• General

    Derbyshire Record Office

    As part of the Excite Inspire Engage Erewash project, I met and worked with the rather lovely and very talented  Paula Moss on the Metal Ages section.

    Amongst other things, Paula has been Artist-In-Residence at the Derbyshire Record Office whilst they redesigned and refurbished their space, and as the project is coming to an end, we got the opportunity to take a “back stage” tour to see what it was all about.

    I guess I’ve never given much thought to what a record office does.  Is it a library service, a museum, a room full of files and paper?  Well, I guess it’s all of those and more.

    The office, at Matlock, houses 12 rooms of records for both Derby city and Derbyshire as well as local studies books, and also

    You can find out all sorts of information about anything in the area, and the staff are very generous with the help and support.  The outlook at this friendly office is that this information is there for the public to see and to make use of, and not only can you access a wealth of information, you can even see, touch and use original documents.

    There’s a huge variety of things in their collection from the original silk paper charter for the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School at Ashbourne, to original woodcut blocks and prints from local artists, slave records from a plantation (owned by a Derbyshire estate) and much much more.

    A fabulous resource if you are researching for an art project, or looking into your family tree.

    It’s free to use and open, without the need for appointments six days a week.  Well worth a visit, and they even have a lovely little break room with a most appealing aroma from the coffee machine if you don’t fancy wandering down the hill back into Matlock.

    Can’t wait for the chance to go back and study something – I fear I could lose most of a day though!

  • Community Art,  General,  Public Art

    Hot Metal

    As ever, my life has been hectic with things related to my business, the studio and of course home life – I knew I hadn’t written a blog post for a while; well Christmas was the last one I remembered.  What I hadn’t realised was that I never posted anything about the second Metal Ages sculpture, and that was well, AGES ago!

    Back at the end of September, we finally got the opportunity to install the final sculpture at Erewash Museum in Ilkeston.  I say ‘we’ – that would be me with the camera and occasionally passing a drill or screwdriver, and Gavin & Mark doing the lifting, carrying, digging, drilling….

    This one is a rather large sculpture.  It’s over two metres high, and about two and a half metres wide.  It is made up of 7,000 nuts, which represents the size of the workforce when Stanton Ironworks was in it’s heyday.  It has four ‘vines’ growing from the ground, which represent the four main foundries that could be found in the Ilkeston area back in the 1900’s.  Across the middle is a shank, used for pouring molten metal in a foundry.  The centre of this holds a glass disk, which like the ‘Old Men & Pipes‘ sculpture at King George Gallery is inspired by the ‘fire in the sky’ that was ever present when Stanton was a busy place, and also representing new beginnings.

    Musuem Sculpture Install8 Musuem Sculpture Install6 (2)