25/09/2026
The continues and our curator Val has come up with something a little different to what you might expect!
When you hear “star object”, you might picture something ancient, ornate or priceless…
Ours is a milk carton. 🥛
During our Hidden Gems exhibition in summer 2025, our volunteers delved into the museum stores and chose objects they felt deserved their moment in the spotlight.
Our Chairman, Duncan, picked a glass milk bottle from J. A. Grant’s Grantown dairy, pairing it with this milk carton from Auchernack Dairy Farm, Grantown-on-Spey – which also happens to be a favourite of our curator, Dan.
They might look like ordinary objects, but today they tell a much bigger story. There are no local dairies left in Grantown and very few dairy farms, making these everyday remnants of local life increasingly significant.
And the carton is particularly special. Unlike a glass bottle, there was little reason to keep one. They were difficult to clean, designed to be used and discarded, and very few are likely to have survived.
That’s what we love about small museums. 💛
Our treasures aren’t always silver bowls or portraits of lairds. Sometimes, it’s the ordinary, uniquely local things – the things nobody thought to save – that tell us the most about how people actually lived.
So, for this month’s , we’re giving the humble milk carton its well deserved moment in the spotlight. 🥛
Not bad for something that was supposed to end up in the bin!
We reckon Nairn Museum and Historylinks Museum, Dornoch, Sutherland should have a bash next!
Museums and Heritage Highland
