Today’s Willett is Henry Willett, a founding father of Brighton Museum, and reportedly “a man of great energy, enthusiasm and wide-ranging interests.” Born in Newhaven, the youngest of 11 children, he moved to Brighton in 1841, where he ran the West Street Brewery. By the end of his life, he was worth an impressive £230,000.
Willett collected fossils, natural history specimens, archaeological artifacts, and paintings. Among the objects of his interest were pottery and porcelain illustrating British popular history. In all, he collected about 2,000 pieces dating from 1600 to 1900, based on his thesis that “the history of a country may be traced on its homely pottery.”
Today, the Willett Collection of Popular Pottery is displayed at the Brighton Museum–and you can view all of the objects in it online.
The photo shows Henry with his granddaughter Joyce sometime in the 1890s.
