Posts by date: March 2014

Here comes the Sun

Guest post by Caroline Whitehead. We all need something frivolous in our lives now and again, and this month I’ve been working with some of the most frivolous things in Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums’ Costume & Textile Collection… Read more

Roman Bridge souvenirs

  Not souvenirs of a Roman bridge, but souvenirs made from a Roman Bridge! This object, thought to be a letter-opener, comes with a signed certificate to identify it as a souvenir made from wood recovered from the Roman bridge over the… Read more

Persian New Year

Ethnographers do not exclusively study historic cultures, or ‘world cultures’ or cultures different from our own. Ethnography simply means ‘study of human cultures’. That is a pretty broad remit. For me, one of the most exciting aspects of ethnography is… Read more

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

People have done crazy things for beauty for millennia. In Ancient Greece and Rome, people bathed in mud and crocodile faeces to tone their muscles and keep their skin youthful. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Japanese married women dyed… Read more

Was your ancestor a Sunderland freemason?

Last year the Archives was delighted to receive on deposit the historical records of the Phoenix Lodge, Sunderland. The origins of this freemasons lodge date back to 1755, when the King George’s Lodge was constituted. The Lodge met in public… Read more