Our ‘Behind the Scenes of the Year of the Dealer’ continues with Whitby based antique dealer Caedmon Antiques at Preston Park Museum – you can watch the finished film HERE
The Preston Park Museum films allowed us to widen the focus of the lens on the history of antique dealing in Britain and highlight some of the lesser known regional antique dealers and their role in the development of public museums. The films at Preston Park Museum also allowed us to draw attention to some of the less historically significant ‘antiques’ sold by antique dealers and what such objects (and their markets) tell us about the evolving interests, such as an increasing focus on ‘Social History’, in museum collections and displays. For example, this charming, early 20th century handmade toy Noah’s Ark (see below) which features in the Caedmon Antiques film at Preston Park Museum.
‘Social History’ collecting and an increasing emphasis on stories about everyday culture (‘below stairs’ stories in historic houses for example) was becoming more common in public museums in the period after World War II. There are earlier examples of such interests of course, in the ‘Open Air’ heritage sites such as Skansen in Stockholm, (founded in 1891), but in the Year of the Dealer films at Preston Park Museum we wanted to highlight the significance of the role of local and regional antique dealers in this evolving phenomenon – 3 of the 10 dealer films at Preston Park Museum focus on ‘antiques’ that were acquired by Preston Park in the 1960s and 1970s – all objects that foreground the interest in Social History, and all from antique dealers in the local area (Harbourside Antiques at Hartlepool, Piercebridge Antiques at Piercebridge, and of course Caedmon Antiques at Whitby).
You can see in our project map of numbers of antique dealers in various locations in the North East of England (see below). The map shows the numbers of antiques dealers in the North East during the period from 1900 to about the late 1960s – as you can see, Darlington (centre of the map), had 35 antique dealers in the period; Stockton, (the location of Preston Park Museum), which is near to Thornaby and Yarm, had 11 antique dealers in the period, and Hartlepool had 6 antique dealers in the period.
We will reveal some more detail on the Harbourside Antiques and Piercebridge Antiques films in the coming months, but do check in again next week for another in our ‘Behind the Scenes of the Year of the Dealer’ project.
Mark
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