National Museums Liverpool Blog - Tuesday, November 06, 2007

There are seven more Ben Johnson progress photos up on our Flickr page, all taken on 31st October. They include the work just beginning on the Museum of Liverpool, Neptune Developments and the Paradise Street Development. Admittedly none of these developments are actually finished yet but they will be, and so are being included. Ben has been in close contact with city planners and architects throughout the process and is including buildings which will definitely appear on the city skyline, ie have planning permission, detailed architects' plans etc. 

Michael Aspel and some huge white trucks were stationed at St Georges Hall on Sunday as the Antiques Roadshow came to town. The broadcasting legend that is Mr Aspel was recording his final roadshow and we were delighted he popped into the Walker Art Gallery and Merseyside Maritime Museum beforehand to record some links for the programme. He had a look at some of our treasures including 'And When Did You Last See Your Father?' and our outstanding sculpture collection. I’ll certainly be glued to the TV when the programme airs in January to see whether the experts uncovered any hidden gems from dusty Liverpool lofts.

All eyes are going to be on our fair city and visitors - along with some superstars thanks to the MTV Europe awards - from all over the world will be descending next year, but does this make Liverpool a global city? A public forum being held at World Museum Liverpool tomorrow night is going to be looking at Liverpool’s status as a global city and what the term really means.

The discussion is the second in a series of public forums giving you the opportunity to comment on the main themes that will be focused on in the new Museum of Liverpool. If you want to have your say or just listen to a lively discussion headed by our expert panel of history lecturers and curators the event runs from 6-8pm – although if I was you I'd get there a bit early as complimentary refreshments are being served from 5.45pm ...

Places are limited so if you want to come along call 0151 478 4543 to book.
 

If you missed the Face of the City drop-in session the other day fear not. Because the session went so well the organisers are repeating the session every Monday in November starting today, 5th and then 12th, 19th and 26th. Again sessions will be held at the BBC Radio Merseyside studios on Hanover Street and will run 10am-5pm.  As ever more information is available on the project website.

This story for me, Stephen Guy, typifies the versatility of Liverpool’s shipbuilders at the height of the innovations of the Victorian age.

The beautiful steam yacht Said was built in Liverpool for the viceroy of Egypt when the country was part of the Turkish Empire. His name was Said Pasha and he ruled the country between 1854 and 1863. Said’s reign was marked by liberal reforms which followed trends in contemporary Europe. Today he is best known for granting a concession to the French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps to start building the Suez Canal. Both Said and the Turkish sultan later opposed the plan.

Despite official opposition, the canal linking the Mediterranean with the Red Sea was completed in 1869. It transformed sea travel between Europe and the East. Combined with the American Transcontinental Railroad completed six months earlier, the canal had an immediate and dramatic effect on world trade, speeding up travel times across the globe.

Said tried unsuccessfully to abolish the slave trade which was long established in Egypt. However, there were too many important, wealthy people involved. 

There were successful important reforms in land ownership and taxation. The land reforms supported individual land ownership and reduced the influence of the sheiks who exercised almost feudal local powers. Said imposed direct taxation on big landowners, thus removing a burden which had rested hard on the peasants. Some land owned by the largest landowners was confiscated.

Said was born into an influential Egyptian family in 1822 and was educated in Paris. He joined the navy and became Admiral of the Fleet at an early age.

There is a very detailed builder’s model of the Said on display in Merseyside Maritime Museum. It shows the remarkably graceful lines of this elegant ship which was fit for a powerful potentate. The screw steam yacht was built of iron by Jones, Quiggin & Co of Liverpool for Said Pasha in 1858.

The 230 ft long Said was luxuriously appointed and the 1:60 scale model hints at the splendour of her unseen saloons below decks. Tiny details include her twin-bladed screw. Her 250 hp engines were of the two cylinder oscillating type, geared up to the screw shaft and made by Forrester & Co of Vauxhall, Liverpool. The 891-ton Said left Liverpool for Alexandria, Egypt, in October 1858. She must have made a splendid and exotic sight heading out of the Mersey with her white hull and two raked white funnels flanked by three masts.

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

Many moons ago, when there was still the promise of a summer featuring the sun, Guy Knight in Entomology told us about the fieldwork the team was undertaking in Smardale, Cumbria. Well, the 'field' bit of the work has concluded and now they're spending the winter grubbing through their finds. More from Guy.

