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07 February 2025

What’s that? Who made it and when?

Most museum’s will have objects for which they have little or no information about its use, maker or where it came from. Often it is left to lurk in the stores defying a full identification, alternatively it can become a “mystery” object to be brought out to challenge all comers to fill in its missing backstory or simply act as a catalyst for visitor engagement with the collections where a solution to its identity does not really matter.

Wisbech & Fenland Museum has many curiosities within its collections that people may have never come across before. For many of these objects the Museum may have some, if not all, details of its purpose and who made it and when.

For most additions to the Museum’s collection there is detailed information on provenance and the object’s purpose is quite evident. However, this is not always the case and our description of the object may contain many circas, possibles, or probables.

A recent donation to the Museum was known to have been made locally and what it was used for. Can you identify the object?

The object was donated by Jenny Clingo from Outwell and the only information about it was its use. It had been produced to be used locally as a labour-saving device, two of which enabled a fruit picker to carry six chip baskets of soft fruit in each hand. Other than that, it was guesswork – early twentieth century, no maker’s marks, probably not commercially produced (well, it does look like it was a one off knocked up in someone’s shed).

And so, it would have remained, perhaps until a visitor to the Museum, when confronted with “what’s this mystery farm gadget?” replies “ooh, I’ve half a dozen of them, they’re for carrying chip baskets and they were made by….”

However, the solution to the origins of the carrier was provided not by a knowledgeable visitor or researcher but by a piece of serendipity. Whilst looking through the Wisbech Advertiser for a reference to a visit of anti-slavery campaigner Lady Kathleen Simon to Wisbech in 1933, I turned a page and there before me was an advert for “The Tobro Carrier: the Labour Saver on the Strawberry Field” made by Tom Brown of Sutton Bridge (sole maker and patentee), yours for 2/6 each.

I’ll leave it to the Advertiser to provide details of the carrier’s development.

Today the wealth of information available on the internet as well as the ability to search by images means that identifying objects is easier; however, there are still objects out there, possibly unique, which defy identification. But it is still fun to speculate what an object is and as to its origins.