Katie king
I have worked in museums all of my adult life and have always been fascinated by the power of objects. They can engage and connect with people in a very special way. It is not the materiality of the object itself that holds the power, rather the story associated with it – its provenance. When an object’s story is revealed, even the most ordinary items can suddenly jump to life. Storytelling is at the heart of my role here at Manx National Heritage.
It is an enormous privilege to work with the Manx national collection. We provide a forever home for the treasures of the Isle of Man. My focus is the 40,000 objects which make up the social history collection and 6,500 artworks comprising the national art collection. Both collections are wonderfully varied, with objects and artworks from the 1600s to the present day. It includes everything from Knox designed metal work, Britain’s oldest pair of trousers, to a fibreglass Dracula from White City Amusements. It includes the ordinary as well as the extraordinary – a homemade oak armchair that spent over 200 years sitting by the same fireside, to the uniform worn by Captain Quilliam at the
Battle of Trafalgar (complete with shrapnel holes). Whilst extremely diverse, there is one unifying factor behind everything in the collection. Everything is connected to the Isle of Man. Most objects in our care have been owned, created or used by someone who considered the Isle of Man to be their home – either physically or spiritually. For some the Island offered a temporary sanctuary – such as the holiday maker who cherished a three legged souvenir teapot all their life before donating it to the collection. For others the Island was a prison – literally for those men and women who found themselves interned here during wartime, with many producing works of art to help them cope; for others the Island must have felt like a prison in other ways, unable to leave the grinding poverty of their lives and surrounded by an unforgiving sea.
I find myself steeped in history most days - pondering the motivations, feelings and thoughts of those who handled, created and owned these objects before they came to us. I try not to view the collection as a homogenous mass, but rather consider each artefact as a window into a person’s life. Having been asked to consider the question, ‘what does home mean to me?’, I find myself wondering what did home mean to them? The finely dressed women in our portrait collection? The young herring fisherman captured and press ganged into the Royal Navy? The Jewish refugee plucked out of his sanctuary in Britain and imprisoned behind barbed wire on the Isle of Man?
In order to discover more about the people behind our collections we have access to our wonderful archives – full of papers, photographs, diaries and letters. My favourite archive is the Manx Folk Life Survey, an ambitious project begun in the 1930s. Its aim was to build up a picture of Manx traditional life. Over the course of thirty years, a team of volunteers armed with sharp pencils and notebooks, journeyed into the rural communities (often by bicycle) to capture memories, folklore, songs, voices and stories. They also collected ordinary, everyday objects – from butter bowls, to spinning wheels, and turf spades. These objects and their associated stories enable us to understand how people lived and viewed the world around them. A world that was rapidly changing, especially in the post war era. Their Island home was changing, evolving. One elderly woman interviewed stated that she had lived and worked on the same rural croft her whole life. In all this time she had never been to see the sea. I’ve always found this absolutely fascinating and baffling in equal measure. I wish the interviewer had thought to ask her why. Was she too busy, or was it simply not relevant to her life? Was the sea something to be feared – had her family suffered losses in the dangerous waters? Was she an exceptional case or were people so preoccupied with survival and their own small world that there was no time or inclination to walk over the surrounding hills to the shore? It left me wondering what the Isle of Man meant to her. What did home mean to her?
Which brings me to the original question - what is home? Is it a place, a building, a set of people, a feeling? No matter the answer, I think we can all agree that home is somewhere safe. Somewhere we feel comfortable, at ease.
A place where you can be yourself. I was recently pondering this whilst returning to the Isle of Man from a summer holiday. I sat in the front window seats of the luxurious lounge on the new Manxman, listening to my fellow passengers (on a coach trip from Devon) marvel that this was better than any cruise ship. It was a beautiful sunny and still day. For the entire journey, I could see the Isle of Man ahead of me, surrounded by a mysterious bank of mist, with the hills poking out of the top – an impressive inversion cloud. As we got nearer the cloud did not fade as I expected, but rather seemed to thicken. We entered it and for 15 minutes we were cast into pure whiteness. It was unnerving and I felt a growing sense of unease that we would have to turn back. Manannan Mac Lir was hiding the Isle of Man with his mythical cloak of mist, an experience that many travellers to the Isle of Man must have seen before. Suddenly, we broke out of the cloud and there was Douglas bathed in sunshine. There was a cheer from my fellow passengers, as surely there must have been a cheer when those hardened seamen of old found their way home. The mist had lifted and we were back in the beautiful Isle of Man. Back home.
