“In 1944 during the Second World War in Burma Martyn Skinner, my grandfather woke up in his tent in the middle of the night to find these two pieces of shrapnel on his pillow. A bomb must had gone off but somehow he was not injured. At the end of the war he kept these two pieces, a symbol of the horror, but also of his survival and took them with him and his family, who had been living in India, back to England. He died the following year aged just 37 due to a heart attack. These two pieces of shrapnel have belonged to the family ever since.”                         

Loaned by George Coney

Together with those two pieces of shrapnel, came other objects for the collection, all of them were included in Smart Gallery online collection. Kept inside a suitcase filled with old memories and objects there were these objects:

Opera glasses: “my mum gave them to me when I was a child, I used them to play with them, they must be Edwardian or Victorian.”

Toy car: chosen by the little girls because it looks old.

A stone: any idea of which mineral this could be?

An old phone: chosen because it is so big and different from the new ones.

Steam Engine: built at school by George Coney, the steam goes into the pipes and triggers a circular movement. “I was proud of it and have kept it ever since.”

Loaned by George Coney and family