Spooky Collection Items

With Halloween fast approaching, we couldn’t resist putting together some of our spooky collection items!

The geometric octagonal shape of the bottle and the colour combination of bright green and silver gives this piece an art deco feel. The bottle, which was possibly made in France, was produced at a time when fewer people purchased individual bottles of this type. This is because commercial scents in their own packaging had become increasingly popular. If you look closely at this stunning green scent bottle, you will notice that it is decorated with a spider’s web, on which a spider and its prey are embellished with marcasite.

This mediaeval stone dates all the way back to c.1300 and marked a heart burial (where the heart was buried separately from the body). Occurring when the whole body could not be transported home or when special reverence was shown for the heart. This grave marker was found incorporated into the wall of a building in New Hall Lane which is still the site of Preston’s cemetery today.

This is the skull of a man who lived in the North West of England around 5,500 years ago. He was around 40 years old when he died but sadly, we don’t know how he died. Interestingly, people who lived in the stone age tended to live nomadic lifestyles, hunting animals and gathering wild foods. They used stone and flint tools and wore clothes made from animal skins.

Another spooky scent bottle in our collection is this clown scent bottle! This scent bottle is one of over 2,700 vessels in our collection, donated by an eager collector – Mrs. French. Throughout her life, Mrs. French amassed a huge amount of scent bottles, ranging from novelty pieces, like this one, to very elegant and exquisite pieces. Thanks to Mrs. French’s efforts and her kind donation, we are home to the largest scent bottle collection in the UK!

Spiders are a popular theme on scent bottles, so we’ve decided to wrap up this blog with another spidey scent bottle, donated by the wonderful Mrs. French!

Harris Your Place

Harris Your Place is a £16 million project set to restore and reimagine the Harris for 21st-century audiences as a cultural learning space. The aim of this project is to protect the building and the architecture for future generations whilst enhancing accessibility options and positioning the Harris as a community hub for Preston and Lancashire.

The capital project is more than simply preserving this much-loved building; Harris wants to ensure that it remains a vibrant heart of the community. A place where people want to spend their time.