Collection: Maidstone Museum and Bentlif Art Gallery

Collection-level records:

• Collection overview (Cornucopia)

  Geology

  The museum holds a fossil collection of national importance, a mineral collection of worldwide in scope and of national importance and a rock collection of worldwide origin.

  Biology

  The Botany collections of c.55,000 specimens comprise a good collection of Kentish flowering plants, which is the best in the county and of national importance. There is also a growing type collection of British flowering plants. The Museum also holds British collections of some critical genera, including Rubus, Sorbus, Taraxacum and Euphrasia, together with moss, liverwort and lichen collections, mainly of Kentish origin. Although moderate in size, these are of county and perhaps national importance. There are developing collections of fungal and algal material, seeds and pollen. The zoology collections comprise c. 98,000 specimens, including the mounted bird collections, which are of national importance and good collections of bird skins, eggs and nests. There are also mounted mammals and mammal skins. The entomology collections of c. 250,000 specimens include the European butterfly collection, together with other insect species. There is a very large mollusc collection of national importance, worldwide in coverage, and of considerable scientific significance. The museum also houses a small collection of historical apparatus connected with the collection, rearing, preservation and study of the various branches of natural history.

  Ethnography

  See also the Japanese Collections under Decorative Arts The Museum’s holdings of ethnography (c.4,000 specimens) are dominated by the nationally-important Brenchley Collection, covering the Pacific area, but with particular emphasis upon the cultures of Melanesia, the Pacific NW of Canada and the U.S.A., and the Alaskan Eskimo. There are also much smaller ethnographic collections, in poor condition, from Brazil, Malaya and Africa. The Museum also possesses a collection of weapons from the SE Asia area.

  Fine Art

  The development of the Fine Art collections goes back to the foundation of the Museum and Art Gallery itself, with donations from a number of benefactors, most prominent amongst who was Samuel Bentlif. Acquisition was most active during the Museum and Art Gallery’s first half century of existence. The strongest part of the collections is that of minor Continental Old Master oil paintings of the pre-1800 period, mainly of Dutch and Italian origin. Representation within the collections of oil paintings of the 19th and 20th century British school is small and insignificant. The Art Gallery’s 1,300 watercolours and drawings are a prominent part of the collections and contain groups of works by the two Maidstone-born artists William Alexander (1767-1816) and Albert Goodwin (1845-1932), as well as David Cox and a number of other 18th and 19th century artists. The Art Gallery possesses important collections of some 3,000 prints. These fall into four main groups, which include works by the 18th-century Maidstone engraver William Woollett, colour prints by George Baxter (a near-definitive collection), a large collection of approximately 2,000 examples of all categories of printmaking from the 16th to the 19th centuries and, finally, a small recently-formed collection of contemporary British prints. The Sculpture collection is at present a small one, and the works themselves are generally small in size. Japanese prints currently number 586 works of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, plus a related book collection, and include prints by such well-known masters as Hiroshige and Utamaro.

  Decorative/Applied Art

  The decorative art collections are large and varied and include the Japanese Collections (c.3,800 specimens), which are exceptional in size, quality and importance and regarded as being the finest collections of Japanese material in public ownership outside London. The bulk of the collection entered the Museum in the first quarter of this century, and the two principal donors, Walter Samuel and Henry Marsham, together covered most of the major fields of Japanese art adequately, with emphasis on the Edo period (1600 – 1868). Netsuke, Inro, Sword Fittings, Bronzes and Lacquer are all well represented in the collection. There is a collection of c.2,000 ceramics and smaller groups of enamel pieces, prints, paintings, costume, a book of small textile samples and a few examples of combs, pipes and pipe cases. The Museum possesses a valuable small collection of late 17th to mid-19th century watches, mostly by Kentish makers, together with a small collection of clocks, nearly all by Maidstone makers. The furniture collection consists of mostly English furniture (mainly chairs, tables, cupboards and chests) of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. There are also a number of pieces that have association with well-known personalities (e.g. Henry VIII, Napoleon Bonaparte and Jonathan Swift). The ceramics and glass collections comprise c.1,700 specimens including English porcelain and earthenware collections mainly dating up to the mid 19th century. The Museum also possesses one of the largest collections of local pottery in Kent, particularly Wrotham ware, whilst the European collection (excluding tin-glazed earthenware) is generally seen as a token collection only. The Chinese collection is very large and generally comprehensive. There is an important collection of 250 glass items and a small group of stained glass (including one particularly important piece).

