Farmer's boys

This group of images gives an idea of the range of traditional agricultural tools that are part of the Old House Museum's collection. Bakewell still has a Monday livestock market, though the pens are now in a purpose built agricultural business centre rather than the town centre. Sheep and dairy farming are still part of the local economy. Crops and cereals were grown for fodder and the museum's plough and hoe have recently been restored thanks to a grant and some expert attention. The seed fiddle was used to broadcast seed in the twentieth century, using a technique recorded in medieval times. The smock harks back to the nineteenth century, practical and hard wearing workwear, with more than a hint of Thomas Hardy's novels.

In comes the doctor

In comes the doctor, in comes the nurse, in comes the lady with the alligator purse. So the children's rhyme goes. Once upon a time, before the National Health Service, doctors wore a top hat and tails for their home visits. My own grandfather was an Edwardian doctor in Salford and lived long enough to be part of the NHS. When I was younger I often had conversations with people at bus stops and in shop queues who recognised me as one of the family and remembered him with fondness. I have been told that he introduced free school milk in Salford. When this doctor's case and other medical paraphernalia was donated to the Old House Museum, I often wondered how much of it would have been familiar to him.

Model homes and shops

Inspired by a recent trip to the British Folk Art exhibition at Tate Britain, these are some photos of model shops in the children's display in the Old House Museum. There are also a couple of images of models of the Old House and its lath and plaster inner wall. None of these were ever children's playthings in the sense of dolls' houses or miniature shops nowadays. The model shops were often used as part of a window display, especially where the goods sold were perishable, and had to be removed from the window at night.The butcher's shop is a typical example, and the Folk Art exhibition included life size painted plaster models of cuts of meat, including hams and lamb cutlets rather than the miniature examples you can see here.

Gilding the gingerbread

The recent British Folk Art exhibition at Tate Britain included gingerbread moulds. These lovely carved wooden pieces of kitchen equipment could be used to create interestingly shaped biscuits. They were sometimes embellished with gold leaf, the gilt on the gingerbread. Imagine learning your alphabet,or even your kings and queens through a delicious biscuit. You could identify your biscuit by your initials. We can use alphabet pasta and iced biscuits in the shape of letters in the same way nowadays. Bakewell is famous for its puddings, not for the tarts, which were originally invented by Mr Kipling in his factory in Wythenshawe.All the Bakewell bakeries offer both nowadays, having embraced the confusion. Nearby Ashbourne is famous for its gingerbread, a spicy cake recipe reputed to have been passed on by a French prisoner of war, billeted there during the Napoleonic wars.These moulds from the Old House Museum collection predate the Napoleonic wars, and were used to make a spicy biscuit that I think must have been similar to Dutch speculaas. Some food historians describe it as being like flavoured stale bread, so gilding must have disguised a disappointing taste experience! Local foods and recipes are an important aspect of folklore and local identity, and the Bakewell pudding story will no doubt be told in a blog post soon. Finally, the carpet beetle update - waiting for quotes and grants, while packing continues as the decision has been made to freeze everything, including the cottons.

Folk Art In Bakewell and London

The appearance of carpet beetle has made it difficult to explore the costume collection at the Old House Museum in the way that I had hoped when I started this blog. Outfits and items that I had hoped to photograph and write about are packed and ready for the freezer and it will certainly be months before the process is complete. Last week I made a trip to Tate Britain to catch the British Folk Art exhibition there before it finished.There's been a process of evaluating where folk art sits in the scheme of things in the contemporary art world. Jeremy Deller has explored the use of archive film, photos and images as well as calendar customs in his work as an artist. Simon Costin's Museum of British Folklore, which doesn't have a physical home or base, takes folk art further afield through temporary exhibitions. As with all aspects of folk culture, there is always debate as to how to identify and evaluate what it is and what it does. Craft overlaps art, design and architecture and music hall songs overlay traditional ballads. It's a fascinating topic for discussion and the exhibition at the Tate addressed some of these issues without coming to any hard and fast conclusions. I was lucky enough to take a course in folk life studies as an undergraduate and later to study for an MA in Folklore and Cultural Tradition. When the Old House Museum was first planned it was described as a folk life museum. Beamish in the North East, St Fagans in Wales, Shibden Hall in Halifax and more locally places like Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet and Wortley Top Forge were also presenting themselves in this way, showing traditional homes, workshops, interiors and artefacts in a life like context rather than museum cabinets. As I went round the Tate's exhibition I realised that the Old House Museum still maintains this folk life approach. At the Tate there were quilts and samplers, embroideries and patchworks, shop signs and pottery,gingerbread moulds and butter pats,similar to displays in the Old House. We may not have corn dollies and carved ship's figureheads in the Museum but we do have home made toys, rag rugs and White Watson geology plaques. There were even photos of well dressing at Tideswell and scarecrow competitions. The British Folk Art exhibition has had a national and international reach to a huge audience. Over the next few weeks I plan to share some of the things on our doorstep as a way of exploring folk art through the Old House Museum.