My review of an important volume of essays on the impact of the Suffrage Movement on British politics after 1918 has just come out in the Institute of Historical Research’s Reviews in History.
I was delighted that one of the editors Julie Gottlieb had the opportunity to respond.
Should we be returning to women’s history and is there scope for getting women’s history “out of the ghetto” and into the mainstream?
Books of the Elizabeth Treffry Collection, Hypatia Trust
This week I am leading tours of the Elizabeth Treffry Collection on Women in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly at Hypatia Trust HQ at Trevelyan House, Penzance. Hidden Treasures is a national campaign organised by the Collections Trust in association with the Independent newspaper who featured the campaign in the 2 June edition. About 54 organisations are taking part, mainly museums. Hidden Treasures aims to help give special access to collections that are usually not available to the public. The Hypatia Trust is the only Cornish organisation to open up its collections for Hidden Treasures!
Monday 4 June, Tuesday 5 June, Wednesday 6 June, Thursday 7 June and Saturday 9 June (no tours Friday 8 June).
Tours are free. All welcome. Visitors to Trevelyan House can also view the Redwing Gallery and browse the bookshop. Cornish books available at sale prices! All profits in aid of the Elizabeth Treffry Collection fund.
The Elizabeth Treffry Collection is comprised of books and archives and therefore are not always visually appealing exhibits in the same way as a rare vase or exquisite painting. During the tours I try and get people interested in the subject, explain why collecting on women is important to Cornwall and Scillonian heritage and what’s in store for the collection in the future.
The Hypatia Trust has just started a campaign to fund a new permanent home for the collection in Cornwall and contribute towards creating a free online Index of Women in Cornwall and Scilly that will make a major impact on the way Cornish and Scillonian history, culture, art and literature is perceived, researched and used. We need funds to conserve rare items, especially archives, apply a better standard of curatorial care, furnish a new home and promote the collection to everyone with an interest in women’s and Cornish-Scillonian heritage.
Remember: we are talking about better representation for 51% of the population, past and present!
How’s it going?
The tours were featured in the local press, the Independent, promoted online through our very recent entry into the worlds of Twitter and Facebook and circulated via flyers, emails and word of mouth. Guess what? Word of mouth has won out so far. Today was the first day and we had 14 people turn up, albeit at various times of the day. We are treating the event quite informally and are happy to accomodate and chat to people at any time I or another Hypatia volunteer is available. We want to use this opportunity to get the word out there that the collection exists and what we wish to achieve with it. I’ll look forward to seeing what the rest of the week holds in store.
La Demoiselle Sauvage From King Arthur's Wood by Elizabeth Armstrong Forbes (credit: Hypatia Trust)
My first commission since relocating to Penzance, Cornwall was an audit of the little-known Elizabeth Treffry collection held by the Hypatia Trust that serves to document the lives and works of women in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.
Meeting Hypatia
Having heard much about the Hypatia Trust and its founder, Dr. Melissa Hardie, publisher, author and collector, I wandered into Trevelyan House on historic Chapel Street on a cold January morning to find out more. A warm welcome and two hours of chat resulted in the start of a working relationship and friendship that I hope will last for many years.
…to collect, and make available, published and personal documentation about the achievements of women in every aspect of their lives.
(Ethos of the Hypatia Trust)
The situation I was greeted with goes something like this. The Hypatia Trust exists to further the knowledge of and about women and her achievements. It has a strong basis in understanding women in their regional or geo-historical contexts and so Hypatia exists in several locales, including Hypatia in the Woods in Shelton, Washington in the USA. Its ethos is strongly based in academic and intellectual pursuits and so collecting, especially books, is central to its activities.
Melissa Hardie, in the name of the Hypatia Trust, has already donated significant collections to libraries across the world from Exeter to Bonn, with the sole motive to improve the knowledge and visibility of women in social and historical studies. Other landmark achievements are the creation of the West Cornwall Art Archive with Newlyn Art Gallery and the innovative Cornish Artists Index, a freely accessible online database of artists in Cornwall and their works, past and present.
Elizabeth Treffry Collection at Trevelyan House
Finding a room of one’s own
And so the Elizabeth Treffry Collection is one of Hypatia’s several efforts to turn the tide of male-dominated narratives of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly by actively gathering knowledge about women’s lives and works in Cornwall and Scilly (not just those of Cornish and Scillonian women but all those who have made their lives and home there) and communicating it to a much wider audience through publication, education and participation. The collection’s strengths are in art and literature of the 19th and 20th centuries but its stretches far beyond Daphne Du Maurier and Dolly Pentreath, embracing the Cornish Land Army, women scientists, religion and more besides. And this was part of the attraction of wanting to get involved, to learn more about the relatively silent women’s stories in these enigmatic regions.
The collection comprises books, journals and archives (and a few artefacts) and mainly resides at Hypatia HQ at Trevelyan House with more stuff kept at the Jamieson Library of Women’s History, based in rural Newmill just outside Penzance. Melissa Hardie and the Hypatia Trust wish to tackle the urgent need to find it a new, permanent home where the collection can be publicly accessed, intoning Virginia Woolf’s essay on ‘A Room of One’s Own‘.
But before this search could begin in earnest, and an associated fundraising campaign could commence, a better idea of what the collection comprised and what its future might look like was required. And so I was invited to help Hypatia establish a professional basis for the curation of the collection by conducting a basic audit to quantify it, describe it and make recommendations for its future care and uses.
You can download and read the report to understand more about the collection and what I think its future could look like but I wanted here to write down some of my thoughts about auditing collections and the value of collections in our cultural lives.
