Curator’s Choice

With so many interesting and unique items in Kendal Museum’s collection this part of the website is dedicated to giving you more information about some of the things you can see in the museum.

Alethiometer!

An alethiometer is a device which measures the truth. The word comes from the Greek alètheia for ‘truth’, and meter for measure so alethiometer means ‘truth measurer’.

An alethiometer is given to the leading character, Lyra Belacqua, by The Master
of Jordon College. He tells her that it is a rare device, being one of only six ever made. He did not know that one exisits in the collection at Kendal Museum!

DO NOT TOUCH – it is being guarded by our famous Polar bear and Mrs Coulter’s  ‘Golden Monkey’ dæmon.

It is described in the novel Northern Lights by Philip Pullman thus:

“It was very like a clock, or a compass, for there were hands pointing to places around the dial, but instead of the hours or the points of the compass there were several little pictures, each of them painted with the finest and slenderest sable brush.”