Problem - a true museum piece!

[Peter Symons]

Hi - just joined as a guest! So I have a challenge - I live on the Thames in Wargrave, right beside the Hennerton Backwater and the area visited by Nick Dennis in June - love his shots. Long-term canoeist - my father competed in the C2 1,000m event at the 1948 Olympics - with an 18' Old Town wood & canvas and a Henri Vaillancourt birchbark. My problem is I own the beautiful poker-worked Strickland canoe in the River & Rowing Museum at Henley-on-Thames - she's been there as an exhibit ever since it opened - and the museum is sadly closing in September 2025. It's an antique and really needs to go to a new, appropriate home. The canoe can be seen on the web. Anyone any ideas?

 

[Benson Gray]

Welcome, one obvious solution is to find another museum that wants it. Another option is to see if Nick Dennis knows anyone who can give it a good new home. If all else fails then a good auction house can usually move it along. The bad news is that most people here are on the wrong side of the ocean. The link at https://collection.rrm.co.uk/objects/4291 shows the canoe. Good luck and let us know how this story ends.

Benson

 

[MGC]

Peter,
That canoe is indeed beautiful. Until I saw the image of the canoe, I was at a loss to understand what poker-worked implied.
I wonder if you know anything about the history of your canoe and how it came to be so highly decorated?

 

[Peter Symons]

The canoe originally belonged to someone in London who kept it at Val Wyatt's Boatyard in Wargrave, just down the road from me. He/she used to come down from London regularly to take her out on the Hennerton Backwater and the Shiplake to Marsh Lock stretch of the Thames. That would have been in the 40's and 50's, possibly before. Then they stopped coming apparently - guess they passed away - and it was stored in the rafters at Val Wyatt's for many years. The yard owner, Bill Wyatt, was a friend of my father's and asked if he would like it - better used than not - so it passed to our ownership in about 1970. My father died in 1984 and it came to me. I used it several times, but it's an antique, a work of art! So when the R&R Museum opened in Henley, I loaned it to them although it stayed in my ownership. It's been on display there since 1998, and is the right place for it. Sadly the museum is closing, so at the present time it is destined to return to my garage! I would love to find another museum or collector who would appreciate her, here or even across the pond ...