Special Collections Museum

Wonderful new object joining our collections! It's even nicer IRL. Opject - Hemispherical Form 1 by Jin Eui Kim.

Our new acquisitions have started arriving for our wonderful collection which showcases innovation in material and process. Always exciting to see student and staff reactions to this material! Rootfull Hanging Vessel @rootfull

Exciting! The museum has acquired a floral, watercolour textile design by Pierre Adolphe Valette from the recent ‘Art Botanique’ exhibition @contemporarysix. Alex Reuben, owner of the Contemporary Six gallery, is a former student of Manchester Metropolitan University’s Art Foundation course and is delighted that future students will have access to the work for their research. The painting will be added to the museum’s growing Valette Archive. It develops our understanding of what sort of artist and teacher Valette was and his broad, European, background in design. It illustrates how the region’s strength in cotton manufacturing brought designers and artists from other parts of the world to Manchester - including some who ended up as students and staff at the Manchester School of Art. The painting also helps to illustrate the historical processes of industrial textile design and production, and complements our existing textiles collections. 🖼️ Eastern Blooms by Pierre Adolphe Valette. Mixed Media, 32.5 x 55.5cm. #painting #watercolour #textiledesign #valette #msoa

Valentines for Galentine’s! 🧡 Lace, flowers, cut-work, cats, gold foil, poetry, embossing, envelopes…. the list goes on! Take a look at these incredibly detailed and decorative Valentine’s cards from the Laura Seddon Collection. Find out more about the collection on our website. #valentines #galentines #card #love #lauraseddon #seddoncollection

Have you seen our great zine collection yet?⁠ ⁠ #zines

Textile sample from the Dunbar Hay shop 1935-1940. ⁠ The wonderful book detailing this endeavour 'Dunbar Hay Ltd, 1935-40, and the achievements of Cecilia Dunbar Kilburn' by Simon Lawrence is available to look at in our Reading Room

The Manchester School of Art received a prestigious medal at the Exposition Universelle in France in 1900. The medal was created by the renowned French medallist Jules Clément Chaplain (1839-1909).