National Museums Liverpool Blog - Friday, April 13, 2007

Just seen this interesting article on the Stanford University School of Medicine site. An ophthalmologist there is interested in the relationship between art and eye disease - he's even written a couple of books on the subject. He's now gone one step further and recreated artworks as the artist would have seen them, suggesting that the work we see now isn't what the artist intended. He's concentrated on Degas and Monet because, as he explains, they had well documented conditions, and has put together a slide show of what he thinks they would have seen - it's pretty interesting.

Poster, accession number RD00042.0011

I'm not a gambler but even I've been known to splash out a 50p each way bet at the Grand National occasionally, using the very scientific method of choosing the horse with the nicest name.

When the former Museum of Liverpool Life was open, a popular exhibit was the recreation of Becher's Brook in the in the Sporting Life section of the Mersey Culture gallery. Looking up at the height of that fence really brought home just what an achievement it was to make it safely over once, let alone twice to complete the race.

Did you know that Becher's Brook got its name at the very first meeting in 1839. Captain Becher was a champion cross-country jockey, but his horse Conrad fell at the first brook. Becher re-mounted and continued the race, only to fall at the second brook! He never rode in the race again, but his name lives on.

Curator Kay Docherty has found this Liverpool Corporation Passenger Transport poster in the museum's collections, advertising special tram and bus services to Aintree for the Grand National sixty years ago, on Saturday 29th March 1947.

You can also read a personal account of the 1993 Grand National, famous as the race that never was, from my fellow blogger Stephen Guy, who was one of the journalists covering events at the time. His account is part of the Sport online exhibition. Fingers crossed, things will go more smoothly this year. I might even win something.

It was with a heavy heart - and an even heavier gut - I had to order myself to step away from the Easter egg last night, listen to the feelings of nausea and save the rest of its shell of creamy loveliness for another day. If like me you devoured the weight of a small motor-home in chocolate over the weekend your thoughts may be turning to the world of points counting, soup eating and general misery that is diets. Don’t do it.  I’m glad to report that American researchers have discovered that diets actually make you put on weight. A balanced diet (including a small amount of antioxidant rich chocolate naturally) and exercise are the way forward - which is why I’m prescribing a course of LoveSport at World Museum Liverpool to all you Easter egg gluttons. It's only open for a couple more weeks so catch it while you can and trust me, sinking a couple of points on the Hectic Hoops and a quick burst on the Tour de France simulator has done me the world of good. I definitely deserve the rest of that Easter egg tonight.

The new ramp at the (soon to be) new entrance to the Lady Lever Art Gallery.

Changes are afoot at the Lady Lever Art Gallery. Last week saw the installation of a new ramp for visitors who can't manage the steps. This photo shows work in progress at what will be the new entrance - it's to the right of the front entrance as you currently look at the building. The new entrance and foyer will be a big improvement on the current cramped, inaccessible one, and will lead people right into the heart of the building. Fans of the building should rest assured that all of these changes are totally in keeping with the building and its listed status. More on the improvements we're making to the gallery are on the main site.

Update 10.04.07: sorry, that should read 'to the left of the front entrance as you curently look at the building', so that's the west side of the building.

Detail of the Titanic model in the Merseyside Maritime Museum

95 years ago today, on 10 April 1912, a certain ship left Southampton on a voyage for New York that ended in tragedy just four days later.

It's a well known story and I'm sure many of you will have seen the films and bought the t-shirts already. However, did you know that the Titanic is actually a Liverpool-registered ship, and carried the city's name on her stern? This was because her managing company, the White Star Line, had its head office in James Street, Liverpool.  About one in ten of the crew on her last voyage were either from Liverpool or based in the area. You can find out more about the Titanic's Liverpool connections on our website.

If you haven't seen Merseyside Maritime Museum's recently refurbished Titanic, Lusitania and the Forgotten Empress gallery yet then this week is a good time to go, with a series of free events to commemorate the anniversary of the sinking. There's an adult learning day tomorrow, a chance to meet one of the crew (played by our roleplayer) on Saturday and a spotlight talk on Monday. For more details, times etc see the Maritime Museum's What's On page.

Me admiring the ware. If you look carefully you can see the tower of Bidston Hill and the flags I mentioned. Image courtesy of the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo.

The handling of antique and historic china and pottery has to be done with great care, so is something to be avoided by me, Stephen Guy, who has been known to break quite a few things at home.

Exciting seafaring times when Liverpool was growing into one of the world’s greatest ports are recalled by the images on pottery produced in the town. During the 1700s Liverpool had many factories making all manner of dishes, bowls, jugs and mugs which often featured nautical subjects. Most were made for export and archaeologists excavating sites in America often find broken pieces.

