Leeds links to Boston (Massachusetts)

Having just come back from a trip to Boston (purely pleasure - not work, although I did of course visit a couple of museums) I thought I'd check what items we had in the Leeds collections which had connections to that city.

First off is this late Victorian souvenir teapot stand (donated in 1967) featuring the statue of George Washington which still stands in the Boston Public Gardens.

More recently, in 2008, we collected some personal items belonging to a Leeds woman Hannah Bloomfield (nee Fatkin) who was an active Christian Scientist and visited the mother church in Boston in 1934. The bag that she used for the trip is shown below.

Before marriage, Hannah Fatkin was manageress of Field's Coffee House, Commercial Street Leeds. She was a significant figure in the Christian Science movement in Leeds during the 1930s and 1940s.

Last week I visited the Mary Baker Eddy Library in the Christian Science Head Quarters in Boston and in particular saw the famous "Mapparium" which is a glass globe and world map that you can stand inside. It is frozen in time in 1935 which is around the time Hannah visited, so she may have seen it newly installed. The map proved too costly to alter to keep up with the upheavals of the 20th century, so is a snapshot of a vanished world order. http://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/exhibits/mapparium

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