What’s in the box? at Hove Museum

What connects a mummified toad, a frog mask and a bat-adorned belt buckle? They all feature in the latest What’s in the box? display at Hove Museum.

As eclectic as ever, the display brings together diverse objects from Brighton & Hove Museums’ stored collections. Reflecting the varied activities and projects of the Collections and Conservation teams, the latest picks came to light during inventories, collections care checks for mould, cleaning and store moves.

Dominic installing the frog mask – the mask was possibly used in an ‘end of the pier show’ in the 1920s

Ceramic inkwell featuring a clown’s face, 1800s

A selection of objects from the Natural Sciences collection can be admired at Hove Museum whilst waiting for the Booth Museum of Natural History to reopen in February 2027. See the ‘toad in the hole’, a large flint nodule split in two and containing a mummified toad, recently returned from an international loan to the Bruce Museum in Connecticut, USA. Discover its story and connection to the Piltdown Man hoax.

Other fascinating objects include ceramics with human faces and a Chinese fire pot, whose potentially hazardous contents were removed in the past year. Further surprises come from the Archaeology, Costume, Decorative Art, Toy and World Cultures collections.

The magic lantern box opposite contains its own illuminating display of curiouser and curiouser items. It features lantern slides from an Alice in Wonderland set in the Media and Film collection. These reproduce some of John Tenniel’s vivid and iconic illustrations on the first editions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland novels.

Make it your ‘porpoise’ to take a look!