Research

About us The MOT is short for "Museum voor de Oudere Technieken" or "Museum of Old Techniques". A lot of these so called "old" techniques are coming back into fashion. Low tech is back and here to stay. We try all we can to help this revival.

Half-timbered sheepfold

Prince's castle measured up by UCL students In the autumn of 2016 and spring 2017, a groupe of students of the UCL (Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering and Urban Planning - LOCI Brussels) used the Prince's castle site as a location for a practical internship. Under the motto "many hands make light work" they completely removed no less than two trucks of vegetation from the castle's walls and foundations. This allowed them to accurately measure, describe and draw out the entire site and environment. Based on all these surveying plans, detailed drawings and sketches, they made reconstruction drawings and described in detail the technical and architectural characteristics. In addition, one of the students, Sébastien van Naemen, made a 3D virtual drawing of the whole. This UCL project will be of inestimable value for the further restoration of the site.

Project Bulskampveld Registration and rating of the artisan subcollection in Bulskampveld In 2015-2016 the MOT worked together with the province of West Flanders on the registration of the artisan part of the collection in Bulskampveld. The province called upon the MOT’s expertise for the scientific identification of the extensive collection of tools. The collection had not yet been thoroughly registered and was mostly unavailable for the general public. Every object was photographed, measured and entered into the database by the provincial collectionregistrator. Based on that information, the MOT was able to provide the identification, the description, the rating and an announcement of the object on www.erfgoedinzicht.be. Approximately 6700 objects were registered during the project, making up about 80 percent of the entire collection. Each object was given an extensive description of its shape, function and use. The objects belong to 55 different trades, which illustrates how varied...

Artists at the MOT In the 19th and 20th centuries, many painters took to the outdoors with their easel to immortalize landscapes and buildings on canvas. Grimbergen was very accessible to painters and tourists from Brussels: there was a good tram connection, there were numerous inns and they found the peace that they lacked in the city. From this period dates a rich collection of Grimberg landscape paintings. You can read about them in the book "Grimbergen in de kunst" (1992). The municipality of Grimbergen owns many paintings that depict the Grimbergen landscape and its architectural heritage. Others can be found in private collections. Various reproductions of these paintings were exhibited in the Oyenbrugmolen in the summer of 2018. A year later, paintings of the Prince's Castle were exhibited in the keep. This was the reason for the MOT to photograph those works of art on which the buildings of the museum are depicted. After all, they do not only have an art value, but also a great...