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Bowes Museum
What a magnificent and imposing building, as you turn off the main road from Barnard Castle and into the long sweeping uphill drive. Another location that we've been prompted to visit as a result of numerous appearances on TV programmes, most noticeably through visits by presenters on "Bargain Hunt" and "Antiques Road Trip". If you quickly closed your eyes and reopened them, you could believe that you've been transported to France and are about to look around a large chateau. The latter thought is clearly reflected in the design and scale of the building and one imagines influenced by the time that the builders of this structure, John & Josephine Bowes, spent time in France. The building houses an international standard collection of fine and decorative art. The couple met in France, Josephine a worker at the theatre owned by John. They both shared a passion for the arts, which, grew ever stronger, as did their collecting, especially after they married in 1852. They had the idea to spread the knowledge of the arts, especially in Johns ancestral homeland, the North of England and, in particular in Barnard Castle, where he owned vast acreage of lands. The foundation of the building, which, was meticulously planned and designed, was laid by Josephine in 1869, sadly she died in 1874 along with her wish for John to lay the topping out stone, as he died in 1885, with the building finally completed and opened to the public, seven years later, in 1892.
At least the couple's wish was to come true and over 15000 articles had been accumulated and on display for the general public to admire, then in 1892, and, as is the case today. A most interesting collection of art, furniture, ceramics, and textiles supplanted in the degree of interest, especially at 2 pm, by the elegance and beauty of the performing Silver Swan. As much as wishing to simply visit the museum, not fully aware of the range of its contents, I have to admit that the greater desire was to see and witness the amazing 240-year-old English Silver automaton swan. An automaton only surpassed in design and elegance, according to the museum staff, by the Golden Peacock housed in the St Petersburg museum.
History of The Silver Swan
This musical automaton is much loved and over the last century has become the icon of The Bowes Museum. The Silver Swan dates from 1773 and was first recorded in 1774 as a crowd puller in the Mechanical Museum of James Cox, a London showman, and dealer. The internal mechanism is by John Joseph Merlin, a famous inventor of the time.
It was one of the many purchases that the Bowes’ made from Parisian jeweller M. Briquet, with John paying £200 for it in 1872. John and Josephine first saw the swan at the 1867 Paris International Exhibition where jeweller Harry Emanuel exhibited it.
The American novelist Mark Twain also saw the Silver Swan at the Paris exhibition in 1867 and described it in his book The Innocents Abroad:
‘I watched the Silver Swan, which had a living grace about his movement and a living intelligence in his eyes - watched him swimming about as comfortably and unconcernedly as if he had been born in a morass instead of a jeweller’s shop - watched him seize a silver fish from under the water and hold up his head and go through the customary and elaborate motions of swallowing it...'
Josephine, whose father was a clock-maker, seems to have had a fondness for automata. Whilst the Silver Swan is the best known, there are a number of others including mechanical toys, music boxes and watches with automaton movements at The Bowes Museum. Examples include an early 17th-century lion clock made in Germany, whose eyes swivel, and a mechanical gold mouse, circa 1810, probably Swiss.
The diverse collection spans three floors of the magnificent building and contains items too numerous to list. Whether it is paintings by Canaletto or Goya, porcelain produced at Sèvres, or marquetry attributed to André-Charles Boulle it can all be found at The Bowes Museum, which has received Designated status from the government in recognition of the outstanding collection.
And in addition to all of the above, they also boast favourable catering facilities, housed in the ground floor corner of the building, offering a range of lunch and teatime treats, of which we partook.
