This project has received a massive boost with a $100,000 grant from the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board and extremely generous support from a local benefactor. If we can secure additional support from others who see the value of this project then there is no reason why we should not be able to see this project completed in the original 2-3 year timeframe that was worked out in the planning process.
We need your support to continue this significant work. Every donation of $10 will enable us to relocate and digitise at least another three glass plate negatives and make them available online. Your financial support will help preserve this important record of our region's heritage.
If you are able to donate to our campaign please download a donation form here or collect one from the Museum in Nelson or the Research Facility in Isel Park, Stoke. All donations of $5 or more are tax deductable.
You can also donate online here:
Wooden shelving containing glass plates
On 24 November 2010 the Museum launched a project called the Glass Plate Negative Project. The aim of the project is to relocate over 150,000 glass plates negatives from mobile shelving into new industry standard drawers. As part of the process the plates will be digitally photographed and information about each plate electronically recorded for use in the Museum's collection database. The Tasman Bays Heritage Trust made funding available to kick-start the project. We employed three part-time staff to work on the project and in just over five months, more than twenty seven thousand plates have already been photographed and relocated.
This is the second major project involving the glass plates. During the 1980s and 90s a project conducted by a large group of volunteers carefully and systematically re-housed each negative into acid free enclosures onto wooden compacting shelving. The bulk of the plates were allocated unique reference numbers, and information about the image was recorded on the enclosure and into a card index system.
Each plate is digitally photographed building on the value of this earlier project. The Glass Plate Negative Project will result in digital images and database records for each of the plates relocated. The digital images and data produced by the project will become accessible via the Museum's Collections Online website.
Many of the glass plates were donated to the Museum in 1974 by the Nelson Historical Society. The negatives form the basis of what is considered to be one of the most historically significant photographic collections in the country and includes the work of the famed Tyree brothers, William and Fred.
William and Fred Tyree came to New Zealand with their parents in 1871. They moved to Nelson from Queenstown and established a photographic business in Trafalgar Street in 1878. William moved to Australia around 1910. Fred set up a studio in Golden Bay, he also had farming and commercial interests. The Tyree Studio Collection, which includes the work of Rose Frank who worked for the Tyree brothers and then later owned the studio, depicts people, places and daily life in the Nelson and Tasman Regions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Glass plates relocated inside steel cabinets
The project will also include the work of professional photographers William Henry Davis, William Brown, Ellis Dudgeon, Reg and Hugh Kingsford, Geoffrey C. Wood, Frederick Nelson (Pompy) Jones, James R Akersten, Theodor Bloch, Alexander Fletcher, as well as the work by a number of notable amateur photographers such as F.G. Gibbs.
