THIS week, the team at the Live Borders Museum and Gallery, Tweeddale Museum, in Peebles bring us details on their latest exhibition.

Following the recent request through the Peeblesshire News, a willing group of volunteers has been researching selected objects at Tweeddale Museum in a collection of over 16,000.

In addition to writing about their findings, they were encouraged to speculate and add their personal responses.

Museum & Gallery Assistant Chris Sawers said: "Working with volunteers plays such an important part in the success of our programme, and ‘Lives in a Landscape’, our current exhibition, is no exception. We are delighted with the enthusiasm and energy which has formed the varied responses of the volunteers."

Liz Henderson, initially chose a portable shrine for her research, an intricately worked object from the 1500s in the form of an exquisitely carved wooden ball, with inscriptions in Flemish.

She said: "Brought up as a Roman Catholic, I recognised it as a Catholic device, a focus to concentration whilst praying. I saw the carvings were scenes from the Nativity."

Enthralled by the intricacy of its detail, she discovered it to be the work of an English monk, seven years in the making, who died before it was finished. Further research revealed more about forbidden Catholicism in Scotland from 1560 onwards, and of Protestantism being firmly established as the state religion.

Enthused, the basket-hilted backsword, with hilt in a closely twisted design, was a second object to catch Liz’s attention, a weapon thought to be associated with Highlanders who fought in the several Jacobite rebellions.

Liz added: "I discovered weapons such as these were illegal possessions after the Battle of Culloden in 1745. Jacobite supporters hid them, often burying them in peat moors and that many are often found by walkers today."

She marvels at the decorative inscription one side of the blade supporting ‘King James (the) 8’ and on the other ‘Prosperitie to Scotland and Nae Union’.

She also learned that the former owners of the sword were the Naesmyth’s of Dalwick (Dawyck) and Posso, staunch supporters of the Stuart cause.

This Live Borders project, supported by Museum Galleries Scotland, runs at Tweeddale Museum in Peebles until November 25. Volunteers’ interpretation of the objects will be added to the exhibition, further illustrating the lives of people who made, used and sometimes hid objects we now have within our collection. If you would like to know more about volunteering with this project, please contact us on 01721 724820.