In the lead up to International Museum Day the Grainger Museum has announced that this year’s Melbourne Tweed Ride will be starting at the Museum at 10:00am on Sunday 15 May.
The Melbourne Tweed Ride is a metropolitan bicycle ride with a bit of style. The participants take to the streets in their well-pressed best, and cycle through the city’s iconic landmarks, stopping along the way for tea breaks and a picnic and ending with a ‘jolly knees up’.
Refreshments will be served to participants before departure from the Museum – with gramophone music to get you in the mood.
Percy Grainger was an avid cyclist with a love of tweed. The Museum has a painting by Grainger himself of his beloved bicycle (July 1897) along with both a tweed sports coat and a tweed suit, as part of the 600 items of clothing in their collection.
From the Grainger Museum Curator, Astrid Krautschneider:
In 1897, Percy Grainger was in the second year of his music studies at the Hoch Conservatorium in Frankfurt, Germany. The fourteen-year-old wrote to his father John Harry Grainger (at that time working in Perth as Chief Architect for the Western Australian Government), asking if he might have £10 to purchase a bicycle.
John Grainger wrote back immediately saying yes of course and went even further to suggest he should send extra money to buy a lady’s bike as well for Percy’s mother Rose. It is a charming letter, full of fatherly advice and concerns, including this wonderful piece of wisdom:
“When you ride the Byke [sic] please don’t sit like some idiots do just like a monkey, but sit straightly and gracefully and above all things do not go in for racing hard, it is ugly, bad for your health, and looks disgusting to my mind. And if you get hot you are not to sit about but go straight home, have a bath and change your clothes.”
Event Details
Sunday 15 May 2016
10:00am, meet Grainger Museum, University of Melbourne
Gate 13, Royal Parade
Check out the Facebook page for more information.