Earlier this year, we acquired some lovely butterfly and moth (Lepidoptera) specimens for the biology collection. This is the collection of Joyce Payne (1923-2020), who had a long and full life, dedicated to the study of these wonderful little animals, and left an indelible legacy for biology in Yorkshire.
Blog by Dr Helen Walsh, Curator of Ceramics ‘Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art’ was a fabulous and beautiful exhibition which began at Two Temple Place, London, in January 2022 and toured to the Centre of Ceramic Art at York Art Gallery in June 2022. In practical terms it was interesting to see it …
Content advice This blog post contains information that could be upsetting, including discussion of murder and execution. It talks about crimes and a punishment that were carried out over 200 years ago.
In this mini-series, I would like to share with you the objects collected as part of York Castle Museum’s Covid Collecting Project. In case you missed it, our Curator Helen Thornton has blogged about the aims of the project and how she developed it. I’m here to give you a tour of the …
Last year, York Castle Museum embarked on a project to collect objects and stories which reflect York life during the Covid-19 pandemic. This mini-series will introduce the thinking behind this project and reveal the fantastic objects which have been acquired. Stay tuned for more blog episodes from our Associate Collections Curator, M Faye Prior. In …
Earlier this year we shared a blog about a new archaeological archives project focussing on the Mesolithic site of Star Carr. Excitingly, this is not the only major excavation to recently arrive in the collections of the Yorkshire Museum. From 2013-2016 Northern Archaeological Associates (NAA) were employed by Highways England to excavate the area to …
By Ellen Waters On July 9th the Yorkshire Museum hosted ‘Word Craft’, a University of York workshop based around medieval artefacts and creative experimentation, which sought to introduce York residents to the vast and exciting medieval history that simmers beneath the city. After a tour of the museum and many of its medieval artefacts, led …
Over 10,000 years ago in the Vale of Pickering stood a Mesolithic lakeside settlement, now known as Star Carr. Over time the landscape around Star Carr changed dramatically. Further afield sea levels rose, separating Great Britain from mainland Europe, and locally the lake in the Vale of York drained, leaving behind waterlogged peat. For thousands of …
What’s in a name? In our collections display, ‘Pictures of the Floating World: Japanese Ukiyo-e Prints’ we celebrate the wonderful collection of Japanese prints from the Edo period (1603-1868), the majority of which were given to York Art Gallery in 1954 by J.B. Morrell. One of the challenges in researching these prints has been …
One of the oldest objects in our Costume and Textiles collection is a coif (a type of cap) made over 400 years ago. It was made in an age before sewing machines and mechanised factories, when every stitch of every garment was sewn by hand. We don’t know who made the coif, or who originally …