It is an enormous privilege to work with the Manx national collection. We provide a forever home for the treasures of the Isle of Man. My focus is the 40,000 objects which make up the social history collection and 6,500 artworks comprising the national art collection. Both collections are wonderfully varied, with objects and artworks from the 1600s to the present day. It includes everything from Knox designed metal work, Britain’s oldest pair of trousers, to a fibreglass Dracula from White City Amusements. It includes the ordinary as well as the extraordinary – a homemade oak armchair that spent over 200 years sitting by the same fireside, to the uniform worn by Captain Quilliam at the
Battle of Trafalgar (complete with shrapnel holes). Whilst extremely diverse, there is one unifying factor behind everything in the collection. Everything is connected to the Isle of Man. Most objects in our care have been owned, created or used by someone who considered the Isle of Man to be their home – either physically or spiritually. For some the Island offered a temporary sanctuary – such as the holiday maker who cherished a three legged souvenir teapot all their life before donating it to the collection. For others the Island was a prison – literally for those men and women who found themselves interned here during wartime, with many producing works of art to help them cope; for others the Island must have felt like a prison in other ways, unable to leave the grinding poverty of their lives and surrounded by an unforgiving sea.
I find myself steeped in history most days - pondering the motivations, feelings and thoughts of those who handled, created and owned these objects before they came to us. I try not to view the collection as a homogenous mass, but rather consider each artefact as a window into a person’s life. Having been asked to consider the question, ‘what does home mean to me?’, I find myself wondering what did home mean to them? The finely dressed women in our portrait collection? The young herring fisherman captured and press ganged into the Royal Navy? The Jewish refugee plucked out of his sanctuary in Britain and imprisoned behind barbed wire on the Isle of Man?
In order to discover more about the people behind our collections we have access to our wonderful archives – full of papers, photographs, diaries and letters. My favourite archive is the Manx Folk Life Survey, an ambitious project begun in the 1930s. Its aim was to build up a picture of Manx traditional life. Over the course of thirty years, a team of volunteers armed with sharp pencils and notebooks, journeyed into the rural communities (often by bicycle) to capture memories, folklore, songs, voices and stories. They also collected ordinary, everyday objects – from butter bowls, to spinning wheels, and turf spades. These objects and their associated stories enable us to understand how people lived and viewed the world around them. A world that was rapidly changing, especially in the post war era. Their Island home was changing, evolving. One elderly woman interviewed stated that she had lived and worked on the same rural croft her whole life. In all this time she had never been to see the sea. I’ve always found this absolutely fascinating and baffling in equal measure. I wish the interviewer had thought to ask her why. Was she too busy, or was it simply not relevant to her life? Was the sea something to be feared – had her family suffered losses in the dangerous waters? Was she an exceptional case or were people so preoccupied with survival and their own small world that there was no time or inclination to walk over the surrounding hills to the shore? It left me wondering what the Isle of Man meant to her. What did home mean to her?
Which brings me to the original question - what is home? Is it a place, a building, a set of people, a feeling? No matter the answer, I think we can all agree that home is somewhere safe. Somewhere we feel comfortable, at ease.
A place where you can be yourself. I was recently pondering this whilst returning to the Isle of Man from a summer holiday. I sat in the front window seats of the luxurious lounge on the new Manxman, listening to my fellow passengers (on a coach trip from Devon) marvel that this was better than any cruise ship. It was a beautiful sunny and still day. For the entire journey, I could see the Isle of Man ahead of me, surrounded by a mysterious bank of mist, with the hills poking out of the top – an impressive inversion cloud. As we got nearer the cloud did not fade as I expected, but rather seemed to thicken. We entered it and for 15 minutes we were cast into pure whiteness. It was unnerving and I felt a growing sense of unease that we would have to turn back. Manannan Mac Lir was hiding the Isle of Man with his mythical cloak of mist, an experience that many travellers to the Isle of Man must have seen before. Suddenly, we broke out of the cloud and there was Douglas bathed in sunshine. There was a cheer from my fellow passengers, as surely there must have been a cheer when those hardened seamen of old found their way home. The mist had lifted and we were back in the beautiful Isle of Man. Back home.
‘Children’ by Austrian Jewish internee, Hugo Dachinger, an émigré artist far away from home. One of a large collection of internment art works held by Manx National Heritage.
The Juan Watterson Family Chair. An oak armchair built in 1700 and resided in the same family home for over 200 years. It was donated to the Manx Museum as part of the MANX Folk Life Survey, started in the 1930s.