There are fascinating pottery collections on display at Merseyside Maritime Museum including fine examples of Liverpool creamware.  In the 1750s Liverpool became the world’s first centre for printing decoration on pottery and one of the first places in Britain to make porcelain. Warehouses and docks replaced the factories but the famous Herculaneum Pottery founded in Toxteth in 1796 survived until 1841. Creamware is fine cream-coloured earthenware made in England in the 18th century. Liverpool had links with the legendary Josiah Wedgwood who sent his creamware to the town to be decorated with transfer printing, developed in Liverpool about 1754.

Among items on display are mugs and beakers showing a remarkable sight from the early 1800s – the signal flags that once fluttered on Bidston Hill, Wirral. Flags were used to tell the Liverpool docks and merchants when ships were sighted. These commemorative mugs must have been very popular – all the images are similar and list whose flags are on display.

One large jug remembers a gallant boy’s death with the words: “Sacred to the memory of Robert Charlton Junior who gallantly fell in action near the straits of Sunda on board the ship Jefferson of Philadelphia early in the year 1800 in the 15th year of his age whose gallant conduct would have done honor to age and experience.”

Other jugs show ships in full sail and others tell funny stories such as Jemmy’s Return, a popular ballad of the time. It shows Jemmy the sailor with his girlfriend on a quayside, with ships and a comic verse.

Another has a furious sea battle with the inscription: “A representation of the glorious defeat of the French fleet of (sic) Brest by Earl Howe June 1st 1794.”

More about Liverpool pottery next week.

A new Maritime Tale appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

You might have seen in local press a rather big splash about our Bunny Run event over the Easter weekend. Sorry to disappoint folks but that's a bit of an error (not ours you understand) and there's no chasing of rabbits or any other animal for that matter at our venues this weekend.  There are lots of other events though (check out the 'what's on' section of the main site), and there are actually a good few rabbits in the Wallace & Gromit section of the Animated Adventures exhibition so it's not a totally bunny-free weekend after all.

Mark Adams from the archaeology team with an update on activity at the Manchester Dock site. Photos from the dig are still on our Flickr page. If you've missed any of the excavation posts follow the 'museum of liverpool' link at the foot of this post.

After a lull of about three weeks whilst we recorded the dock structures exposed in the first phase of the dig, excavation has begun for the new museum foundations. This is being undertaken as a 'Watching Brief' which entails the Museum's archaeologists monitoring the excavation of the site by machine. The site is being excavated in this way because test-pits and boreholes taken earlier in the project showed that the quaysides were constructed over dumps of sands, gravels and rubble dumped into the Mersey to form this part of the docks. The vast majority of this material is of little or no archaeological interest, most is probably dredgings taken from the river, and hand digging of this material is not realistically feasible or productive. However, it does contain pockets of very interesting deposits. So far we have found more sugar moulds (below) similar to those found earlier in the excavation, including one which although broken may be complete, and another with a complete makers stamp for W. Ashcroft of Prescott.

An intact sugar mould. Tried to find an image of the type of sugar cone that would have come out of a mould like the one shown, and this was the best I could find (I'm not suggesting you buy one of course - purely for information purposes).

Several dumps of broken pottery have been found, some containing thousands of pieces. Most of this appears to be from the Herculaneum Pottery which was an important Liverpool pottery working for 44 years from 1796. There also appears to be pottery from Staffordshire, possibly because of Manchester Dock's connection with the Shropshire Union Canal. Others may be imports from China, but we need to send these to a specialist to be sure of this. In addition to the pottery dumps of clay tobacco pipe have also been found. This will require examination by a specialist in tobacco pipes, but appears to contain material relating to manufacture of the pipes.

Material like this is of great value to archaeologists and historians, because we know this section of the dock was constructed between 1803-1813 we can give a very accurate date to the things which are found. The results of this work can then be fed into other excavations, hence providing valuable dating evidence.

In the past couple of days we have exposed a section of the waterfront pre-dating the addition of lock gates to Manchester Dock in 1803-1813. We know from maps and other documents that the wall was built in about 1785. Unfortunately very little of it seems to have survived, most having being destroyed by the early 19th century builders.

Liverpool style icon Coleen McLoughlin celebrated her 21st birthday at Thornton Manor this weekend and I can exclusively reveal that pictures from inside the house are now on show at the Lady Lever Art Gallery.
 
Ok, you’ve rumbled me. We couldn’t quite match the offer Hello! put on the table to secure the rights to capture Rooney serenading the birthday girl or Peter Crouch celebrating his Liverpool hat-trick with more hilarious robotics. But we can treat you to a glimpse of the music room at Lord Leverhulme’s former residence as part of the Merchant Palaces exhibition. Who wants to see a bunch of WAGs and B-listers drunkenly cavorting when you can see some true Victorian splendour anyway? 

