Guest Blog 2

The Volunteer Experience

Local graphic designer, Michael Seymour, describes aspects of the project:

"As a volunteer at Winters I'm grateful to be a part of the preservation and maintenance of this local heritage site. Such a discovery offers historical insights to techniques and processes of a bygone era. In my opinion the very purpose of photography is to capture moments in time thus inspiring me to help rediscover and further preserve these forgotten moments of Derbyshire's past."

As someone who works with images, Michael is particularly intrigued by the pre-digital editing processes; the hand-retouched negatives that show the pencil shading to smooth out skin tone, the blocking out of areas with masking fluids; now performed 'virtually' on Photoshop as the captured image is now all-but-extinct as an artefact.


"Working alongside fellow volunteers and members of the Winters team we record, catalogue and digitise both written and visual data and are constantly finding new and exciting pieces to add to the collection."

Michael and his fellow volunteers are integral and essential to preserving these pieces of history!

Guest Blog

The Volunteer Experience

This week we have a guest blog from one of our heritage volunteers. Volunteers are often vital to heritage projects. They are a valuable resource and whilst they are not paid, they are part of an exchange which can involve access to otherwise private collections, specialist training, and skill development.

Below Anne Allcock talks about her first 'hands on' experience down in the cellar:

W. W. Winter's hove into sight and I had no idea what to expect apart from the information which we'd had on the training day, two months previously.  Having been made most welcome by Louisa, Angela and Jane, Angela then said "keep your coat on we're in the back room". Curiouser and curiouser...

All became clear when Jane said we'd be working on the large plates. Jane took  Barbara and myself through the warren into the back room and we started work on the plates. Coats were definitely needed but the cataloguing, cleaning and wrapping soon dispelled most of the cold.

Anne working with project archivist, Jane Middleton-Smith in the cellar

There was a lot of laughter and chat about photography (although we did make a detour to Mount Everest) and so much information was gleaned just from inspecting the plates, with Jane adding from her increasing wealth of knowledge.

Hubert joined us for a while to talk about the 'Victorian equivalent of Photoshop' i.e.hand retouching, and also about the solarisation effect on plates; so much learned in such a short time.

What an interesting and enjoyable afternoon it was.This is an amazing project and deserves all the help it can get—I'm greatly looking forward to my next visit.

Volunteer Conservation Training

We welcomed forty volunteers to the Church Hall on Horwood Avenue on Tuesday 20 January for an introductory session on conservation.

 

We were joined by the lovely Anita Hollinshead, freelance museums and conservation expert, who talked us through the considerations involved in heritage collections.

 

Along with local archivist, Jane Middleton-Smith, we were able to look at the care, cleaning and conservation of historic glass negatives, wrapping them in bespoke acid free envelopes made by Hubert.

The next step is for volunteers to work on site at Winter's putting their new knowledge into practice!

 

Having been recently to the Derbyshire Records Office, I can tell you how exciting it is to see and handle old documents and we hope that the public will be able to access the images in the future and experience this delight!

Keep up to date with our HLF supported project here and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/FriendsofWinters