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Fieldwork finished for the year at Smardale Gill NNR in October. Despite the poor summer, the monthly visits we made to the site were productive and the winter will be spent sorting through samples back at the museum, identifying specimens and preparing information on conserving insect diversity at the site for our report to the Cumbria Wildlife Trust. Several more pictures from the survey have been added to our Flickr page.

It was good to see large numbers of Scotch Argus and Northern Brown Argus butterfly during the summer. They are the only insects which have been studied in detail at Smardale in the past, where they occur towards the southern limit of their British distribution. Several other significant species have been recorded during the survey so far and we were especially pleased to find the Wall Mason Bee Osmia parietina, a Biodiversity Action Plan Priority Species which is restricted in Britain to a handful of sites in north-west England and North Wales.

The team will be returning to Smardale next year when I hope to give more updates on how the work is progressing.  

Ian Murphy, curator of port history at Merseyside Maritime Museum, took this action shot this morning. It shows the gangway being lifted into place for HMS Bangor, which is berthed outside the museum this weekend and is open to the public.

Apparently the ship is a Sandown class minesweeper. I don't know if including the word 'bang' in the name of a minesweeper is an example of naval humour or if it's completely unintentional. 

Ian has apologised for not getting much of the ship itself in the photo, but did point out that the sky and the famous Pier Head buildings in the background look great. As my Museum of Liverpool photo from the other week is more about the sunrise than the construction site itself, I know exactly where he's coming from!

Update 07/11/2007: Here's a photo of HMS Bangor heading off down the Mersey on Monday - I just caught it from the ferry.

The National Conservation Centre was swinging when I popped in this morning. Musicians were tuning up ready for the launch of Sunday Jazz our smooth new musical offering. Representatives from TONY! TONY! TONY! and the Martin Smith quartet were checking out Café Eros where they will be performing live jazz sets on Sundays from 12-3pm. I was treated to a couple of impromptu numbers and I think their cool jazz classics are perfect for soothing away any Saturday night induced fevers and trust me their Latino rhythms will get you dancing your way into next week. Apologies to Monday morning passengers on the Northern Line, there's a good chance I may be Jitterbugging down the aisles for the next few weeks.

I had the chance to have a sneak preview of Ben Johnson’s Liverpool Cityscape last night. Blocking my view of the painting were several famous faces including the artist Peter Blake whose studio is next door to Ben’s and Weakest Link presenter Anne Robinson who came to see the portrait of her home city.

Seeing the work close up really enables you to appreciate the amazing amount of work and effort that goes into each tiny detail. I chatted to Ben’s assistants who help produce the separate computerised drawings of each building in the painting. We discussed the enormous amount of time that goes into each key building, some taking several weeks. One mentioned that a few months ago they had worried about how they would possibly get such an enormous painting finished on time. Thankfully he seemed quite confident it was all on schedule now!

Visitors to the Walker Art Gallery will get the chance to see Ben complete the artwork from 28 January - 7 March 2008.

Last Saturday World Museum Liverpool played its part in the Liverpool Irish Festival by hosting a special day dedicated to Irish arts. It was a busy, creative and very fun day according to Ann-marie Cassidy from our learning department, who has written the following account of the many activities.

You can see more pictures in a Flickr slideshow of her Irish Festival photos.

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"The Liverpool Irish Festival has been running since 2003, when it began as a weekend of traditional Irish folk music. Each year the festival grows in size and now celebrates the special identity of the Liverpool Irish community with an outstanding programme of events and activities throughout the city.

This year, National Museums Liverpool staff worked in partnership with the Liverpool Irish Festival to introduce our visitors to a range of Irish-themed activities and performances. Enthusiastic visitors took part in Celtic art workshops with Holly Langley and explored traditional Irish myths in a singing and drama workshop with Claire Chandler. Our more energetic visitors were treated to a demonstration from the George Ferguson School of Irish Dance, before taking to the floor themselves with the dancers!

The atrium provided the perfect location for a performance from the Knotty Ash Signing Choir, who sang traditional songs with sign language. This was followed by an impressive musical performance involving some traditional Irish instruments. Jarlath Henderson played the Uilleann pipes and I was reliably informed that Uilleann means ‘elbow’. (I imagine this link has something to do with the way the pipes are played!) Jarlath was also joined by John Chandler on guitar and ‘Bones’ Adderley on the Bodráhn, a traditional Irish drum. The group were only asked to play for thirty minutes, but were so well received that they continued playing for nearly an hour!

