Beetles and bugs in Blackburn

Here are some photos from the Blackburn Museum's collection of beetles. The colour and variety are amazing, I love the handwritten labels too. I'm going to be focusing more on the Japanese print collection, but we're keeping these as a back up as they're so fascinating!

Celebrating ceramics

As promised, here are some more photos of the ceramics collection at the V&A. I foolishly forgot to write down the names of the makers, if anyone can help, that'd be great! The V&A collections website is a brilliant resource, but I think the most recent items aren't on it.



Ceramic carrots



Glazes - gorgeous colours!



Tile Panel, William de Morgan




Look at the little feet on these guys!




More beautiful colours.



'Trophy' by Clare Twomey. This was originally an installation where visitors were invited to take away their favourite bird. How lovely!

Hello sausage!

'Sausage' by Richard Slee

Yesterday I went for a training day at the Victoria and Albert Museum as part of the Design for Life project. I worked on it last year with Bolton Museum and 2 school groups. This year it's slightly different, with Bolton as the core museum, and Salford Museum and Art Gallery as one associate partner and Blackburn Museum as the other. I'm hoping to work with young carers from Salford and possibly a school group in Blackburn. Exciting stuff! I've never been to Blackburn Museum and am itching to have a good look at their Japanese print collection!

I'll put up a few more snaps I took at the V&A of the ceramics collection as soon as Blogger decides to play nice! I focused on this as we're thinking of taking the Pilkington ceramics collection as a starting point for the workshops in Salford.