COLLECTION: Design

Discover artists and makers ahead of their time.

Design is an integral part of The Bowes Museum, from the very building itself to the collection it houses.

You can see examples of design spanning seven centuries from the 1400s to today.  Ceramics, sculptures, furniture and more.

Discover the makers and movements and see the technologies they created that influence how we live today.

HIGHLIGHTS

Temple Lamp, Indian, c.1867

This brass temple lamp was lit on special occasions like a wedding.
Botanical Cabinet

Botanical Cabinet

For exotic plants collected during an expedition to the Cape of Good Hope
Silver Swan

Not An Ugly Duckling…

Find out the story of the mesmerising Silver Swan in its dedicated gallery.

From the blog

Visit the blog
image of a ceramic bowl

The Bowes Museum of Japanese Art – in Liverpool?!

The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, County Durham [let’s get our geographical bearings right, right from the start] contains the most comprehensive collection of European fine and decorative art in the North East of England. Formed in Paris in the 1860s, its founders – most notably John Bowes’ French wife Joséphine – were keen to cover
23 Jul 2021
Image of the mechanical Mouse

Mice in a museum?

The Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle has many unusual items that are not found in other museums in Britain, let alone in a market town in the north of England. The circumstances of The Bowes Museum being formed in Paris by ex-patriate collector John Bowes and his French wife Joséphine are fairly well-known and explain
18 Jun 2021
Image of yellow ceramic cats by Emile Gallé

Feline fun in the Museum

Museums can appear rather humourless places.  Full of beautiful and fascinating objects, certainly, but how often do they make us laugh, or even smile?  Well, the two pottery or ‘faience’ cats that welcome visitors into the astonishing Ceramic Galleries at The Bowes Museum give me a smile every time.  Small for adult cats, but almost
16 Sep 2020

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