The final workshop of the day was a poetry workshop with Eddie Bixter. Eddie began by introducing participants to some of the work of Seamus Heany and talked about how lots of the words used were ‘dark’ and ‘earthy’. He then asked the group to think about words that could represent Liverpool, looking at the language we use and talking about well-known buildings, people and places. By combining some of the words, the group created individual lines. These were put together to form one collaborative piece of poetry. The poem is quite abstract, but some of the lines are great! Have a read and see what you think!"

The Liverpool Irish Poem

Crosby rain stone, loving hard ground,
Rhythm cut a house,
Loose stoop rats, radio tower,
Musky, old, echoing path,
Kirkby la la cut out, Everton piled bog,
Irish stubbed clot grit,
Soggy bone, Scouse sods,
Shrill, overhead echoes,
Liverbird flock beneath salt dock fields,
Smug, solid Scousers,
Humming, smudging, minging railway,
Frogs lug splintered,
Sugar hung, thick dark cloud,
Oo-er, dig bush, Playhouse north,
Liverpool sky, cool 2008 hens,
Liverpool Echo, culture club.

Sorry this is a bit short notice - worth making the effort though. A few weeks ago I told you about a project several museums staff are involved in. Face of the City is encouraging the city's workforce to get involved in the 08 celebrations by producing their own artworks and displaying them in their own workplaces.

Paul Miller, who came up with the idea, will be in the BBC Radio Merseyside studio on Hanover Street from 10-5pm today (that's Wednesday 31st October) chatting to the public about the project and how they can get involved. More info on the Face of the City website.

As I’m going to India at the end of the week I thought this would be a good time to write my first blog. Technology permitting I’m hoping to send in a few blogs while I’m away. As a quick introduction my name is Emma Martin and I’m Head of Ethnology and Curator of Asia collections based at World Museum. My trip is part-holiday, but also part-work as I’ll be presenting a paper on a contemporary collecting project I’m working on with colleagues in India and I’ll also be collecting new objects for the Weston Discovery Centre at World Museum.

I’m flying out to Delhi on Saturday and although the shopping and restaurants are fantastic I’ll only be there for a few days before I head off to Chandigarh. Chandigarh is a relatively new city designed by Le Corbusier the famous modernist architect. I’m not going for the modernist architecture though, but for the incredible Nek Chand garden. This fantastic garden was started by one man, Nek Chand, using reclaimed land he built, in secret, amazing structures, including waterfalls, bridges and plazas and covered them with mosaic designs populating the place with mosaic-covered people and animals. It’s hard to imagine so I’ve added a picture so you can get a better idea. The place is now so big that I’ve been told it is the second most visited tourist attraction in India after the Taj Mahal! This is where I’m giving my paper. I’m presenting with Minhazz Majumdar, the co-director of The Earth and Grass Workshop. Together we’re working on a commissioning project for NML, asking a number of well-known Indian artists to create new works for NML’s collection, it’s a really exciting project and we’re both really pleased with how it’s going so this seemed like a great opportunity for us to speak about it together. I’ll write more about the collecting project as it develops and as the new works start to arrive in Liverpool.

After the conference I’ll be heading to Orissa a beautiful state on the east coast, which is famous for its temples and crafts. While I’ll be spending time relaxing, catching up with friends and hopefully doing a bit of tiger-spotting (!), I’ll also be visiting a number of villages known for a whole variety of crafts and I hope to pick up a few things while I’m there for the Weston Discovery Centre.

So fingers crossed I’ll be posting from India next week, giving you a sneak preview of some of the new objects you’ll be able to find in the Weston Discovery Centre early next year.

Is the Walker Art Gallery your favourite place in Liverpool? Do you love its beautiful pre-raphaelite paintings for a stylish date on a Sunday afternoon? Then vote today!

We were pleased to find out that this week that our very own Walker Art Gallery has been nominated in TWO categories at the Juice FM Style Awards.

The Walker has been recognised in both the culture award and visitor award sections and we're asking for your votes!

If you think that the Walker is one of the best places to visit in Liverpool and deserves an award, then please show your support and vote for us here:

Culture Award 

and here:

Visitor Award

It is a constant source of fascination to me, Stephen Guy, how some people and things seem to pick the short straws in life. Take White Star’s Titanic and Olympic liners, for example. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong for Titanic on that terrible night but her sister Olympic just went on and on with hardly a hitch. She successfully completed 257 round trips across the Atlantic between 1911 and 1935.

