Today we are launching our campaign to raise funds to help preserve and make available the Rex Wailes Collection. Read on to find out more about this significant collection and how you can help to conserve and make the gems in his collection publicly accessible.
We received the Rex Wailes Collection after long-term talks with the Science Museum, who had housed the material since Rex’s death in 1986.
We are so thrilled to have this collection in our safekeeping, and we are passionate about making inroads into the material so that researchers can learn more from its unique records. Now we need your help to turn our dream into a reality sooner rather than later.
There is much to do before we can make the contents of the collection publicly available. The collection is vast, its items must be inspected, recorded, repackaged and assessed for potential repair, before being digitised so that people around the world can learn from and enjoy the history of mills and milling that this collection represents.
Much material relates to Rex’s work to document the state of mills during the 1920s, and initial inspection is already turning up some fascinating threads to some of the other mill stalwarts of the 20th century – more to follow on this in future blogs!
We have committed to housing the collection, which has been made possible by the support of Perendale Publishers, who produce the monthly “Milling & Grain” magazine (its predecessor was the journal known as “Milling”). We have also applied for a small grant to help us make some emergency repairs to several of the large drawings.
However, to be able to make the collection available to the public as soon as possible, we need your support. Any donation will make a difference.
To find out more about the collection, how you can help, and how to make a donation, please visit new.millsarchive.org/rex-wailes-collection-appeal/
If you have any questions, please do get in touch with us.