Object of the Month – April 2024
This month’s object is a lovely silver teapot, part of a set presented to Thomas Byard Winter Sheppard in 1861. His grandfather was George Sheppard, who founded the mill in Spring Gardens. Of course, Sheppards Barton, constructed in the 18th century for weavers, was also a legacy of this illustrious family.
Thomas was Secretary of the Literary and Scientific Institution at a time when they were moving into North Parade, and it is believed that the service was a wedding gift on the occasion of his marriage in Clifton, Bristol, to Mary Anne Rogers.
Accessibility project with Bath Spa University
The museum is hosting a series of workshops in collaboration with the OpenStoryTellers charity in Frome, and with Bath Spa University,
The workshops look at different ways of making the museum more accessible and approachable for a range of visitors who might at present not consider themselves our core audience, from a starting point that says that people are disabled by barriers in society, rather than by their ‘impairment’ or ‘difference’.
Barriers can be physical, like buildings lacking accessible toilets, or they can be caused by people’s attitudes to difference, like assuming that disabled people can’t do certain things.
We are exploring how this approach can suggest changes to museum practice that can provide value for all, including, for example, the handling of objects from the museum’s collections and displays.
Stained glass surprise
Rev Jeff Hopewell, an expert on the 19th century Frome stained glass manufacturer Horwood Bros has confirmed using old company invoices that a section of stained glass at the museum was originally in Christ Church, Oxford, probably on the south side. It was given to the museum by the renowned stained glass artist Patrick Reyntiens when he replaced all the glass at Christ Church in 1983.
The invoice Rev Hopewell has found refers to the holly pattern on the museum’s piece and to the same ‘seven panes painted on obscured glass’. There is also a distinctive root device on the first pane that is seen on other similar items manufactured by Horwood Bros.
A few other pieces in the same style, with different foliage variants, have been identified by Rev Hopewell in houses and churches. However, examples are rare as these plainer pieces of glass seem to have been a temporary measure provided by the manufacturer until donors were found, or funds raised, to pay for more colourful, complex and expensive stained glass.
