Dear diary
Entry 1 - developing the chemistry collection
By Dr Rupert Cole, Associate Curator of Chemistry at the Science Museum
When I’m asked ‘what do I do’ as a curator, the answer can be quite long. There is sometimes an assumption that a curator’s job is mainly to pick things to go on display. Although that is certainly one (fun) aspect, the role is way more varied.
A key part is looking after and developing a collection of objects – in my case the circa 10,000 objects that make up the chemistry collections.
This might include rectifying horrible documentation messes from a former curatorial epoch or thinking about what we should be collecting now to represent chemistry in 2018.
I regularly get offers of objects from members of the public and institutions. The majority end up result in a ‘thanks but no thanks’. But recently a real gem popped into my inbox.
It was an offer of a jelly strength tester.
After some googling and back-and-forth with the potential donor, Dennis Little, I discovered this kind of instrument was used to quality test the density of fruit jelly!
And not any fruit jelly, but fruit jelly made by Bard Brothers, who had a jelly factory in the East End of London from 1916 to 1996.
The next step was to go and visit this jelly tester. Dennis kindly invited me and a conservator colleague to his home in York where the tester has been living since he rescued it when the factory closed down.
Dennis and his wife Beryl were fabulous hosts, enthralling us with stories of the factory. Visits like these are one of things I love most about the jobs: meeting interesting people.
We were also introduced to another piece of Bard's jelly apparatus. A device to measure the specific gravity of jelly, complete with a red-jelly stain on its glass.
Presenting the case to add these objects to our collections at the Science Museum’s collecting board was an easier task than usual – most people think (quite rightly) jelly is fun.
The Bard's jelly tester was made by a local East London scientific instrument firm, H. Hughes and Son, probably in the 1930s.
It may seem a slightly unusual fit for our ‘experimental chemistry’ collection, but, as it transpired, jelly strength testers were the subject of chemical research in the first half of 20th century.
Seeing it go from an offer in an email to a record in our database, and from the object Dennis found in a factory cupboard to a museum artefact, is a bit of a thrill.
I imagine this jelly tester will remain a favourite object of mine, being the first I added to the chemistry collections since I began the job. One day I hope to see it on display.
