To celebrate Museum Passion Day, an event coordinated by the BBC in partnership with the Museums Association, National Museum Directors’ Council and Art Fund, the Museum of Cornish Life team have chosen to share some of the collection’s most interesting objects.

This desk calendar with a difference was chosen by Museum Director, Annette MacTavish:

Annette says, “The object I picked that I feel passionate about in the collection is a really beautiful serpentine desk calendar, and I love it because it reminds me of holidays and it’s a little bit kitsch as well, so at the centre there’s an image of Penzance and on top there is an unidentified fish and we all have our different opinions about what it is! The reason I love it is because serpentine is so central to the story of Cornwall and especially to the Lizard where the museum is based.”

It’s our Customer Service Apprentice’s first week on the job! We asked Nina Verdon which object had captured her interest so far:

Nina says, “After joining the museum this week as an apprentice, the stand out object from the collection, for me, has to be the Cider Press from Trelowarren Estate, circa 1750. You can’t miss it as you walk through the museum, it is absolutely huge! I do enjoy a pint of cider, so for me it’s interesting to see the size and grandeur of the press. I never realised how big they were. Another fact that really amused me was that the labourers were paid in a daily allowance of cider as part of their wages!”

Community Engagement Curator, Isobel King, chose to talk about ‘Henry the Parrot’ and his shipwreck survival:

Isobel says, ‘So, a stand out piece in the collection for me is ‘Henry the Parrot,’ who is actually not a parrot at all, he’s an Australian Galah, and he was aboard a ship called the Socoa, a French ship, in 1906 which unfortunately shipwrecked. It was sailing from France to San Fransisco and of course, going past the Lizard, in the storms it didn’t make it. Henry abandoned ship and he flew to the mainland and arrived at Mount Herman farm and he was adopted by the family and they took him in, and they loved him so much that they kept him, and when he died of old age he was preserved by taxidermy and then they gave him to us. What I like about this story is that I know that galahs are sociable birds, they’re silly birds; they like to play and they like company, so I’m really pleased that he found a family so that he could, you know, enjoy his final days and that he’s now here in the museum with us for life.”

This felted wool jacket from Multan, Pakistan, was chosen by Curatorial Intern, Rachel Haddy:

Rachel says, “For me, one of the stand out pieces in the museum’s collection is a felted wool jacket which was made it Multan, Pakistan, most likely in the Highland regions surrounding the city of Multan. It’s a bit of a mystery as to how the jacket ended up in the South West of England, but it is a beautifully designed piece of costume with a decorative trim and elements of silk throughout. The buttons at the front of the jacket are made from glass and metal and painted a really vibrant red and green.”