Bristol Museum: Tiger Tiger

On Monday I went to Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery. I also had a rather successful shopping trip, but I'll save that for another day! I have being visiting Bristol Museum since I was a baby, long before it became well known for the Banksy vs Bristol Museum exhibition, which unfortunately I couldn't get in to. A lot of the objects have sentimental value for me as I can remember re-visiting them on a regular basis, although some of the displays have changed now. It's a very old fashioned feeling museum, both in the architectural style and the displays. It reminds me of a smaller V&A, another museum I love-there are similarly eclectic displays of strange objects interspersed with gems such as jewellery, oriental ceramics and beautiful paintings. There is also a new children's area, which I think is a great idea, a lovely café and a very modern exhibition space which shows contemporary artwork on a regular basis. As I love the museum and took masses of photographs, I'm going to do several posts on the different collections. One of the new displays for 2010 is of one man's collection of tiger themed objects, as it is the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese zodiac. There was a huge collection of plastic tiger toys. These are Asian New Year ornaments for the Year of the Tiger, I think they are ceramic. I like the one at the front with the tiny baby tiger. The most impressive tiger object was probably this life sized papier maché model, which was used on a float in a local carnival. It looks really fierce!