Music room minus the Sugababes and P Diddy

The Lottie Sleigh explosion.
Image courtesy of Liverpool Daily Post & Echo

Loud bangs and crashes are something which I, Stephen Guy, hate so this was one event in Liverpool’s history that I would not have wanted to witness. It was a noise to almost waken the dead – an incredible, ear-splitting blast that could be heard more than 30 miles away. People covered their ears and cowered in terror as the terrible explosion followed by a huge gust of air wrecked property and smashed thousands of windows in Liverpool and beyond.

The cause of all this mayhem was a blast that destroyed the sailing ship Lottie Sleigh moored in the Mersey. The most miraculous thing about that terrible day in January 1864 was that nobody was killed.

It all started with a simple accident on board the ship as she lay at anchor in the river. Fire broke out after a steward upset and ignited a can of oil as he trimmed a paraffin lamp. The fire spread quickly and a passing ferry took off the crew. Doubtless it quickly dawned on them what was about to happen – the Lottie Sleigh was carrying 11 tons of gunpowder.

A tremendous explosion tore the ship apart and a contemporary account reads: “The contents of the vessel blew up with a report which it is hardly possible to describe. The simultaneous explosion of 500 pieces of heavy ordnance could not have produced so terrible and alarming a shock.

“Its effects in every part of Liverpool were severely felt and created indescribable terror. At the same time the most solid blocks of warehouses, offices and private dwellings were shaken to their base – doors locked and bolted were thrown wide open – hundreds, yea even thousands of squares of glass were smashed.”

Most of the gas lamps in Liverpool’s streets were put out by the massive rush of air. Considerable damage was also caused on the Birkenhead side of the river. Chester was among the distant places where the explosion was heard. The authorities telegraphed Liverpool to discover what had caused the sound.

The shattered wreck was later beached at New Ferry where it was broken up. Remarkably, the figurehead of the Lottie Sleigh survived and is in the collections of the Merseyside Maritime Museum. The ship dated from 1852 and the figurehead presumably shows the lady after whom the ship was named.

A new Maritime Tale appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo.

Poster accession number RD00042.0012

The Easter holidays start this weekend, and as you'd expect, we've got lots of free activities at our venues to keep the kids entertained while they're off school.

In the spirit of the season, the National Conservation Centre are holding five Easter craft afternoons from Wed 4 April, which include card making and egg painting. You could also take part in an Easter rummage at the Customs and Excise Museum over the next 3 Sundays. Please check the What's On listings for the times of each session.

It's a busy time so if you are travelling into town, this poster from the Museum of Liverpool collections has some good advice, which still rings true sixty years after it was printed. The poster is number 13 in a series produced by Liverpool Corporation Passenger Transport in the late 1940s, aimed at passengers to help reduce queues and peak time travel for workers.

Anyone for a slice of cathedral?

Today is architect Sir Edwin Lutyens's birthday. Born in 1869, he would have been 138 in the highly unlikely event that he was still around today.

I don't know if anybody out there is up to the challenge, but I think that Angela had the right idea in her blog about potentially edible buildings in Liverpool. The only suitable way to mark the occasion would be with a cathedral-shaped cake, ideally the size of the model in the Walker's exhibition The cathedral that never was (I'm being practical, not greedy - the cake needs to be big to fit all the candles on).

Or you could just treat yourself to a normal size piece of cake in the Walker cafe in Lutyens's honour if you don't have an industrial size oven of course.

Head of sculpture conservation Sam Sportun gives Pomona a quick clean

Most people decorate their garden with a nice pot from the garden centre, or maybe an ornamental bird bath or fountain. The gardens at Het Loo Palace in the Netherlands are pretty spectacular however, so they have commissioned a specially made replica marble sculpture from conservation technologies at the National Conservation Centre to grace their lawn.

The replica is a life sized copy of a 17th century marble statue of the goddess Pomona, part of the Royal Collection, that's on display in the Orangery of Kensington Palace, London.

The original statue was laser scanned to produce an accurate 3D computer model. As it is such a large sculpture it had to be divided into 8 pieces that were machined separately out of Carrara marble. These were then carefully assembled, rather like a huge 3D jigsaw puzzle that weighs around 400 kg. The joins are cleverly hidden in the sculpture, so you would think it was carved from a solid piece of marble.

You can see a Flickr slideshow of photos of Pomona being carefully packed into a crate ready for the trip to the Netherlands. 

Update: see pictures documenting the replication of Pomona and read more about the process in a new case study on the National Conservation Centre website.