Cabinet of Curiosities
The Phillaneum Gazette Issue 5 – The Decorative Furniture Panel Special begins with furniture and ends somewhere much larger, exploring ornament, atmosphere, craftsmanship, and the emotional warmth that decorative interiors continue to bring to modern life.
Explore vintage exhibits, curious artefacts, and forgotten stories. Each piece is paired with modern insight, inviting fresh discoveries across craft, technology, culture, and imagination.
Arts & Crafts
Would Victorians
Recognise Makers?
Arts & Crafts
Newsletter (Aug 2026)
An Unfinished
Conversation (2026)
Apostles of Art
William Morris (1902)
Vintage Technology
The Invention That Could Change Beer Forever
7 Victorian Era
Analog Computers
How to Read a
Victorian Patent
5 Arctic Airship
Expeditions
Culture
What Was Victorian
Life Really Like?
7 Rare Victorian
Measurement Units
4 Victorian Dishes
We'd Never Eat
6 Common Victorian
Children's Games
Recently Updated Artefacts
This section highlights recently added and revised artefacts within the collection. It offers a view of ongoing work, where new material is introduced and existing pages are refined, extending the connections between items and strengthening the structure of the archive over time.
Guildhall Exhibition
English & French Painters
Electro-Magnetism
Engineer & Inventor
Designer notes on decorative panels [1902]
Old Furniture Jacobean
& Other Styles [1902]
From the Curator's Cabinet
Explore the Jacobean furniture collection
Curated Journals
These curated journals organise material by theme, assembling articles and artefacts into coherent groupings. They invite the reader to move beyond individual pages and observe how ideas, forms, and practices connect across the collection.
The Phillaneum Gazette Past Issues
Past issues of The Phillaneum Gazette bring together themed selections of articles, artefacts, and notes into cohesive editorial editions. Each issue reflects a moment of focus within the collection, offering a guided reading that connects material across topics and reveals patterns through curated arrangement.
The Phillaneum
Gazette 005
The Phillaneum
Gazette 004
The Phillaneum
Gazette 003
The Phillaneum
Gazette 002
Topical Newsletters
Featured in the Museum Shop
Inspired by William Morris and the Arts & Crafts movement? Continue the experience beyond the page with our exclusive William Morris Portrait Library Tote Bag. Perfect for carrying books, sketchpads or daily essentials, it is a practical keepsake for readers, artists, designers and museum lovers alike—a distinctive way to carry a piece of Arts & Crafts history wherever you go.
At the Curator’s Table
Every collection has a backroom. Before articles appear neatly arranged within the Phillaneum, they pass across the Curator's Table, where forgotten magazines are rediscovered, obscure references verified, and new ideas tested before publication.
With the Decorative Furniture Panels editorial cycle complete, attention has turned to strengthening the collection itself. Over the coming months, vintage magazines will be revisited, selected legacy articles refreshed with newly discovered material, and stronger links created between related journals, people and historical themes.
Current Editorial Priorities
- New story — The Story of the Unknown Church [Published]
- Refresh — Apostles of Art — William Morris [Complete]
- Refresh — Electromagnetism from Engineer and Inventor [Complete]
- Refresh — London Guildhall Exhibition from The Builder [Complete]
- Refresh — 5 Incredible Legends That Shaped Mexican Folklore [Not Started]
- Refresh — Influential Female Figures in the Arts and Crafts Movement [Not Started]
- New article - An Unfinished Conversation: A Victorian Farewell [Published]
- New article - 5 Forgotten Victorian Superstitions [Published]
- New article - 7 Unusual Victorian Occupations [Published]
- New article - 6 Common Victorian Children's Games [Published]
- New article - 4 Victorian Dishes We Would Never Eat Today [Published]
- New article - 7 Victorian Measurements Rarely Used Today [Published]
- New article - 5 Types of Witches in Victorian Folklore [Published]
- New article - 10 Famous Victorian Singers We Can Never Hear [Published]
- New article - 15 Victorian Designers, Artists and Makers Worth Knowing [Published]
- New article - 5 famous artefacts from the 1800s that are lost forever [Published]
- New article - The day London smelled of chocolate. [Ideation]
- Booking in another great debate with the senior editorial team [Not Started]
The Curator's Table is intentionally unfinished. Some ideas will become featured exhibitions, others will quietly disappear back into the archive, while a fortunate few will uncover forgotten corners of history that deserve to be remembered once again. If you enjoy discovering what lies behind the exhibition cases, this is where you'll find the next clues.