Strathnaver Museum & Mackay Country Community Trust Moving Times & Museum Tales
Strathnaver Museum
Behind The Scenes At The Museum
Artefacts and Artists at Strathnaver Museum
Artefacts
Discoveries are so often made during the course of daily life. For instance - a Bronze Age burial cist containing a cremation beaker was unearthed by road workers at Chealamay, Strathnaver in 1981. The beaker is made of clay and would have held honey or mead. The 'Chealamay' beaker is on display within the museum and the burial cist has been reconstructed in the cemetery by the front door. The ‘Dogskin Buoy’ is probably our most intriguing artefact. Along with an old leather boot which is now known as ‘The Melness Shoe’, it was found in the wall of a house in Melness while it was being renovated. These finds probably date from the nineteenth century. The Dogskin Buoy and the ‘St Kilda Mail Boat’ were featured in the BBC Antiques Roadshow's visit to the Castle of Mey.
The Artists in Residence
During 2012 The Museum was delighted to be in receipt of funding which enabled it to create 5 Artists’ Residency positions. The brief for the appointed Artists was to create new work in their chosen medium informed and inspired by The Museum’s collection. The 'Chealamay' beaker’s clean lines and gravitas has shaped the beautiful work of ceramicist Lorraine Robson during her Residency. Textile artist Joanne. B. Kaar created new work in paper and a vibrant schools and community project around the topic of The ‘Melness Shoe’.
Film maker Will Sadler has engaged with the entwined histories of the resettlement or relotting which was involved in the processes of Improvement and Clearance which created the crofting system through a focus on the now abandoned township of Poulouriscaig near Armadale. His specific focus became the ceilidhs for which Poulouriscaig was so famous.
Visual artist and printmaker Liz Myhill felt that her artistic journey during her Residency was shaped by ‘the marks which had been left in the landscape by successive generations’. She has generated a fascinating geocaching project and original landscape prints through her growing fascination with the interplay of Museum artefacts and books, intriguing items brought into The Museum Antiques Roadshows by members of the public and the many local Bronze and Iron Age remains.
For Déirdre Ní Mhathúna it was the Gaidhlig lore of land and place evidenced through placenames and stories which has informed and shaped her production of deer hide maps and sound stories in the course of her Residency.
