Over the past months a small museum of sorts has developed on the shelf behind my desk. The objects can’t really be described as examples of incredible craftsmanship, but they have proven to be extremely valuable in developing our displays.
Nestled alongside my glamorous helmet and safety boots (needed for visiting the galleries whilst under-construction) are a small number of paper and card creations, masquerading (with varying degrees of success) as 17th and 18th century productions.
As you will no doubt have guessed, these are some of the stand-in objects we have created for when certain objects were unavailable to be used at display mock-ups.
Their number has fluctuated quite dramatically over time as space is at premium and the disposal policy is really quite lax (i.e. some of our cardboard creations can find themselves ‘stored’ in the recycling bin quite swiftly).
Depending on the requirements of the mock-up and the nature of the objects, the realism of our stand-in objects has somewhat varied. Some objects were disposed of after use with few qualms – such as these slightly surreal flimsy, flat paper guns.
Unfortunately, the masterpiece of my carefully-shaped, 17th-century cardboard guitar is also no longer with us but some rather bijou examples of our handiwork remain.
Although admittedly not made of cardboard, the most dazzling piece in our mini-museum collection is this pair of early 17th-century gauntlets. I had in fact made these to be used as a prop for the Museum’s staff pantomime (yes, there really is such a thing!!) two Christmases ago, but they proved an almost perfect substitute for when the gauntlets going into The Cabinet were not able to be used at a mock-up.
To end today, here we have more 21st-century reproduction armour (which I think has a similarly high likelihood of being used as fancy-dress sometime in the future) – an early 17th-century German breastplate which will feature in our War display.
