Town silver spotlight

A new partnership project will give more people than ever before the chance to see items from Richmond Town Council's silver collection.

Forty objects, some of them dating back to the mid 1600s, and relating to the town’s civic history are on permanent display at The Green Howards Museum. Volunteers from both organisations have embarked on the project which will:

• explore the history and personal stories behind the silver on display
• add to existing knowledge of the items 
• improve information in the object records
• create new online content, giving greater access to key pieces of the collection

“It’s great to be working together to improve our knowledge of these pieces,” says Bob White (pictured right), a town council project volunteer. “Some of them, such as the Corn Cup or the Robert Willance goblet are well-established features of Richmond’s history, whilst other items in the collection have a less well-known back story. I’m looking forward to helping research and re-interpret the display, and seeing how we can bring these silver stories to life with the digital content being planned.”

Once the research and cataloguing has been completed, a new online exhibition will be created featuring dazzling images and showing selected pieces in rotation, along with more in-depth stories about the items themselves.

“We are delving into the history of the pieces, discovering why they were created, and understand more about the people who commissioned or created them,” explains the museum's Head of Collections, Zoe Utley (pictured centre, with museum volunteer Janet Milne, left). “Whilst physical display space for the shimmering collection is limited by the size of the case these wonderful pieces are displayed in, the online content we are going to create, using film and photography will give a new perspective and depth of information. Developing online content like this allows us to bring the history of the collection to new audiences, regardless of whether or not they are able to physically visit the museum to look at the objects in person.”

The online town silver exhibition will go live in the spring.