Blog

Dearest Wife!

By Pat Ellingham, Volunteer, British Empire & Commonwealth Collection (BECC) Around this time of year, sentiments of love and devotion waft in the air as Valentine’s Day approaches. As I sat with the latest collection I’m cataloguing as a volu…

The chapel of Saint Blaise

Today (3 February) is the feast day of Saint Blaise! So to celebrate, here is a short blog on our very own (long lost) chapel to Saint Blaise.   Saint Blaise was an Armenian bishop and the patron saint of wool combers, wild animals, candle makers a…

Become a Trustee of Bristol Museums Development Trust

Bristol Museums Development Trust are looking for several new trustees to join their board of trustees. Bristol Museums Development Trust (BMDT) is an independent registered charity (registered charity number 1137777) which supports the work of Br…

Patrick Cotter O’Brien, ‘The Bristol Giant’ (1760 – 1806)

Did you know that we have many powerful disability stories within our collection? As part of the Curating for Change project, our disabled curator Joanne is busy uncovering, researching and celebrating disabled Bristolians throughout history. The am…

200 years of amazing collections and stories

By Deborah Hutchinson (Geology Curator) and Kate Iles (Archaeology Curator) Bristol Museums’ forerunner, The Bristol Institution for the Advancement of Science, Literature and the Arts, officially opened 200 years ago on 6 January 1823. We’ve bee…

Christmas at Blaise

This week we’ve been busy decking the halls at Blaise House. Gathering greenery from the park, putting up Christmas trees and retrieving boxes of ribbons and baubles from the basement.  Out in the park, gathering holly, ivy, yew, laurel and box, …

Spotlight on: Jonathan Adagogo Green

Spotlight compiled by Eve Andreski, Documentation Assistant. To coincide with Black History Month, the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection (BECC) team wanted to focus on an important series of images within the archive. The Jones collectio…

The return of the Winter Lectures

The Winter Lectures are back and for the first time will be held in person and online. The programme is as varied as ever with the first three sessions covering design, dinosaurs and mid-winter traditions.   Up first and in October is curator Cleo…

Decolonising the Bristol Archives catalogue

By Sophie Welsh, third-year PhD student at the universities of Exeter and Southampton Hello, my name is Sophie Welsh. I’m a third-year PhD student at the University of Exeter and the University of Southampton. I took a short break from my PhD to wo…

Women’s work: Making discoveries in the Australian collection

By Polly Bence, University of Bristol, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology My research focuses on cultural objects from Oceania – an understudied part of the collection at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery. Earlier in 2022 I undertook a fou…