Discovering objects

Our crowdfunding campaign for packaging the objects from our Franklin collection has reached its £1000 target! A huge thank you to everyone who has donated – your support is much appreciated.

The Franklin objects have made us realise that we have other fabulous, exciting – and sometimes downright strange – objects in some of our other collections, which should also be properly packaged in museum quality boxes. So we’ve decided that any extra money we receive through our crowdfunding campaign will be spent on looking after those items.  We’re sure to discover more of them as we start hunting through our collections, but to give you an idea of the kind of objects we have:

An Ashbourne Shrovetide football from the 1930’s:

A beautiful piece of embroidery from 1937, showing Bakewell Market Place:

And a collection of textile samples, including this elephant pattern:

If you’d like to help us look after these and other objects (we’ll blog about more of them as we uncover and re-package them), then you have until 3.00 pm on Friday 19 July to donate on our crowdfunding page.

We’re in the news!

The Derbyshire Times has a big article about our crowdfunding campaign and did you catch us – very briefly – on East Midlands Today on Wednesday evening? Great to see so much interest!

And we’ve had another wonderful comment from a supporter:

‘Cultural history is very important and we should do everything necessary to preserve our knowledge of it’

Will you be next to help us preserve our cultural history?  Then support us on our crowdfunding page or by calling our reception on 01629 538 347.

 

Wonderful support!

Only a few days into our crowdfunding project and we’ve already reached nearly £200! A huge thank you to everyone who has supported us so far, and especially for the lovely comments you’ve left behind, such as:

‘Because the past is as important as the future.’

‘Real history is vital in the midst of meaningless memories. Support this venture for future generations.’

If you agree, then do have a look at our video and support us on our crowdfunding page.

Or you can call our reception on 01629 538 347 and donate over the phone.

 

We’re crowdfunding!

Did you get it from our teaser? It showed us having a go at shooting a video to go on our crowdfunding page. Yes, we’re diving into the 21st century and are starting a crowdfunding campaign for the objects in Lady Jane’s Museum.  As I’ve mentioned before, Lady Jane Franklin kept some of her most precious mementos in a small museum at her home, where she would show them to visitors. All these lovely objects came to us jumbled up in a box, together with objects kept by the Gell family from Hopton Hall (the family Eleanor Franklin, Lady Jane’s stepdaughter, married into).

Lying loose in a box isn’t very good for any of them, as they are moving about and damaging each other, so we want to package them in such a way that they are safe, but still together as one collection.  We’d also like to hire a professional photographer to take high quality photographs of them all, which we can then add to our online catalogue so everyone can see them. Through crowdfunding we want to give people from all over the world the chance to be a part of our Discovering Franklin project and help us look after this amazing collection.

There’s more information on our crowdfunding page, where you can watch that video and find out why we’re not asking for boats…

This slideshow requires JavaScript.