Pop-up parlour will celebrate city's beauty

For the first time, artworks that have been shown at the Millennium Gallery - as part of the recent In the Making exhibition - will be displayed in the parlour on The Moor for people to see up-close. There will also be the opportunity for visitors to ‘Ruskin’s Use & Beauty Parlour’ to have a go at a range of artistic techniques themselves, including metal-working, making crystal gardens and weaving wool bowls with a series of professional Sheffield craftspeople, who are usually based at Persistence Works studios. Passers-by will also be able to take part in drawing mini-pictures of the Moor, adding a patch to a Moor Makers’ blanket, and finding an object of natural beauty to hang on the Moor Beauty branch. Seeds from grasses and flowers suspended around the parlour can be collected and taken home to plant and, those who make something, will have their picture added to the City of Makers gallery.

Ruth Nutter, producer or Ruskin-in-Sheffield - an annual programme of events and activities to rediscover the legacy of John Ruskin in Sheffield - said: “This is an initiative of the Guild of St George, funded through a Year of Making commission, and Arts Council England. On display in the parlour, people will be able to see reproductions of images from the Ruskin Collection, the Guild of St George’s collection of paintings, drawings, minerals, rare books and illuminated manuscripts established to inspire and educate Sheffield’s Victorian metal-workers.

“The collection is on permanent display today at the Millennium Gallery, where it continues to inspire artists and makers.”

The parlour will open on July 30 to August 12.