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.

Support from HLF East Midlands

The Heritage Lottery Funded Volunteer Room

Winter's used to have a suite of darkrooms running across the back of the building. With the advent of digital photography and imaging, these wet processing rooms fell out of use. The colour darkroom was set up in Mr Winter's old private office. Being a dark room we didn't see it much but this is what it ended up looking like:

Over a period of four months the layers have been laboriously peeled back, and restored to a workable office space for our HLF project volunteers. The insulation had to be stripped off the walls which revealed the old fire place, sash windows, and a secret doorway!

Once this was done, we were able to rebuild the room back from the bare-brick. Our builder, Jason Toon, worked hard to create the perfect finish:

All this labour that has been going on in the background means that these specially trained volunteers...

 ...can use this room....

 ...to turn these...

...into this!

Follow our blog to keep up-to-date as we scan and publish more images!

Photo Heritage Evidence

FORMAT Festival 2015 is up and running!

There are two ways to access Winter's archive during Derby's international photography festival:

Artist Debbie Cooper has produced a beautiful exhibition using images from large format old glass plate negatives discovered in Winter's cellar.

Sneak preview of the @formatfestival greenhouse from my @WWWinterLtd residency funded by @ace_midlands pic.twitter.com/lFL4HQ3gLL
— debbie adele cooper (@debbie_cooper) March 8, 2015

Inspired by the war time practice of recycling glass from negatives to build green houses, Debbie has re-imagined an architectural space in the form of a hexagonal glass house printed with portaits from Winter's.
The sense of light brings these images to life in a very personal way. Photography allows us to observe the face intensely without fear of social embarrassment, and gives us the space to reflect, 'who is this anonymous person / who am I?', letting our imaginations grow.

Tours* around the Winter's studio allow the public to further investigate the most important part of Derby's heritage; its people.

On display around the studio are many portraits spanning the history of the business over the last 150 years, as well as cameras and lenses. The original daylight retouching studio will be open to view, and take a turn around the large photo studio to see some of the old hand painted backdrops and props.

*Book your tour place via the Quad box office, and browse the FORMAT festival website for all the exiting events and exhibitions over the coming weeks. We look forward to seeing you!

Tours for FORMAT 2015

Tour dates and times have been announced!

During international photography festival FORMAT 2015, W.W. Winter will be running tours around the studio and building. One—hour tours will be available to visitors to explore the building and discover a history of photography, equipment and images in the studio's archive.

Booking Essential

Book through the QUAD box office on 01332 290 606 (places are limited to 15 per session).
Tours will take place at 12noon and 2pm on the following dates:
Saturday 14 March
Saturday 21 March
Wednesday 25 March
Tuesday 31 March
Thursday 9 April

Please note the tour includes at least one flight of stairs.

Artist in Residence

We are also delight to announce that artist in residence, Debbie Adele Cooper, will be exhibiting her Winter's inspired work at St. Werburghs Church, Cheapside, Derby (close to Derby Museum). Read about her work on the FORMAT website here, and follow her project on twitter:

Sneak preview of one of the dry plate glass negatives made at thephotoparlour for @formatfestival only… http://t.co/0sr4BgjlzB
— Archive Artist (@archive_artist) February 19, 2015

We look forward to seeing you!

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

Revealing in 2015...

Yikes it is 2015 already!

We are looking forward to the pace picking up in our Photographic Archive Project.
January sees the first 'Collections Care Workshop' for our volunteers. They will be trained up in cleaning, packing and caring for glass negatives, learn about the history of glass negatives and Winters, and get some hands-on experience.

With our enthusiastic volunteer team behind us, we can then start revealing the images in the archive and find out what they might mean for Derby.

It is going to be a gradual process but we excited about tying the community history into the photo archives and sharing them with the county!

Lovely old view up Iron Gate to Derby Cathedral

Unearthing History

Archiving Project

Time for a quick catch up on our Heritage Lottery Funded archiving project. We have had wonderful support and volunteers are champing at the bit to get started. However, in trying to make a viable space for people to work we have run into a bit of a road block....

The cellar underneath the new archiving room-to-be.

As you can see there is a huge pile of rubble still to shift, but we need to clear it in order to insulate the room above. This section was completely full - the doorway was completely blocked. As clearing has commenced we have found many artifacts, including complete glass negatives, old bottles and packaging. It look like it was used as the on site dump and we are being careful to sift through as we go.

Anyway, now that we know what we are up against we are creating a temporary space for volunteers to work in the office so we can get on with the actual archiving. Opening the workroom proper will have a to wait a little while but will definitely be a cause for balloons and a few bubbles when we achieve it!

Some of the waste glass that has been shifted below the new work room. It stands around a metre deep.

Glass plate negatives, old chemical bottles, and packaging are being salvaged.

The negatives we really want to start working on