Behind the scenes

To accompany the Prestoungrange Gothenburg’s exhibition of pottery, we recently held a ceramics workshop at one of our museums. Antipodean ceramicist Rosie Little led 15 children in a hands-on introduction to slabbing, coiling and extruding terracotta clay. The results will be fired in a kiln and decorated in two weeks’ time. Some photos from the workshop appear above. Click on the thumbnails to see each picture.

Our recent adult art classes at Prestongrange were a big success, and they culminated last Friday in an exhibition of the work produced by the participants, few of whom had ever attempted formal art, but were encouraged to do so by the enthusiasm and encouragement of the class tutor, Jacquelyn Rixon.

Working with materials that have a connection with Prestongrange’s past, such as soap, (char)coal, sand and clay, all of the artists produced engaging and relevant work. The results can be seen at Prestongrange Museum until the end of October.

While the adult art class was a pilot project, we hope to continue it in the future. For more details, please contact Jacquelyn Rixon at jacquelyn.rixon@virgin.net

See Europe A La Carte’s blog entry about the classes…

Museums are about things, stuff, objects, artefacts whatever you want to call them. The collections store in Haddington has somewhere in the region of 25,000 objects in it, from the everyday (a griddle pan), to the unusual (a stone anchor), from the beautiful (an Edwardian wedding dress) to the utilitarian (a piece tin). How on earth do we know where everything is? What it comes down to is have you ever thought about what happens when something is given to a museum? It isn’t just a case of find some space on a shelf and leave it there, to be forgotten about and gather dust. Objects are identified, numbered, named (not as simple as you might think – is it a spade or a shovel?), cleaned, measured, stored and recorded on a database. Sometimes there is even the opportunity to do some research on the object. But this all takes time, energy and enthusiasm. We benefit from the help of volunteers like Hazel (pictured) in the store, who has been involved with the Museums for a number of years. Over the next months and years we will be looking for more volunteers in the museum store, so watch this space!

As a postscript to this blog we were shocked and saddened to hear of the sudden death of another invaluable volunteer, archaeologist, keen supporter of East Lothian’s heritage, and friend, Norma Buckingham last week. Norma had helped in the store, with exhibitions, research, opening nights – just about anything. Her glamour, humour and good spirits will be sadly missed.