York Museums Trust Blog

The paper dress had its origins in marketing and consumerism. The first ones were used as a cheap promotional gimmick by the Scott Paper Company in 1966. The response from the public was overwhelming; 500,000 paper dresses were exchanged for coupons saved from Scott products.

The hem on the dress was left deliberately left unfinished; since the paper doesn’t fray, the dress could be cut to the required length. A handy tip was to use the leftover fabric as a matching hair bow!

The fad for paper dresses did not last as paper garments had a short life. Once the novelty value had worn off paper garments were relegated back to their original purpose as protective clothing for use in hospitals and factories.

You can see film footage in The Sixties gallery at the Castle Museum that shows just how disposable these dresses could be.

Info. by – Jackie & Josie

YORCM : BA 1076

Illustrations from the Tillotson Hyde Collection

This watercolour by Marjorie Miller is one of my favourites from the Tillotson Hyde Collection. Miller was an illustrator of children’s stories and periodicals around 1924-1935. The elongated figure and composition demonstrate a Japanese influence.

James Tillotson Hyde (1894-1973) amassed a collection of some 1,500 drawings, most of which were original illustrations for newspapers, childrens’ publications and satirical publications such as Punch. In 1962, he gave his collection to York Art Gallery, where it now resides.

YORAG : R4414 Info. by – Jenny

This is a porcelain three-tier table centrepiece by Rockingham and stands about 2 feet tall. It was made at Brameld & Co. between 1830-1868 and was decorated by Alfred Baguely in the same design as a dessert service made for William IV in 1830.

It is an incredibly complex decorative piece of 10 parts, combining modelling, matt and burnished gilding, painted scenes on the base (Hawes water from Thwaite force and Lowther Castle and Park) and tiny painted Civil War scenes on the bowl at the top. It is a beautiful though somewhat gaudy piece on its own, but imagine it covered in flowers, fruit and desserts on a Rococo period table….

From the Arthur Hurst Bequest to the Yorkshire Museum in 1940. Currently in store 

 Information by - Helen

YORYM:2000.4708

One of the big bonuses of working in a museum is that you accidentally come across all sorts of interesting stuff and get to see it really close up.

This morning I was over at the Castle Museum in the new Sixties gallery and found Josie unwrapping an original Mary Quant mini-dress from the ‘Ginger’ range. Note the upside-down ‘i’ – very Sixties.

Most people would think of this as ‘stained glass’, but would you believe it’s actually painted? It’s one fragment from a collection of pieces acquired from excavations. This medieval glass has survived really well in unfavourable conditions. Much buried medieval glass decays terribly.

Looking at the intricacy of this single piece of glass, you can just imagine the hours of work which must have gone into a whole window. Church windows would have been a truly impressive sight to the vast majority of the population. Most windows would have been a shutter covering a hole in the wall!

Info. by – Katherine

YORYM : 2007.6077

As part of my retrospective documentation work I came across this exquisitely preserved fossil brittle star.

It is from the Middle Jurassic 195 – 189 million years old.

Although it does not have a locality the preservation and matrix indicate that it comes from Dorset.

Info. by – Stuart

YORYM : 2007.4563

Willow pattern is probably the best known and most enduring example of English chinoiserie design.  It is generally accepted that Thomas Minton engraved the earliest version in the 18th century.

Willow pattern is wholly English in concept, but completely Chinese in inspiration.  It is not a direct copy from any Chinese design, but is a composite drawn from Chinese sources.  The early versions vary quite a lot, but by the first decade of the 19th century a standard pattern had emerged, and this is still being produced today.  It has even found its way back to China.

The willow pattern was produced by many potteries and proved to be very popular. Stories and legends then grew up around the design.  Although the stories varied, they usually centred on a pair of doomed lovers who are turned into birds by sympathetic gods. The first known printed version of the willow pattern legend was published in the magazine, The Family Friend, in 1849.

YORCM : 2007.446

Information by - Michelle

This is a large, four storey, wooden doll’s house. I t was made for Phyllis Dulce Warwick in about 1895 when she was 8 years old.  The rooms are furnished with the original objects.

The doll’s house is wired for electricity and still has original carbon filament bulbs (very few real houses would have been lit by electricity in 1895).

The most interesting and unusual piece of furniture is the miniature Ice Chest.  On top there is a hinged lid revealing the space where the block of ice would be stored, the interior is painted grey to represent the metal lining the full-sized chest would have.  On the shelf in the cold compartment there is a miniature cooked chicken.  Ice Chests as a form of cold storage became popular in the late 19th Century.

Information by - Sarah Maultby

 YORCM : 1972.51

click for a better view

This is a domino-sized piece of soapstone engraved in reverse with the words “Julius Alexander’s salve for irritations”.

It is one of only 60 such stamps world-wide. Cosmetic branding was as important to the Romans as it is to us today. This stamp ensured that people knew they were getting ‘ the real McCoy ‘ and not some forgery.

It was found on the Mount by the Dickinsons – a farmer and his nephew who worked land on which the Mount School now stands. They worked very closely with local archaeologist Peter Wenham in collecting and plotting Roman objects from their land.

Their collection of artefacts now forms part of the archaeological collections at the Yorkshire Museum.

Information by – Andrew Morrison

YORYM 2006.2878

This is a good example of a typically “tourist” Italian leaf, mounted up on fine, imported Eastern (most likely Chinese) sticks. Visitors to the Bay of Naples – many of them on the Grand Tour – would buy these and take them home, in much the same way as tourists to Spain sometimes bring home those rather naff little fans made of plastic and nylon lace!

It is a carved ivory fan, with a fine skin leaf painted with three trompe l’oeil views from around the Bay of Naples, with two leaves of handwritten script placed between. On one, beneath the caption “Aria”, are words from the opera Orpheus and Euridice. The other leaf gives the name and address of the painter, Sign. Nicola Lanezno, and is dated Naples, 1779. The reverse of the leaf shows Vesuvius erupting.

info by Josie   (BA293)