The working life of Museum of London

Flints, Faces & Footware

With only half the project left, what did Week 6 produce?

General Finds

Excellent progress was made this week on Glynn’s side of things. Having achieved the entire repacking of the London Docks archive, the focus moved to the next two sites on the agenda; Baynard House (MM74) and Minories (MN74). Lots of pot, animal bone and building material from each site meant a nice mixture of objects were worked on this week. For the main part, the artefacts were the usual sort we get; sherds of pots, fragments of animal bone and bricks and tiles. However a couple of outstanding bits caught our attention. This redware bowl from Baynard House is almost complete and this fragment of medieval pottery has a rather crude face, which led to one of Thursday’s volunteer’s nicknaming it “Medieval Morph”.

Registered Finds

Two sites worked on this week; Jewry Street (CAS75) and Chaucer House (CH75). Both interesting sites, Jewry Street is the smaller  producing us with several decent pieces of Roman glass. Chaucer House on Tabard Street in Southwark, was the winner however, with a fantastic box full of ivory goodies, some mystical jet bracelets, an amber bead and one of the best clay tobacco pipes in our collection. This pipe dates from the mid 19th century, with the manufacturers name, Critchfield, on one side and production area, Southwark, on the other. Its bowl has been shaped into a Turk’s head – a popular image at the time.

This pipe was selected as one of week six’s two objects of the week. Watch this space for more on the project’s Object of the project competition that will be coming up soon.

Graduate Wednesday

Our graduates continue to produce sterling work on their task of getting as much of LAARC’s leather/textile archive sorted out as possible. This week, they worked through several sites including the registered finds from 175 Borough High Street (175BHS76), Modern Foreshore (MFS76), Milk Street (MLK76), Southwark Leisure Centre (SLC76) and Duke’s Place (DUK77). Altogether these sites had a wealth of leather and textile treasures, from Saxon shoes to medieval silk. The best though has to be our second object of the week – a scabbard and knife set. Tip top.

Workshops

Two fantastic themes this week with our new to VIP workshop on flints alongside one on metal artefacts. Both incredibly engaging topics with many mighty fine pieces to get excited about.

Next week, only three days due to the Bank Holiday, but we should still be on track to reach our project targets and rediscover  even more items hiding within LAARC’s boxes.

Thanks to volunteer Wayne for his photographs. For more photos from the project visit our Flickr site