The County Museum Service has used some of the 100,000 photographs taken by John William (J.W.) Tommy' Thomas as the starting point for this exhibition that explores the twin themes of 'labour' and 'leisure' in the 1950s.

Thomas moved to Oxford in 1946, where he set up home in Risinghurst, and there he established his business with a studio at home. And it was in his garden storage shed that some 80,000 of his glass plate negatives were discovered. They were bought in 2001 and then subsequently restored for the county's archives.

Thomas first established a national reputation for the quality of his photographic work when he took photographs of Oxford's historic buildings for use in the Oxford Historic Buildings Appeal in 1952. So, suitably, included in the exhibition is a splendid portrait of Thomas with tripod and camera, on the roof of the Bodleian Library with the familiar silhouettes that make up the Oxford skyline, including the dome of the Radcliffe Camera and the distinctive roof of the Sheldonian Theatre.

But Thomas was also commissioned by local firms and organisations to record their business, their people and to celebrate special events, and it is some of these photographs that provide the real inspiration for this exhibition.

The 'leisure' theme makes use of photographs of Denman College, Marcham, including one in which Women's Institute members are indulging in the complexities of The Filling of Cream Horns, with an industrious application which smacks of 'labour' not 'leisure'. Accompanying all the photographs are a range of household artefacts that were clearly state-of-the-art in the1950s but now look incredibly cumbersome. One such is a clumsy electric mixer, which is purposefully flanked by those curious metal cones that are still used today to make cream horns.

The 'labour' theme draws on photographs of Morris Motors and of John Allen Engineering of Cowley. Motor manufacture in the former and the production of industrial and farming machinery in the latter. The Clubhouse Dance shows leisure as integral to labour, as workmates flirt and socialise.

The exhibition is at Fletcher's House, the Oxfordshire Museum, in Woodstock, and continues until September 22. Tommy' Thomas's photographs are stored at Oxfordshire Studies at the Westgate Library in Oxford. They can be viewed on line (www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/heritagesearch).