Four of the leading characters in the Titanic drama are pictured here on the deck of Olympic just weeks before they transferred to Titanic. They are (l to r): Officer William Murdoch, Chief Officer Henry Wilde, Third Officer Joseph Boxhall and Captain Edward Smith. Only Boxhall survived the sinking.

Olympic’s maiden voyage was on 14 June 1911 and from then on she gave stalwart service both as a troopship in the First World War, often sailing to and from Liverpool, and as a luxury liner. However, during her long years of service Olympic did have her share of dramas.

On 20 September 1911, commanded by Captain Edward Smith later of Titanic, she collided with the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Hawke. Olympic was carrying a capacity load and the voyage had to be cancelled.

The Titanic disaster revealed weaknesses on board Olympic, not least the shortage of lifeboats. This was rectified and the ship also refitted with a double hull in case the unthinkable happened again.

The next notable incident took place in October 1914 when Olympic neared New York during the First World War. She encountered the sinking British battleship HMS Audacious and rescued her crew. Olympic later served as a troopship carrying thousands of Canadians to the Western Front. It was during this period that she was nicknamed 'Old Reliable' because of her trustworthy service. But her most memorable achievement during the war was ramming and sinking the German submarine U103 on 12 May 1918. Olympic, with her vast bulk of 46,000 tons, has the distinction of being the only merchant ship to sink an enemy warship during the war.

In 1934 Olympic was involved in a tragic accident when she hit and sank the Nantucket lightship on the approaches to New York. Seven of the 11 lightship crew died.

At Merseyside Maritime Museum, as well as the 20ft builder’s model of Titanic, there is a single bed from cabin C-97 of the Olympic. Other items in the museum’s collections include leather-bound timetable lists the sailings of Olympic in 1912 – plus the ones Titanic would have made if disaster had not struck.

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

On Friday museum demonstrator Claire Noble told us about the first day of the 'BORED?' games workshop that she ran at Aigburth Family Centre with Alex Shears. Here's her update from the second and final day, with some exciting news about an inventor in the making (remember, you heard it here first!).

Have a look at our Flickr slideshow of photos from the 'BORED?' workshop for more pictures.

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"We have discovered the youngest board game inventor right here in Aigburth!! Our second day at Aigburth Family Centre began with our youngest member Yorgie proudly showing off his newest board game invention ‘Car Chase’.  With diagrams and written instructions (very nicely printed by his Mum), Alex and I couldn’t help but think that our Thursday’s sessions of games galore helped him on his path to board game stardom! But now back to normality…

We started Friday’s session with a series of fun and energetic games and (much to our delight) some of the young people began to offer to teach some of their favourite games to the rest of the group! The focus of the session soon changed to the instructional DVD, to be made that afternoon. Ideas were flowing and by lunch time the kids had not only chosen their favourite game to teach on the DVD, but had made their own poster for it too! 

After lunch our film maker Mally quickly set up and the young people began to teach and play their games to the camera. A bit of camera shyness soon disappeared and Mally caught some great footage. We wanted to finish the session with a fun group game and what better way to finish a game themed workshop, but with the best party game in the world, Pass the Parcel! 

With their mouths still full with sweets, we explained that invites would be in the post for them to see their DVD on the big Treasure House Theatre screen at World Museum Liverpool on 10 November. The National Museums Liverpool Youth Theatre would also be invited to the festivities, finishing with plenty of party food, drink and perhaps a few party games in between."

I went down to World Museum Liverpool earlier this week to meet the stars of this weekend’s Irish arts day. Eleanor King and Cecilia Ferguson took us through a few of the steps they will be performing with their troupe from the Ferguson School of Irish Dance tomorrow. Taught by a former world champion their twinkle toed performance is not to be missed. Irish singing sensation Helen Roche and Knotty Ash choir will also be entertaining us with the unique sounds of the Emerald Isle with performances of traditional Irish folk songs. The events are part of the Liverpool Irish Festival, check out the rest of the events happening across the city on their website. All this talk of Ireland has made me a bit thirsty, I'm off for a pint of the black stuff ...

Hello there! The various presentations I mentioned in my last blog post about Black History Month, volunteers and lots of talks went really well (I was not jeered anyway). The audiences were all very different and that is one of the things I like about this job. At the Harris Museum in Preston I had to speak for 30 minutes, without using a PowerPoint to hide behind, to a mixed group with several members of the Preston Black community in the audience.  It is not a large community but incredibly varied with a fascinating history. Currently on show at the museum is an exhibition called Bitter Sweet: Legacies of Sugar and Slavery in the Caribbean until March 2008.

