Brecon Museum

 This is a two post day because I have been having really annoying McAfee pop-ups which I tried to sort out through settings, but think I pressed something to do with the cookies, which have made signing into my blog difficult.  Eesh.  It can't be fixed until Tam is over next.  Just checking to see if I can access photos and no, I can only see the number of them and not what they look like.  

I have had to do the first room just from counting and comparing to my photos on my phone.  You will get the idea though, and these stunning love spoons must have been so cherished through the generations.

A lovely Welsh dresser with various dairy and kitchen bowls made from Sycamore (which has a natural disinfectant), and a spoon rack bottom right.

The links of the chains for these love spoons etc are all carved from a single length of wood . . .

Such a beautiful sampler sewn by Mary Thomas, age 17.

Miniature furniture, beautifully worked.  Young men had such wonderful skills making treen pieces like these.

Sarah Jones clearly had wonderful needlework skills, despite her young age.  She was taught well.

This is Mary Lewis's work, also aged just 10.

I took lots more, and really loved seeing the ECM's upstairs, which include the original Neuadd Siarman's stone.  I was talking to the chap on the till in Aldi, and he had never been in there and had zero curiosity about it.  I guess that's why he works in Aldi . . .

Hoping Tam can help me put my computer to rights . . .  I am cross with myself for even trying.  Not sure if I can reply to your comments at the moment either, as several attempts have not been posted.  Sorry.

Brecon Museum II

Many apologies for the delay in this post.  It has been an odd week - another viewing, which mopped up all but a few hours of the past 5 days - and yet more problems with the broadband and the phone line (which was extremely crackly).  I couldn't load photos for love or money, which was very frustrating.

Oh, and the viewing?  Well, I'm not holding my breath.  Two ladies who run a spiritual retreat - one very tuned-in to the house (and said how fortunate we were to live here) but was also heard to mutter perhaps it wasn't for them.  (Not surprising as she stuck her head up the leaking inglenook as there was a wet spot beneath it I could not disguise . . .)  I spent the week being very stressed out because there were two obvious areas of damp on walls - temporary, since lime walls breath in and then expel any damp by drawing it out again WHEN it finally stops raining.  One wall is the old gypsum plaster and that doesn't breath like lime plaster does.

Anyway, today Tam and I are off to Newton House (where I used to volunteer) at Dinefwr Park in Llandeilo where there is a day of talks about old houses, lime, and letting them breath and we hope to find a replacement for our dear friend Steve who did all the lime work and much of the restoration on our house.  He has now retired, bless him, and out of the area so we will miss him turning up on the doorstep with his metal detector or a jar of honey from his bees.

So, back to Brecon museum, starting with this fabulous old hand-made and hand embroidered smock.  I have always had a really soft spot for such things - SO Thomas Hardy, and a real link with our agricultural past.

This was part of a panorama of the beautiful scenery around Brecon - the Brecon Beacons in sight here.

A Great Wheel, a design which lingered on in Wales.  Originally invented in the 14th C, it was also called a Walking Wheel as the spinner would stand up to work it.  As the treadle wheel, a later invention, was more expensive, the Great Wheel was used well into the 19th C here in Wales.

Tally sticks - simple square batons of wood marked with crosses to count livestock (usually sheep, especially here in Wales).  Beside them is a fagging hook  which held the corn for it to be cut with the sickle.  I used to have one which was a more simple wooden stick (one which had a natural bend to it).  Inside that is a reproduction Ox Shoe.

If I remember rightly, this hefty iron bucket came from a coal mine.

Various dairy implements for the production of butter.  I love the pretty hand-carved sycamore butter  stamps and have a couple myself.  Metal skimmers to the right (though these look like French ones to me), Scotch "hands" or butter pats to shape the pat of butter, and hand-made wooden bowls too.

Another part of the same display with a milking stool and a metal skimmer to the front.  The bowl with holes would have been used to drain the whey from the butter and then the water when it was washed to remove any remaining whey.

Part of an exhibition about Adolina Patty, the famous opera singer who lived at Craig-y-Nos Castle between Brecon and Neath.  (The Home Rule for Hay flyer is associated with the self-appointed "King of Hay", the late Richard Booth, who was responsible for turning the town into the "town of books".

This looks like a Mamgu Shawl - one worn by a nursing mother to keep her warm when she breast fed her baby in the still of the night.

Right, I will get this posted before the internet plays up again.  One more post about Brecon Museum to come.

Brecon Museum Part I

We went to auction at Brecon yesterday, and afterwards we went on to the Museum.  We have been on the look out for the museum at Brecon to re-open for a long time now (it was closed for more than 3 years for a renovation and extension project.  It now has the Brecon Library under the same roof.  However, a severe lack of signage and the incorporation of an art gallery made negotiating it rather difficult - they definitely need signage - for a start to say which door leads to the bloomin' museum!!  The original glass front doors now shut to public, which seems daft . . .  It was very disjointed too - no flow to it whatsoever.

Firstly these wonderful Welsh love spoons formed part of the original Rural Life display.  I think they have more on display now and oh my goodness, the quality of this work is just amazing.  The ones with chain links (wooden) were all carved from one long piece of wood.

As well as the spoons there were pieces to fit in stays/bodice (whale bones later used) and some other more random pieces of craftsmanship - all given as love tokens.

A lovely old Welsh dresser showed a wonderful selection of Welsh treen items for the dairy and kitchen - all hand made of course.

A double and two single spoons.

Sarah Jones was very diligent as was Mary Thomas, below.

More lovely examples of craftsmanship - close up of the writing on the one on the left below.  I love the knife, fork and spoon on the one on the right!  SO cleverly done.

This reads" Mary Davies.  Coed (wood) Lland-y-vailay Vach.  March 1st 1643.  Amazing that it has survived, but I imagine it was much treasured and passed down through the family.

A wonderful puzzle? piece, again all carved by hand in such intricacy.

Miniature examples of  furniture.  Apprentice pieces or just the work of many winter's nights by the fire?

Stumpwork (probably 17th C looking by the design) - so the women's skills with a needle were represented too.

In the children's section - I used to have a little tinplate set like this - it was from the Queen's Coronation.

Some wee dolls - the one on the right looks a bit grumpy!

Finally, soft toys .

Off for a bath now as I am very sore from a visit to the Chiro today to put back my neck (it would be the arthritic part that fell foul of my fall) and lower back.  Hopefully it will remember where it should be tomorrow and bits will have stopped aching.