Preston: The Harris Museum


Last September I blogged about Preston Guild, an extraordinary city wide celebration which takes place once every 20 years.  One of the events that I attended was the Ladies of the Guild reception where I met a number of interesting women who play a prominent rote in business, local government and the professions in Preston.  One of those ladies was Gemma Rooke, Business Development and Fund Raising Assistant at the Harris Museum and Art Gallery.

The Harris is an important institution for the country and not just the city and region.   It houses several of the works of Preston's best known artist, the 18th century portrait painter Arthur Devis, his son Arthur William who is best known for his Trafalgar paintings and Arthur's brother Anthony who painted landscapes. There are also important watercolours, sculptures and books in the Museum's Fine Art Collection,  Fine Arts, moreover, is just one collection.   Others include archaeology, costume and textiles, local history including everything one could possibly want to know about the Guild and a fascinating collection of scent bottles from the 18th century.

For me the most interesting thing about the Harris is its work in the community which extends way beyond Preston and North West England as The Cotton Exchange Project shows.   One of the events to which Gemma kindly invited me was "Doing Business at the Harris" on 4 Dec 2012. Sadly, I was travelling back from court in London that day so was unable to attend.  The highlight of the event was a talk by John Ward  of Napthens.  

That firm represented the successful party in John Richardson Computers v Flanders and Another [1993] FSR 497 one of the early  cases on copyright in computer software.  One of its current intellectual property practitioners is Benjamin Dredge to whom I have recently linked through Linkedin.

I am looking forward to doing much more work in Preston.   I am planning a half day seminar on recent developments in IP for local practitioners in Spring which will include talks on the new small claims jurisdiction, the patent box and the unitary patent.   Should anyone be interested please call me on 0161 850 0080 or use my contact form. You can also follow me on Facebook, Linkedin, twitter and Xing.

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