Drawing the collections

 A small group of amateur artists is engaged in depicting objects at Fairlynch, some of which have rarely been exhibited in public. Martyn Brown  and Lyn Cooke explain:    

The idea  of starting a group to draw the collections developed from the Museum’s Puttee Group, established in 2014 to work on puttees as part of the  Heritage Lottery Fund WW1 project.  Members of the group had participated at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) in Exeter in an arts group, using their collections creatively to inspire visual and written responses. 

For Fairlynch the idea was picked up by Museum volunteer Lyn Cooke and she proposed the ‘Drawing the Collections’ pilot group via Trustee Martyn Brown.

The first session took place in October 2015 after the Trustees had agreed the pilot project, and the group has met monthly — usually consisting of five or six people. On each occasion two or three objects from the collections have been selected and a ‘still life’ has been set up in the Exhibition Room.

Objects have included a pair of ladies’ white boots, and a fine pair of buckled shoes, a sewing machine, cobbler’s tools, a dress, and a doll and pram, pictured here. The participants have enjoyed drawing these things in their own choice of media: pencil, pen and ink, crayon, watercolour and digital.

At the end of the pilot programme the group will have a review, and feed back to the Museum’s Trustees with their reflections on how the project has gone, whether or not it will continue, and how it can best be organised and managed for the future. There are discussions afoot about the possibility of exhibiting some of the pieces of work.