My Dad's Museum

from the Museum of Richard Corbet Woodall (my Dad!)

Most of my peers who work within museums can recall a seminal moment in their childhoods, when they visited a museum and had a profound, moving, scary, exciting, or otherwise extraordinary experience. I can't. As a child, although I visited all sorts of National Trust houses, churches and some museums too, these visits haven't made a profound impact. For some years I felt I bit concerned about this, wondering what it was that now draws me to funny little objects and rummaging about in collections.

And then I remembered my father's museum. Tucked away in an old chest of drawers in the garage, it was where he kept everything that he had dug up from the garden and beyond. And there was plenty of stuff. The above picture is just one tray from the museum, not a particularly interesting one when compared with some of the others, but still very beautiful. Clay pipes and bits of pottery and china in here. It still looks exactly as I remember from 30 years ago, when I used to sneak into the garage and play with the things, ordering them in different ways and finding the most beautiful pieces.

Anyway, over Christmas this year, I spent an evening while staying at his house, revisiting my Dad's collection, finding old favourites, remembering what was there, and discovering all sorts of new things that I hadn't seen before. I am going to post some of these finds as my task for the new year, and look forward to sharing these 'things of the least'.