Surprise!

Checking to make sure I haven't been outwitted by moths

By Kasey 






The fortress may have closed for the winter, but we have been hard at work preparing for our new season, which  begins on March 21, 2016.

 

One of our winter projects is getting the Redoubt ready to embark on a transitional journey - one culminating in a restored Napoleonic fortress and a new museum to go alongside it. It is a very exciting time! 

 

In order to begin this process, all of the Heritage Eastbourne objects have to leave the store at the Redoubt and move to a new store at the Town Hall, where the environmental conditions will be easier to monitor.

 

As the museum's Collections Assistant, it has been my job to locate and repackage the objects.

 

Now, I have only been in my post since September, so I am still discovering treasures that have been hidden away in the store for many years. Each box I look in has a new story to offer. I have been delighted, intrigued, perplexed, and sometimes all three at once. Never did I imagine that I would actually be startled. But then, I never expected to find this:

 

And what might this be? Just a leopard in a box 

 

Yes, it is in fact a leopard skin . . . complete with a leopard head, from 1935.

 

This display at the Redoubt shows how the skin would have been worn

We don't know specifics about its provenance, but we think it must have belonged to a tenor percussionist in the Royal Sussex Regimental Band. Animal skins served both a practical and an ornamental purpose in infantry battalion drum corps. Ideally, they prevented the uniform from coming into contact with the instrument. They are still used today, but most regiments opt for synthetic materials instead of real skins.

This animal lover is glad to hear it.

My post-discovery face

Stay tuned. You just never know what I am going to find.