There are all sorts of strange things donated to Oxfam bookshops and recently we seem to have had our fair share. 

I have covered this theme before but do you know what, it still keeps happening. All these were donated in the last week.

Here is a microscope, from we think, the mid to late 1800s.

Here is a box lined with what I think (but don’t know) is Japanese script/newspaper – but from what era? 

A pair of shell casings from WW1 – not trench art, just casings, presumably brought home and you have to wonder what was the story behind bringing them back.

The box was donated by a fellow volunteer who won it at an auction at the Australian High Commissioner’s event in Singapore many years ago – as you do.

He (the volunteer, not the commissioner) told me it was the box that had held the surrender papers from the Japanese navy at the end of WWII – but he was joking. 

He had no idea what/when/why it was.

I would like to know what the script says – it is the classified adds from the Tokyo Times in September 1970 or a confirmation this was owned by the under secretary to the under secretary of the Emperor sending out a secret message to Matthew Perry – the first foreigner ‘allowed” into Japan for 200 years?

So, what to do with them?

‘You can do a Japanese table display,’ said my manager.

But we would need Japanese books…

And yes, the next donation she sorted was a bag full of Japanese books – there are some book gods out there….

As for the microscope. It has no name on it so not an absolute treasure, but a volunteer who knows about cameras (close enough) was called in to check it out. 

It was probably a school microscope dating from the mid to late 1800s. Brass, solid, in a box, used and re-used by schoolboys (no doubt, no girls) and who knows whether it inspired a child into science where he (undoubtedly) did some good science work which is benefiting us today….

And, our volunteer found out one like it – for sale on E-bay. Ours has ‘ original patina’ as they say on Antiques Roadshow, but that one was all polished up.

He was sneery about the polishing and thought the original condition would please someone who wanted the original/ripe for rescue microscope –  and very sure that ours will make more than the £94 the other one went for on E-bay.

By serendipitous coincidence, we had already been gathering books to do a window on science and technology and now we have a star artefact/prop.

The microscope will be in an Oxfam window near me in the next few weeks and there will be a lot of fingers crossed hoping that a microscope restorer looking for a new project will be walking around Petersfield…….

Well, we will see and I will tell you.

In the serendipity of an Oxfam bookshop, we had already been collecting books for a window of science and technology through the ages – so the microscope will be out star (non-book) performer.

As for the shell casings.

Well they are not crafted into trench art and so our best hope is that the metal might be worth something – or/and, fingers crossed people, there is someone out there ( book-shopping in Petersfield) who wants some undecorated WW1 memorabilia.

And some William Morris Sanderson fabrics and a pair of curtains.I thought they’d gone out, in and back out of fashion, but turns out they are still worth a bit.

Arts and Crafts, I thought. 

Well, of course, I hear you saying.

But what I plan/hope/can to do with them is for another time.