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Mink stoles, feathers and coal dust: 100 years of royal visits to GKN
The spectacle of a royal visit to an industrial site can often feel rather awkward, with an expensively dressed monarch cutting an incongruous figure amid the “dark Satanic mills”. However, royal visits play an important role in validating the importance of a particular industry to the nation’s economy. The Coronation of King Charles III presents…
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Object of the month: Margaret Nettlefold’s blotter
Our object of the month for April is Margaret Nettlefold’s wooden ink blotter. Our curator, Henrietta, tell us more about this special object. Writing a letter in the Edwardian period was, literally, a ‘hands-on’ process involving a fountain pen, an inkwell, and blotting paper. If you touched the written text before the ink was dry…
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The animals went in two by two
An exciting project is taking place the Winterbourne nursery! Sarah Moss, an artist who has had a long association with Winterbourne, is painting a frieze which will extend all the way around the beautiful room in which the Nettlefold children played over a hundred years ago. A draft section of the frieze by Sarah Moss…
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Object of the month: sphagnum moss
Our archive is filled with thousands of treasures from the past, many of which never get to see the light of day. We want to change this, which is why each month we’ll now shine a spotlight on one of our many objects. First up is a perfectly-preserved specimen of sphagnum moss (c. 1900), introduced…
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A woman of outstanding artistic abilities
To celebrate International Women’s Day on 8 March, Curator Henrietta explores the life of a little-known Birmingham photographer. Many of the photographs in our archive have the name of the photographer stamped on them. In the Victorian and Edwardian period, most of these photographers were men. I was quite excited, therefore, when I noticed the…