About

“Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life.” Marcel Proust

The Museum of Thin Objects contains a weave of stories: some personal, some historical, some real, some imaginary. Often the stories co-exist – just as they do in life – as a collage of our personal perception of the world around us.

To me a Thin Object is a focusing point, a point of connection where I’m likely to experience a transition from the mundane and known to a state of mind where we feel and think significantly differently and where there’s a strong sense of the past being still present. A Thin Object takes me beyond myself and closer to wonderment. Or silence.

A Thin Object need not be a valuable, overtly beautiful or sacred, it may not be universally acknowledge as outwardly significant at all – an old postcard, an old boat, corrugated iron sheds are all part of my personal pantheon of Thin Objects, with each able to transport me to a qualitatively different place. My thin objects speak to me, they relax me, they unmask me, and through them there’s a chance to feel more comfortable in my own skin.

Originally called Eileen Inlanding, the blog initially shared the story of my family’s renovation of a 1903 Birmingham Canal Navigation iron day boat called Eileen – it still follows that renovation – however the process of coming to terms with and getting to know the boat opened many doors and, over time, the blog renamed Slowboat and then the Museum of Thin Objects, has expanded to accommodate other interests that include, in no particular order:

geneology; deltiology; documentary; folklore & art; landscape; language; vernacular architecture; old maps; journal writing; list making; digital sunshine; photography; natural history; poetry; industrial heritage and psychogeography…