Expanding the Collection

Conservation of the Weavers’ Banner from the Lewis Textile Museum

The Friends have received a request from the Museum for a contribution towards the conservation and repair of the Blackburn District Weavers, Winders & Warpers Banner in the collection. The work would be undertaken by the People’s History Museum. There will also be a crowdfunding appeal through which it isl hoped to involve the local community. After treatment, it is intended to display the banner in the redeveloped cotton town space

The banner probably dates from around 1900. The Weavers, Winders & Warpers were based at 1 Clayton Street in the assembly rooms (via the back entrance). They succeeded the Blackburn Weavers’ Friendly Society which was established in 1854. The earliest reference to the union found by the Museum staff is 1901. One very interesting aspect is the depiction of working women, which seems to be unusual – women tended to appear as widows or angelic or deified entities on such items, rather than as workers.

The banner is oil painted on silk, and the painted panel has separated from its support. Unsurprisingly, treatment of such a large, complex item is expensive. The Friends committee will be considering their response when they next meet in February.

The Friends have purchased Self Portrait in a Trespass Hoodie by Adil Amin for presentation to the Museum & Art Gallery.

This painting won 2nd prize in the Art Open exhibition held in the Art Gallery in 2022

In 1999 the remarkable survival of the diary of Charles Tiplady was discovered in a Nottinghamshire saleroom. This record by a Blackburn printer and bookseller, covering the period 1839-73, when the Borough was coming into existence, had long been thought lost

It came up for auction on 28th January 2000 and the Library, Museum and Blackburn Local History Society agreed to pool their resources and put in a joint bid for the diary.  Nick Harling, then Keeper of Social History at Blackburn Museum was successful in securing the diary for the town. The original diary was to be kept at the Museum, and a microfilm copy made for use at the Library.

Members of the Local History Society, and in particular Barbara Riding (a Tiplady enthusiast and founder member of the Museum Friends who died in 2023) transcribed the diary from the microfilm.

The Library recently made a successful bid for funding from Townsweb Archiving towards digitisation of the diary, and the Museum Friends have offered to contribute £500 towards the remaining cost.

This project will greatly increase the Diary’s accessibility and hence its value to researchers.

Link to the Cottontown Website for lots more information about Tiplady

We are contributing to the purchase of Sunday Morning, a work in stained glass by Jamie Holman, also supported by the V & A Purchase Fund and the Art Fund.

Link to Jamie Holman’s website

In 2021, the Friends purchased the painting “Sana” by Azraa Motala and presented it to the Museum & Art Gallery. It had been part of the exhibition “Unapologetic” at Blackburn Museum.

Part of the 2021 British Textile Biennial, “Unapologetic” was shown across multiple cultural arts institutions in Lancashire including the Haworth Art Gallery, and Towneley Hall. The artist invited other British South Asian women aged between 18-30 from the North West to be painted wearing clothes of their own choosing.

Azraa Motala (b.1996) is from Preston, the descendant of two generations of Lancashire mill workers. She is a graduate of the University of Central Lancashire and Chelsea College of Arts.

In 2019 she was a finalist for Robert Walters Group UK ‘New Artist of the Year Award’ at the Saatchi Gallery.

Link to the painting on Art UK web site

Richard, one of our volunteers, shows us how a loom should be prepared before using.

In 2011, the Museum Friends responded to a request from the Museum to fund a new donations box for the Entrance Hall. Entrance to the Museum & Art Gallery is free and this has encouraged visitors to make a voluntary contribution.

In 2010, the Museum Friends agreed to contribute towards purchase of the painting of Darwen Tower by Jack Crewsden of Darwen Tower.
Jack Crewsden, a taxidermist who lives in Darwen, is a member of Blackburn Artists Society well known locally for his paintings of animals and birds.

Link to the painting on the Art UK website

In May 2006, the Friends contributed towards the purchase of a hand-carved, unglazed clay sculpture by Halima Cassell: Blackburn on the Hill which had been on show in Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery in one of the artist’s first major exhibitions. Halima has since gone on to exhibit widely in Britain and abroad and has works in many major collections as well as numerous public art installations, including in Blackburn town centre.

Born in Pakistan, she was brought up in Blackburn, educated at Queens Park High School and Blackburn College before taking a degree at University of Central Lancashire.

Link to Halima Cassell’s website
Link to interview in Creative Lancashire Magazine

Manuscript Lectionary, purchased by the Museum & Art Gallery from Sothebys in the 1990s. This medieval service book contains lections, which are selected readings from scripture for use on particular days.
It was purchased by the Museum because it contains a mortuary brief, a short obituary circulated to other monastic houses to announce the death of a monk or nun and ask for prayers, which in this case referred to a monk possibly from Whalley. Evidence within the book suggests it was not used after the Reformation.
In 2002 the Friends paid for the conservation and repair of the manuscript.

Contribution to £11k purchase cost of Icon with Saint Vsevolod, Grand Prince and Wonder Worker – Tempera on wooden panel, Western Russian, ca 1575

St Vsevolod was acquired for the Museum to mark the Millenium in 2000, with help from the Museum Friends, the Victoria and Albert Museum Purchase Grant Fund and the Art Fund.

Link to the icon at Art UK
Link to Wikipedia – Saint Vsevolod

The Blackburn icon collection is one of largest in Britain, all assembled since 1970.

For more information:
Go to the Museum blog post

In 1995 the Museum Friends purchased a set of Dresden tobacco jars, from Roger Hargreaves, who was descended from James Hargreaves, tobacco merchant of Blackburn.

The jars were used to display tobacco in James Hargreaves & Sons retail tobacconist shop in Blackburn.

Cleaning the oil painting and providing period frame.

This painting is one of very few old master paintings in the Blackbum collection. It was the gift of Mrs G. Newman in 1959, at which time it was attributed to Jusepe Ribera and in desperate need of a clean. After the cleaning, which revealed much previously unseen detail, the painting was re-attributed to the circle of Francesco Guarino ( 1611-54), a Neapolitan Baroque artist influenced, like Ribera, by Caravaggi.

Link to Art UK website

This was followed by the purchase of a reproduction 17th century period frame for the restored picture.

Contribution to the conservation of this watercolour of Mainz by J M W Turner.

This watercolour was engraved in 1834 for Scott’s “Life of Napoleon”. It was bequeathed to the Museum & Art Gallery by E L Hartley in 1954 as part of a large and important collection of English watercolours.

Purchase of sideboard from Imperial Mill as a memorial to Jessica Lofthouse, the first President of The Friends.

Purchased from Courtauld’s who had owned Imperial Mill and taken the sideboard to Heron Mill, Oldham, where it was in 1992.

It is currently on display in the local history gallery.

In 1988 the Friends financed the conservation of a watercolour of ‘The Falls of Terni’ by J M W Turner before it went for exhibition at The Biblioteca Classense in Ravenna, Italy in an exhibition about Lord Byron.

Byron lived in Ravenna for a while in 1817. The waterfall at Terni is mentioned in his great poem “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.”

Funded preview of the exhibition “Lancashire South of the Sands,: 2 – The Industrial Landscape”

The Friends of Blackburn Museum & Art Gallery was founded in 1982 to help promote and support the Museum.