Blog

This post is part of a series of closer looks at aspects in our current exhibition, Endurance. Here I am going to explore a couple of objects in the case looking at fire safety. The objects that I am looking at take their inspiration from glass fire grenades which were used between 1870 and 1910...

Last week MoDiP opened its latest exhibition, Designated Design: A collection of national importance. It celebrates the wonderful accolade we received earlier this year when Arts Council England awarded the museum Designated Outstanding Collection status. The exhibition is based upon themes taken...

When we curate an exhibition at MoDiP we not only create a physical display but also an online version too. Part of this activity involves photographing objects that are to be viewed and getting intellectual property rights clearances from the designers and manufacturers involved. Writing to...

MoDiP has several pieces in the collection by Anna Castelli Ferrieri (1918 – 2006), the leading female industrial designer in Italy throughout the 1960s-1980s. She began as an architect, studying at the Politecnico di Milano and becoming its first female graduate in 1943. Her husband, Giulio...

Our current exhibition, Endurance , shows how good design and the right choice of plastics materials can play a part in reducing risk to life and help us to survive in a variety of situations. The exhibition is made up of 11 cases the first of which, in the air , features a single object. Gentex...

There is no better feeling than finding an important nugget of evidence about an object, even if it proves we have got something wrong. Ekco U122 radio, 1950. https://www.modip.ac.uk/artefact/aibdc-002557 Due to its age and colouring we had assumed, incorrectly, that the above EKCO U122 radio was...

Earlier in September we attended the Festival of Plastics, held at the Museum of London. This festival was a celebration of the C OMPLEX project which was coming to an end after five years. The project, run by UCL’s Institute for Sustainable Heritage, received funding from the European Research...

MoDiP recently visited the Yunex Traffic manufacturing facility in Poole to talk about traffic lights. The company supply, install and maintain traffic signal and control equipment for the BCP council, and had kindly offered to donate some plastics objects to the museum. We were treated to a tour of...

The enduring properties of plastics materials can have negative connotations, especially in relation to the pollution of land and oceans by poorly managed waste streams, single-use products, and those that are carelessly thrown away. Those same material characteristics can be put to good use to make...

MoDiP has three different examples of plastics NAAFI tokens in the collection. With reference to the image below, on the left is a circular ½ d token, in the centre an octagonal ½ franc token and on the right, a circular green coloured token valid in NAAFI Egypt only. MoDiP’s three NAAFI tokens...