Professor Simon Olding, Director of the Crafts Study Centre

We are very pleased that our good colleagues at The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) at Reading University are exhibiting the works from ‘Shoulder to the Wheel’ exhibition until 5th April 2020. The MERL has taken an innovative approach to displaying the contemporary wheels, situating them in the context of their majestic line of heritage waggons, so that the contemporary counterpoints the past. In addition, the museum has edited extracts from the ‘In Conversation’ between Curator Dr Glenn Adamson and the wheelwrights for our show: Gareth Neal, Greg Rowland (joined by his journeyman, George Richards and his father, Master Wheelwright Mike Rowland, and Zoe Laughlin. It is an inspiring conversation about process, practice and the still vibrant craft of wheelwrighting and the relevance of historic methods to new modes of enquiry.

https://merl.reading.ac.uk/explore/online-exhibitions/shoulder-to-the-wheel/

Image courtesy of Museum of English Rural Life

The Crafts Study Centre has published a catalogue to accompany the exhibition (£10.00 available from CSC reception) and it contains an essay by Glenn Adamson and a very fine longer essay by Dr Paddy Bullard from the University of Reading which sets George Sturt’s important book ‘The Wheelwright’s Shop’ into its literary and historical context.