Small Performances team members, Caroline Archer-Parré, Ann-Marie Carey, Maciej Pawlikowski, Liam Sims and advisory board member, Malcolm Dick, were invited to attended a ‘Specialists Day’ at Nottingham Industrial Museum to observe two rather carriages. Organised by the Carriage Foundation in conjunction with the Baskerville Society were were invited to a close-up observation of the collection’s two horse-drawn carriages once thought to have been built in the seventeenth century and to have belonged to the landed Baskerville family. Excitingly for us, new research has led to re-dating and ascribing of the carriages, which we are now 95% certain once belonged to John Baskerville the Printer (no relation to the landed Baskervilles) and were built, in Birmingham, in the mid-eighteenth century. This is exciting, because the carriages are the only extant evidence of John Baskerville’s domestic life and, potentially, of his work as a japanner. The specialists came from diverse institutions—The Science Museum, The Carriage Foundation, The National Coal Mining Museum, University of Cambridge, Birmingham City University and independent carriage restoration specialists, Fairbourne Carriages —and discussed the carriages from the perspectives of history, manufacturing, design, making, materiality and conservation. The team are now reflecting on the next steps which includes fund raising to enable the carriages to be moved ‘home’to Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery.