My last engagement was at Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. My sister Lorraine lives there (she told me not to say older sister!) so I stayed over for the weekend. On the Saturday I was fortunate enough to see Oxford United v Woking with my brother-in-law Tom and nephew Samuel (both Arsenal fans unfortunately). It was truly a battle between giants of the lower divisions (minus goals or indeed excitement).

The rest of my time was spent discussing and planning the impending havoc of my niece Cara’s 18th birthday party. Over 200 of her friends (yes, I did say 200) will be strutting their stuff until the early hours in a few weeks. A table for the oldies has been arranged at the back of the room to save her from any embarrassment.

This week has been a really interesting one. Yesterday I had the pleasure to interview Nkosinathi Biko, son of the South African activist Steve Biko, and Chief Executive Officer of the Steve Biko Foundation. He is here along with his brother and mother for an event at the Merseyside Maritime Museum this evening.

Yesterday evening I gave a talk at a Manchester Black Health Agency event to commemorate the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade act. It was very well attended and it was a pleasure to have been invited to speak. The only downside of the evening was that my train back to Liverpool broke down just outside Newton-le-Willows. I set off at 11pm. I got back to Liverpool at 2am!

Well I will sign off for now but before I do an apology to my legion of football blog fans. Last week I said Leeds United were playing Millwall. It was in fact Brighton (we won 1-0). Tomorrow is Millwall so hopefully we can keep the unbeaten run going.

National Museum Liverpool's collections are an important source for a whole range of scientists, academics and researchers. One man who is no stranger to the zoological collections is acclaimed wildlife artist David Quinn. For over 25 years he has worked as an illustrator of a broad range of natural history publications. His incredibly detailed illustrations have featured in many books and journals dealing with bird identification issues and in academic studies concerning the biology, behaviour and ecology of birds. Not only are his illustrations and paintings extremely accurate, they are so incredibly lifelike and animated that the creatures depicted look as if they will spring to life at any minute. It's no surprise that he's a former winner of British Bird's 'Bird Illustrator of the Year' award.

David's work is the result of painstaking research, both in the field making studies of live birds and animals, and in museums including World Museum Liverpool, where he takes advantage of the fact that our mounted specimens don't move around to sketch the finer details of their plumage and markings.

You can see an exhibition of his work, 'Nature in the Frame - Portraits from our Living Landscape' in the Joseph Banks Room at Chester Zoo until 2 December 2007. The exhibition is a collaboration with the zoo and Cheshire Mammal Group and includes some pencil and ink illustrations for their forthcoming book, due out next spring. There are also some mounted specimens of some of the animals David has illustrated, including a bat and vole on loan from World Museum Liverpool.

Here's a report on some special half term activities from Claire Noble, one of our Treasure House Theatre demonstrators, who was out yesterday helping Liverpool children to escape half term boredom with games that have been played for thousands of years:

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"At 10.30am sharp Alex Shears and myself began our first 'BORED?' session, the first  of a set of two full day workshops at Aigburth Family Centre. Based on the very fact these kids (like all kids do) get BORED over the school holidays, myself and Alex Shears decided that, what better way to keep kids from climbing the walls... but to teach them loads of games!! 

The first hour was nicely packed with drama icebreakers and story building games, all of which were devised so that they could play it themselves whenever they are BORED and need something to do. After a quick break (and happily the five attendees didn’t run out the door, but in fact stayed!) we introduced them to two ancient board games from the Weston Discovery Centre, which went down a treat. Menkala and Fox and Geese were played for a solid hour and at times the tension was unbearable! 

The afternoon session was craft based, beginning with the moulding and painting of their own scarab beetle board piece and then the making of a giant snakes and ladders board game that they can keep and play in their centre. There were a few 'eeeeees' when explaining why the Egyptians idolised the dung beetle and to show them an actual dung beetle provided to us by Jen in the Bug House was the icing on the cake. They were impressed too by the image of a 13th century Snakes and Ladders game from World Cultures Gallery too, especially as it was made by a monk for his sick mum!

Alex and I were really pleased overall with the sessions. After telling them that tomorrow's sessions will be inventing their own games and creating an instructional DVD for it, they were already thinking of ideas. Let’s see what tomorrow brings!!"