BSHP Peter Homan Small Grant Award: The World Turned Upside Down

BSHP Peter Homan Small Grant Award The World Turned Upside Down: Creativity gallery development National Civil War Centre, Newark Museum

 by Verity S R Smith Freelance Curator, Consultant & Writer

Verity Smith

I have undertaken a programme of research, development, and delivery of additional content for the Creativity gallery at the National Civil War Centre (NCWC) focusing on an extraordinary period of creativity during the 17th Century amidst the British Civil Wars. I wanted to focus on concepts and ideas that were conceived in the 1600s, primarily those that have evolved over several centuries since that time and inform the way we live today.

My activity has delivered on this, building on the development of the National Civil War Centre (NCWC)’s The World Turned Upside Down galleries in 2019. With the support of the curatorial team, two of the museum’s academic advisors, and specifically identified external museums and organisations, I have spent periods of time researching significant people and their achievements of the period. I used the museum’s galleries and collection as a starting point widening this to recommended bibliography around specific topics and discussions with immediate colleagues.

Through the Peter Homan Small Grant Award from the British Society for the History of Pharmacy (BSHP), I applied for and purchased the use of two images in the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum collection. These enhance the graphics of the Creativity gallery whilst illustrating to visitors some of the developments in Pharmacy during the 17th Century with accompanying interpretation.

The earliest known English delftware drug jar, 1647 (l); Bleeding Bowl c.1700 (r).  Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum collection.

I have broadened and deepened my knowledge in several topic areas. I have had the opportunity to explore some of the detail of the social history of the period, through developments in astronomy, mathematics, medicine and pharmacy and the individuals who made significant achievements in their respective fields of expertise. It has been fascinating to learn how some of these were fleeting or appeared quickly while others have evolved over the last few centuries.

Some of the individuals I researched only became well known posthumously and their work remains their legacy, influencing those who followed in their footsteps down the centuries. For example, the Atlas Coelestis, is considered the original star atlas compiled by John Flamsteed (1646-1719), the first Astronomer Royal. In addition, he produced the Catalogus Brittanicus (a catalogue of 3000 stars) but these were only published following his death thanks to Flamsteed’s wife Margaret Flamsteed, the first woman associated with Astronomy in Great Britain. John Flamsteed laid the foundation stone for the Royal Greenwich Observatory, home to the Prime Meridian that initiated the global time system that we use today.

Following contact and discussion with Derby Museums and the Norris Museum, St Ives, Cambs, I arranged the use of images (Derby) and the loan of relevant books (Norris Museum) to display in the Creativity gallery. Research trips to other museums have allowed me to consider alternatives approaches to displaying similar subject matter and relating contemporary content to the 17th Century in creative engaging ways. For example, at Millennium Gallery Sheffield, Phlegm: Pandemic Diary documented the artist’s observations of daily life in the Pandemic lockdown of 2020 in the form of 67 pen and ink drawings. I have been able to draw parallels between this and the plague of the 1660s.

This project has developed my research skills and practice and skills through exploring the details of an event, a discovery, or an individual and being able to link it back to the context of the 17th Century, and some instances, the backdrop of the Civil Wars. This enables me with my colleagues and the museum to ‘join the dots’ for those with no prior knowledge of this period and to make it relevant for audiences. This project and developments to the museum’s galleries will empower others to look at the collections and the NCWC differently.