Blythe House Collections

Trip to Blythe House- Archive Collection

Blythe House is basically an extension of The Science Museum galleries that are stuffed with over 15,000 objects, however more than 170,000 more of our objects are hidden away there in Blythe House. Many of these have never been on public display. We went and saw a collection of archives on old prints and how they documented it.

The massive labyrinth of storerooms at Blythe House is home to everything from beautifully crafted telescopes and early examples of operating tables to Stone Age tools and freeze-dried genetically modified animals. Although we were just looking at print and textile samples it was fascinating to know what you could research there.

The basement and the majority of rooms on the ground floor are occupied by objects from the collections of the Welcome Trust, which are artifacts of the history of medicine. The ground floor also houses part of our pictorial collections and then the remaining four floors hold the rest of the objects, arranged by collection.

There are over 90 rooms in total dedicated to holding our objects, from the very small to the very large.

Also at Blythe House is a conservation laboratory, where our conservators work across a range of objects to preserve their condition. We also have a photographic studio, where objects are photographed for our records and publications. There's also a quarantine area (where incoming objects are checked before being transferred to the main rooms) and a research room.

Seeing how they record all there work makes you think that each piece you do should be documented and every fabric sample should be mounted and saved properly. It was helpful to look at this book for our fabric swatches projects on how we can display them. Each book in blithe house was so carefully preserved and each little label attached explaining when and what the piece was and whether it featured anywhere.