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Visitors will see the painting cleaned

Museum marks slave trade abolition

To mark the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade, County Durham's Bowes Museum will be taking a look at the demand for luxury goods linked to the trade.

Revealed: Luxury Goods and the Slave Trade will run at the Barnard Castle museum from 23 March until 29 June.

Among the items on show will be sugar moulds and designs and tobacco graters and tins.

During the course of the exhibition, visitors will be able to watch the museum's conservator work on a painting called Girl with a Dog by Philip Vilain.

There will be items related to tobacco

At the moment the painting is covered with layers of surface dirt that have built up over the years and varnish that has discoloured with time.

The painting features a black servant and the museum aims for visitors to be introduced to the subject as the painting is cleaned before their eyes. The servant is obscured from the viewer's attention and fades into the shadows while the female sitter is bathed with light.

Luxury goods

The exhibition will trace the European demand for luxury goods such as tobacco, sugar and indigo and the development of the transatlantic slave trade using objects from its collection.

Among the items are sugar moulds and designs showing the intricate sugar decorations which were placed on aristocratic dinner tables.

The cane for the sugar was grown in slave plantations in the Caribbean and Brazil and as the number of plantations increased the price of sugar dropped allowing a wider section of society to drink sweetened tea and coffee.

Items related to tobacco will also be on show and through the display visitors will find out more about the Virginia plantations.

There will also be items from the museum's textiles collection, which will be used to explain the history of cotton plantations in America and the UK's textile industry.