6th October.

It is a stunning installation which combines both sound and light to bring insight into one of our closest neighbours in the solar system.

The art work is by artist Luke Jerram and the sounds and music by composer Dan Jones.  The moon measures seven metres in diameter and once inflated weighs about forty kilos.

It is made from fire resistant white fabric and has images from NASA printed on its surface.  It is kept inflated by a small fan embedded in its north pole.

It was stunning and we spent ages just looking upwards and I think I managed to photograph it from all sides.

After we left the Cathedral we headed to the Derby Museum and Art Gallery for lunch.  Afterwards we saw a wonderful exhibition of Japanese Art including watercolours and prints from the museum's collections.

The paintings of fish, birds and animals were exquisite.  No photos of the paintings I'm afraid.

Origami birds across the floor of the gallery. I think there have been Origami workshops held in the gallery during the exhibition.

Poppies, Photos, Peregrines and Princes

On Friday we drove over to Derby to see the Weeping Window poppies which are at present adorning the tower of the Silk Mill at the side of the River Derwent.  

 The tour of the ceramic poppies is organised by '14-18 Now' the UK's art programme for the centenary of the First World War.

The poppies were the concept of and designed by Paul Cummins and the installation was designed  by Tom Piper.  These poppies are some of those from the original installation 'Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red' which were first seen at the Tower of London in 2014.

They looked wonderful in the bright sunshine.

I like the Silk Mill building anyway so it was great to see it draped with poppies.

As we stood and looked at the poppies we could here the mewling up above from one of the peregrine falcons which nest every year on the nearby Cathedral.  My camera was stretched to its limits but I did get a mediocre photo of the bird.  Here is a link to the Derby Cathedral Peregrine Project's Blog.

I like this little area of Derby with its individual shops and cafes and a small independent department store called Bennetts.  The bunting was out blowing in the breeze which added a quite festive feel to the street, it was good to feel the warmth of the sun too.

The statue above is of Charles Edward Stuart usually referred to as 'Bonnie Prince Charlie' or 'The Young Pretender.' On 4h December 1745 at the height of the Jacobite Rebellion he marched with around six thousand men from Ashbourne towards Derby intending to ride towards London.   Two days later he was beating a retreat northwards and back to Scotland.  Four months later, on 6th April 1746 he was defeated at the Battle of Culloden.  Here is more information

We met him again in the Museum and Art Gallery.  We had popped into the museum to see a photographic exhibition before it closes this weekend.

The exhibition is called People Place and Things and explores early studio photography from 1854 onwards by using a collection of photos taken over the years by local photographers W.W. Winter which is, apparently one of the oldest running studios in the world.

There were lots of visitors enjoying the photographs and several finding people and places they knew.  There was a small group of people who were delighted to find their grandfather and uncles on a wonderful photo of Walter Tickner's butchers shop.  Below is a photo of the WW Winter photographic studio in the early 20th century.

Paul was thrilled to find a photo of a trainee pilot in a flight simulator at Derby Airport c. 1938.  So, as an early birthday treat for him, we bought the book which accompanies the exhibition.

Have a lovely weekend everyone.