The working life of Museum of London

In response to Nigel’s post, ‘Life as a medieval and later pottery specialist in the Museum of London Archaeology Service‘, mary lane garmon said:

What an incredibly interesting article! I recently visited London and found some pottery shards on the banks of the Thames, in particular a pie shaped piece of white clay, very rough, covered on all sides with a translucent green glaze. It looks like something used in a kiln. Do you have any idea about what this might have been used for? Thank you.

addendum: a pie piece shape, triangular I meant to say, as if it had been cut from a circle, and fits in the palm of the hand. It is less than an inch thick.

Nigel responds, “is it possible to send an image? If not, then your observation could be correct, between the 17th to the 19th century, the south bank of London had many pot houses making stoneware and tin-glazed wares. The waste products from these industries are commonly found on the Thames foreshore, something I’ve witnessed on my own wanderings on the banks of the Thames”.

While I had Nigel in my office, I asked about the difference between sherds and shards - are they the same thing? Yes, was the simple answer. Shards is jargon from the antique trade, and sherds is an archaeological term.

If you have questions about the Museum of London, Museum in Docklands, LAARC, or museum and archaeology jobs, I’ll do my best to get answers for you. You can leave questions in comments or via the email contact form.

Previously, someone asked “who edits museum exhibit text?”.

The answer from Roz in the Department of Early London History and Collections was:

“The text is written by whichever curator(s) is/are responsible for the gallery or exhibition in question. Then various other people have a look at it - usually the Director of Public Programmes, Design and Exhibitions (or the external designers, if used), and Community and Audience Development/Learning. For some temporary exhibitions, Outside Edge, for example, the text is written by an external curator, then edited in-house.”

You can see some of the other jobs curators do in these photo sets.

You might also be wondering which LAARC object was chosen as April’s Object of the Month - the answer is on the archaeology page.