  Costume/textiles

  The costume collection of c.7800 items was started in the 1950s, and originally consisted of some good examples of 17th and 18th century costume and textiles together with a good basic collection of several hundred 19th century costume items and accessories. During the 1970s a conscious effort was made to develop the collections in the field of 20th century fashion, and at that time Maidstone became one of the first provincial museums to specialise in contemporary costume collection leading to the acquisition of two large collections of couturier and designer garments including pieces of Hartnell, Givenchy and Balenciaga. The collection was further enhanced by the donations of the entire wardrobe of Doreen, Lady Brabourne, consisting of 1,500 items from the 1930s to the 1970s. The “High Street” end of the fashion market has also been comprehensively covered, often by local purchases. In connection with the Carriage Museum collections, a small group of coachmen and footmen’s liveries is held and has recently been enlarged by the rare transfer of a group of similar material from the Victoria and Albert Museum. The museum also holds costume accessories, including headwear, shoes and bags and to a lesser extent male accessories. The needlework collections are varied, reasonably comprehensive, of average to good quality, and contain a number of outstanding early pieces but generally unrepresentative of the 20th century.

  Social History

  The Museum holds collections probably numbering in excess of 15,000 specimens or artefacts which come within the field of Social History and particularly strong domestic themes include housing, heating and lighting, cleaning and maintenance, food and drink, toys and games, textile crafts, music, broadcast and pre-recorded entertainment, writing equipment and smoking. The Oyler collection of sports and games is another outstanding collection, unique in its field. The museum also holds a fairly large collection of material of major local importance, documenting the everyday life of the Borough, local events and celebrities.

  Archaeology

  British Archaeology comprises c.11,000 specimens that are of major local, regional and national importance; they are countywide and are representative of every period from the Pre-historic to the Mediaeval. For some periods (e.g. the Anglo-Saxon) the items are amongst the finest in the country, though for others (e.g. Norman) coverage is much more limited. The collections include that of the Kent Archaeological Society (1,300 specimens), which is of outstanding regional and national importance. The foreign archaeology collections are limited in quantity (870 specimens) and representativeness and consist of a relatively small number of Egyptian, Aegean and Gandhara specimens, including an Egyptian mummy.

  Music

  The Museum and Art Gallery possesses a small collection of 50 musical instruments, including a portable clavichord reputedly owned and used by Handel.

  Ancient Egyptian Collection

  The museum holds 584 ancient Egyptian objects which are part of the Archaeology collection. Classes of objects represented in the collection include: amulets; canopic jars; coffins; coins; flints; funerary cones; glass vessels; jewellery; metal figures; animal remains (mummies); human remains (mummies); pottery; scarabs; cosmetic palettes; shabtis; stelae (stone); stone vessels; textiles; toilet articles; and wooden figures. Objects are known to have come from the following locations in Egypt (with the name of the excavator/sponsor and year of excavation given where possible): Alexandria; El-Amrah (MacIver and Wilkins with the Egypt Exploration Fund, 1900-1901); Ballas (Quibell and Petrie, 1894-1895); Beni Hasan (Garstang with Liverpool University, 1902-1904); Fayum (Seton-Karr, 1901); Ehnasya (Petrie with the Egypt Exploration Fund, 1904); el-Kab; Hierakonpolis (Quibell, Green and Clarke with the Egyptian Research Account, 1897-1899, received 1899); Naqada (Petrie, 1894-1895); Thebes (including Ramesseum).

  Subjects

  Antiquities; Ancient civilizations; Antiquity; Archaeological sites; Archaeological objects; Egyptology; Archaeological excavations

  Numismatics

  The Museum and Art Gallery contains collections of Greek, Celtic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Mediaeval and Modern English coins, Kent tokens, hop tokens, jettons, miscellaneous foreign coins, local commemorative medallions and medals, ranging from the commonplace to the valuable and totalling over 17,000 specimens.

  Arms and Armour

  In addition to housing the military collections of the Museum of the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment (a separately Registered museum) the Museum also possesses its own collection of arms and armour, mainly within the J.S. Williams collection (mostly of swords, but with some armour) and partly by a fairly mixed collection of firearms, a total of some 750 specimens. There is also a collection of weapons from the SE Asia area.

  Photographic

  The Photographic collections (c.200 items) consist of a good basic collection of magic lanterns and slides, cameras and accessories and equipment, together with a small quantity of amateur cine equipment.

  Archives

  The Museum houses a major collection of printed ephemera (circa 12,000 specimens) relating to Maidstone. The collection ranges from the eighteenth century to the present day, but the most comprehensive cover is for the second half of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth.

  Source: Cornucopia

  Date: Not known, but before 2015

  Licence: CC BY-NC