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 Twenty two

We were late getting up this morning after a restless night.  We gradually got moving and decided to go for a woodland walk after morning coffee at the garden centre.  On the way back I called at the library to collect one of the books I'd had reserved and which had become available.  That's about it really nothing more has happened today.  Below are a few photos taken during our walk in Hem Heath woods.

We heard a Woodpecker tip tapping and the sweet song of a Blackbird. It was good to be out in the fresh air.

I'll be back tomorrow.

Blogtober - Day Twenty one

 Shall we have a Five on Friday?  

Perhaps a bit of cheering colour is needed this week.

1. Spotted in the entrance to a supermarket

Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar in crochet.

 

  Very charming and colourful.

 

2.  Also very charming and colourful

This Robin stayed long enough for a photograph.  He was by the smaller lake at Westport Lakes where we walked earlier this week.  There were one or two Robins about but we still wait to see that bright blue flash of the Kingfisher.

3.  Halloween Displays

Seasonal displays at the farmshop and cafe in Hartington on our way back from Bakewell a week ago.

 

Halloween black cats decorate the fireplace.  The tables were trimmed with pumpkins or ghosts.  I didn't take photos of these as there were lots of people about enjoying a late lunch.

 

Pumpkins galore - everywhere. 

 

4.  Garden Visitors

 

A week ago I posted a photo of a bird on a barbed wire fence. We thought it may be a Meadow Pippit.   It was taken on Fenton Fields which is just two streets away from home.  Earlier this week this bird landed on the lawn.  I think it may be the same type of bird.  We've never seen one in the garden before but it could have decided to have a little adventure and vist some nearby gardens.

Edit 6.30p.m.  Thank you to Coastal Ripples and Ragged Robin who recognised the bird above as a Redwing.  First time I've known one visit our garden.

 

A lovely Red Admiral visited in between showers this morning.  It spent ages on the winter pansies in the hanging basket just outside the kitchen window.
 

 5. New Street Art

 

This small area at the bottom of the Strand just by Times Square and opposite the station has been turned into a memorial garden just in time for Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday next month.

 We've driven by many times over the last few weeks on our way home and we've seen the work in progress. Often just one artist up a ladder.  A couple of weeks ago we noticed it had been opened up so we stopped to take photos.

Blogtober - Day Twenty

I've recenly slowed down a bit on reading and I've just realised I haven't updated my reading list for a while.  Something I must do.  I've had reserved books at the library for ages and I'm still quite high in the queue for two of them so I've been relying on the library loan e-books Cloud Library which sometimes doesn't have books I really want to read.  I tend to stick to writers I'm familiar with but occasionally if the 'blurb' sounds like something I'd enjoy I give a new writer a go.  Consequently I have two books by new to me authors on my kindle.  They are The Museum of Ordinary People by Mike Gayle and The Last Supper by Rosemary Shrager.

Two of my most recent reads have been the latest Vera Stanhope novel The Rising Tide by Ann Cleeves and Marple a book of short stories, all featuring Miss Marple, by crime writers like Val McDermid, Elly Griffiths and Lucy Foley.  The stories introduced me to another writer called Ruth Ware.  I borrowed two of her books from the Cloud Library.  I've read one and am halfway through the second.  Both took a while to get into but after a while I found they were hard to put down.

I also have on my Kindle two non fiction books Finding Richard III edited by A J Carson and Foxes Unearthed by Lucy Jones. I'm dipping into both occasionally as I read the other books.

What are you enjoying reading at the moment?  Do you have a favourite genre of books? Can you read more than one book at a time, say a fiction and non-fiction book?  I don't think I could read two fiction books at the same time without getting confused but I can swap between fiction and non fiction quite easily.

 

We woke up to a very misty morning and it took a time for the bottom of our side of the Crescent to appear.  Now it is raining and everything seems very dull and grey both inside and out.  Just the kind of day for curling up with a good book.

Blogtober - Day Nineteen

Just a short post today as I seem to have run out of time and energy to write about the Museum in Derby that we visited after viewing Gaia (see my last post).  I will write about the Museum of Making in a later post.

Yesterday morning, I had my hair trimmed and tidied up and afterwards we took a short walk in the glorious sunshine.

It was like Autumn and Summer combined.  Leaves crunching on the ground and the heat of the sun on our backs making coats redundant.  They were back on today though as it is much colder and quite windy.

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.