Preparing Collections for Display
By Emily & Erin - Post-Graduate Museums & Heritage Studies Students at the University of St Andrews
We have been working as Project Collections Assistants at St Andrews Heritage Museum for the past three months while the Museum has been under redevelopment. As the project nears its completion, we have been preparing the collections for transportation and exhibition.
Each object which will be displayed needs to be condition checked, photographed, and packaged ready for moving to the newly redone Museum. We also had to update the object information held in the Museum's digital collection records so that everything was up to date. This work was done both at the Museum's temporary office space and at the Museum's Collections Store, where we carefully packed up fragile objects like paintings with fun tissue paper jellyfish (protective tissue puffs).
A favourite moment of this process was handling and packing the objects for the Aikman and Terras grocer's shop, and getting to see the lovely old confectionary tins like the one below which depicts the annual Kate Kennedy procession in St Andrews.
Shortbread tin by McArthur's of St Andrews depicting a coloured illustration of the Kate Kennedy procession.
We really liked thinking about how these tins have developed over time and how they compare to biscuit packaging you see in supermarkets today. Seeing the variety of all the tins made us appreciate the detail put into the designs of these older ones.
Another object we worked with was the 'Sunday Stick', which has a fun history as a combined walking stick and golf club used for playing golf secretly on a Sunday when the Church banned it. Interestingly, the Old Course continues this tradition – perhaps golfers might still appreciate a 'Sunday Stick' even today!
Sunday Stick
There were lots of objects in this 'Ancient City' collection that broadened our perspective on St Andrews and its history, beyond its golfing past – the strong Christian roots and fisherfolk community remain important and present today.
Preparing the objects for the Toy Shop exhibition was somewhat a challenge given the sheer volume of items to check, photograph, and create object records for. There are only so many toy cars you can digitise in a day! However, all this digital work gave us an opportunity to develop helpful skills for navigating a world that is increasingly online. All the objects that will be on display once the Museum reopens will be available on eHive as a virtual collections database that anyone can access around the globe.
In the coming weeks, we are looking forward to transporting and installing these objects that we have been working with into their new permanent homes in the Museum and working in the space ourselves. We are glad to have contributed to the redevelopment of the Museum, and are excited to visit once it fully reopens to see our hard work in its final phase.
