Catherine Howell: The main street model kit.. Now, again I don't know a lot about that because it hasn't been catalogued yet. Its actually part of a very large collection of architectural paper models that are in the process of being given to the museum over a period of time. It's one persons collection, and he collected everything and never made anything. And so all these things ..well they may have been played with in the past, but a lot of them are in their original packaging and were never used. I think main street was owned by somebody but they probably opened the box, had a bit of a rummage round, and didn't do a lot else with it, because its in pretty good condition inside, and it probably dates to the 1960s, I would say, something like that. It's made by an American company called Skyline Manufacturing. They were particularly well know for their models that went with train sets. So you would have had your train set made by Hornby or whatever, but if you wanted to make a paper or card building, a station or whatever – all sorts of buildings -then you could buy sets of these from this particular company.
LHT: All the ones in that cupboard there are from one person?
Catherine Howell: Given to us by one person..
LHT: Really?
Catherine Howell: Yes. And that's not just one cupboard. More than half of those cupboards are filled with one person's collection..
LHT: @audible gasp@
Catherine Howell: …you're talking 20, 000 objects..
LHT: Of unmade..
Catherine Howell: ..Yeah, of unmade models, of one sort or another.
LHT: That's amazing!
Catherine Howell: Yeah. And a selection of them will feature in our next in-house exhibition which is happening quite soon, in October.
LHT: Fingers crossed for our one.
Catherine Howell: @laugh@ I'm afraid that's not one of the objects chosen to be on display, because it cant be made up. The ones we've chosen for display are either ones that look really nice in their unmade form, so a lot of that will be ones that are flatter - more 2d that we can frame on the walls, and have pictures of the buildings or the things like that - or they are some of the simpler ones that are made for children as this one was, which we have been able to make up because they come out of the box and you can make them, and it hasn't meant interfering with the object at all. It's literally things that you can just slot together. Whereas this one you would have to take things out of their bits of card, and do something a bit more complicated. |