Book description
The Secret Museum is a unique treasure trove of the most intriguing
artifacts hidden away in museum archives from all over the world -
curated, brought to light, and brought to life by Molly Oldfield in a
beautifully illustrated collection.
Who knows what's hidden from view? Locked away in cabinets, secure
storage and aircraft hangars.
Most of a museum's collection never gets seen. It sits in the quiet
dark of an archive waiting for a treasure hunter or obsessive researcher
to root out its very existence. Under the streets of Manhattan priceless
books are shelved; brick outbuildings in London's East End house drawers
of Victorian embroidery remembering foundlings long ago dead; body bags
in Washington clothe space suits covered in real moon dust and in an
unvisited aircraft hangar sits Auguste Piccard's extraordinary
invention, the balloon gondola…
This and many other extraordinary inventions, legacies, discoveries and
artefacts have been visited and curated by Molly Oldfield into a Secret
Museum. Rich in atmosphere and anecdote, suffused with the surprising
emotion of a personal discovery, but grounded in fascinating factual
detail, this is a unique and beautifully illustrated book.
The Secret Museum reveals sixty unknown artefacts and stories from all
five continents, from Rome to Rio and Boston to Berlin. And like the
very best mornings spent at a museum it promises to be idiosyncratic,
surprising and enormously good fun.
The Artefacts in the book include: An original Gutenberg Bible printed
on vellum, Harrison Schmitt's Space Suit, A piece of Newton's Apple
Tree, Van Gogh's Sketchbooks, The original drawings of Wimbledon's
Centre Court, Dickens' letter opener,Three pieces of Mars, and much
more… 'Oldfield's genius is to see that museums have more stuff than
they can display, and to persuade curators to show her their buried
treasures … her cabinet of curiosities reveals very engaging
personality' Times
'[Molly Oldfield] selects 60 of the most interesting and iconic
artefacts from museum archives … and tells their stories in fact,
fiction, history and enthusiastic, interesting anecdote' Saga Magazine
'This gorgeous golden-jacketed book is totally brilliant … It's one of
those rare solution presents too, great for anyone of any age' A Little
Bird Molly has been a writer and researcher on 9 series of the
landmark BBC1 programme QI, presented by Stephen Fry, and has spent that
time honing her ability to bring the most interesting and entertaining
fragments of information to light. She also writes a weekly QI column in
the Saturday Telegraph and researches QI's sister Radio 4 programme, The
Museum of Curiosity.
