Closing for Christmas

We would like to wish all of our followers a very merry Christmas and a happy 2015.

MoDiP will be closed over the Christmas vacation, along with the rest of the campus, from 24th December 2014 and will reopen 5th January 2015.
Seasons Greetings
Susan, Pam, Louise & Katherine

Do you 'snow' what these are?

MoDiP has the kind of collection that you may think you are very familiar with. We have objects which we all use every day, and some pieces which are more unusual.

By looking at this distorted image are you able to guess what the object is? What do you think it could be used for?

Post your answer in the comments below or to find the answer click here and you will be taken to the MoDiP catalogue.

Louise Dennis (Assistant Curator)

A different view #4

There are many ways to look at the objects in the MoDiP collection.  With this series of posts I want to highlight the interesting views of objects that we may ordinarily miss.  These include the underside of an object, the surface pattern, or traces of manufacturing processes.

Title: Major Morgan electronic game
Designer: Unknown
Manufacturer: Playskool for Hasbro
Object number: AIBDC : 0_2306

Louise Dennis (Assistant Curator)

Did you know? #12

Did you know that all of our collection is accessible online for you to browse?

With nearly 13,000 objects in the collection, browsing the website is a great way of seeing what we have.  You can search the collection using search terms or our filters.

To browse the collection firstly you need to click on the blue 'The Collection' tab at the top of the page.

This will take you through to the collection page where you can do a free text search by using keywords or use our helpful filters to narrow down the search.

To find out more about the objects in your search list simply click on the image or the object title in blue.  This will take you through to the object page, an example of which can be seen below.

 

If you are a researcher wanting to come to the museum and view any items from the collection you will need to make a note of the 'Object Number' located in the bottom right of the record page.

Louise Dennis (Assistant Curator)

#MusBuilding

The theme this month on culturethemes.blogspot.co.uk/ is Museum Buildings and objects relating to architecture, it is an opportunity for museums to share their surroundings or architecture items they have in their collections on Twitter.


MoDiP occupies a space in the AUB's library and we can't claim to be in any sort of grand building but the interior had a rather lovely spruce up over the summer vacation time.

The new configuration for our downstairs display area does look very smart.

Our architectural strength lies within our collection.  The first object I would like to show is a set of roofing slates which, of course, are made of a plastics material making them lighter causing less stress on the roof structure and yet looking just like the real thing.

These slates (AIBDC : 006037.1) are on display as part of our current exhibition Is that plastic? Skeuomorphs and metaphors in design, and were also part of an exhibition entitled Substitute: animal vegetable mineral

We all need to be thinking about keeping our homes warm and energy efficient.  One way to do this is to keep the loft insulation up to the recommended depth.  The insulation below is made of recycled PET bottles so gets double green points.  It featured in our Encore! re:formed plastics exhibition.

AIBDC : 005906

The following images show examples of plastics used within the building process.  Firstly, here is some exterior cladding from the 1960s.

BXL : 0504.2

And secondly, Plastazote being used a sound proofing beneath flooring.

BXL : 0182

The last two pictures might not be for those of your who have vertigo.  Here Plastazote is used in the construction of a bridge.

BXL : 0193.1

 This seems perfectly reasonable until you see the next image...

BXL : 0193.2

... I am not sure that wearing a hard hat will help you very much if you were to fall off the edge of this bridge.  We do not have the dates for when these images were taken but I am glad that the safety of construction workers has moved forward since then.

Other museums and museum visitors will be sharing their buildings and architecture on Twitter today - find out more by searching #MusBuilding or following @Culturethemes
Louise Dennis (Assistant Curator)

BXL photographic archive #0076

In 2010, MoDiP was donated a large archive of images relating to a single company. Bakelite Xylonite Ltd, also known as British Xylonite Ltd or BXL, was possibly one of the first British firms to successfully manufacture a plastics material in commercial quantities. The company was established in 1875 and after a long history went into liquidation in the late 2000s. The images we have in the collection are concentrated around the 1960s through to the 1980s and show us glimpses of the manufacturing process, products and the company’s employees during this time. We plan to share an image each week to give a flavour of the archive. If you want to see more you can view the whole collection on our website.

This week’s image shows a range of novelty radios.

To get a better view of the image and find out more have a look at it on our website http://www.modip.ac.uk/artefact/bxl--0237

We are still working on the documentation of the archive, some of the images we know more about than others. It would be fantastic if we could fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge, if you know anything about the company or specific images it would be good to hear from you.

Louise Dennis (Assistant Curator)

What could this be?

MoDiP has the kind of collection that you may think you are very familiar with. We have objects which we all use every day, and some pieces which are more unusual.

By looking at this distorted image are you able to guess what the object is? What do you think it could be used for?

Post your answer in the comments below or to find the answer click here and you will be taken to the MoDiP catalogue.

Louise Dennis (Assistant Curator)

A different view #3

There are many ways to look at the objects in the MoDiP collection.  With this series of posts I want to highlight the interesting views of objects that we may ordinarily miss.  These include the underside of an object, the surface pattern, or traces of manufacturing processes.

Title:Folding Habitat chair
Designer: Unknown
Manufacturer: Habitat
Object number: AIBDC : 000753

Louise Dennis (Assistant Curator)