We hope you’ll enjoy the first two of our online exhibits showcasing aspects of our collection of artifacts and documents. We have been hard at work over the past few years digitizing our collection – first in museum software which we ran locally, and now in CatalogIt which allows us to easily mount online exhibits and show the community and beyond at least a small portion of our extensive collection.
First up is part of our collection of Holiday cards – Christmas and New Year’s cards dating back to the 1880s. It’s interesting to see that in the 1880s, Christmas cards often didn’t employ the iconography we’ve come to associate with Christmas – and instead were illustrated with paintings of flowers. At least one of our cards is an 1880s card from S. Hildesheimer & Co., in the UK. Siegmund Hildesheimer was very influential in the growing popularity of Christmas cards, which were first sent in the 1840s. The Victoria & Albert Museum in London has more information on the history of Christmas cards.
We’ve also assembled a small collection of winter scenes in and around Newcastle and we will add to those soon. (We have quite a few that have yet to be added to the catalogue).
View online exhibits