Lifting The Victorian Pot Lid At Museum’s Ten Minute Tales

Published on: 17 Aug, 2017
Updated on: 29 Aug, 2017

Local historian and Guildford Dragon NEWS writer David Rose will be taking part in Guildford Museum’s Ten Minute Tales programme, in which an object from its collection is given a closer look.

David Rose finds some history on the edge of a flower bed in the Castle Grounds – part of a stem from a clay tobacco pipe and fragments of Victorian glass fairy lights!

Visitors to the museum are invited to spare 10 minutes or so at lunchtimes to join these free informal sessions.

Taking place at 1pm on Tuesdays, either by museum staff or guests, the sessions have already started, with the programme continuing throughout August and September.

On August 22, the object will be one of artist John Russell’s pastels.

David Rose is the guest on August 29, and will be looking at a Victorian ceramic pot lid from a Guildford barber by the name of John Savage.

Something for the weekend sir? Barber John Savage’s Celebrated Peruvian Balm ceramic pot lid will be the object in focus at Guildford Museum on Tuesday, August 29, at 1pm.

The pot, on to which the lid covered, held a product called Peruvian balm, and was sold as a cure for baldness! Did it work? Probably not…

David will be talking about the object (something of a collector’s item today) and showing a picture of the barber’s shop that was in the High Street.

Objects featured on Tuesdays from September 5 to 26, include a wassail bowl, Dresden work embroidery, a season ticket to Guildford Lido from years ago, and garden designer Gertrude Jekyll’s sketch book.

Guildford Museum has more than 100,000 objects in its care including items illustrating local archaeology and history, needlework and toys, as well as items associated with famous people such as writer Lewis Carroll.

The collections have been developed over a century, and have come to the the borough-council run museum through donations, purchases or excavations. A number of objects are on long term loan to from Surrey Archaeological Society.

The collections include material that is significant locally, nationally and internationally.

A representative selection of these objects forms the heart of a current exhibition Take A Closer Look, and museum staff have focussed on the stories that they have to tell in this display and in the associated programme of Ten Minute Tales.

See more objects from the collections on line by clicking here to the museum’s website.

For further details call 01483 444751 or send an email to heritageservices@guildford.gov.uk

Museum entry is free.