National Museums Liverpool Blog - Monday, October 13, 2008

Image courtesy of Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

Whenever I look at Merseyside Maritime Museum’s collection of miniature ship models I marvel at these wonders created without the aid of plans or drawings. I could manage plastic construction kits of HMS Hood and the Bismarck but when I see these beautiful sailings ships – some little more than and inch long – I’m amazed. They are the ship model equivalents of beautiful humming birds – tiny vessels built by French prisoners-of-war.

Many of these models have - comparatively speaking - as much detail as those at the other end of the spectrum in the museum’s collections, such as the 20 ft-long model of the Titanic.

The Pilkington Collection of French Prisoner-of-War Models illustrates a vanished art when prisoners used materials such as wood chips or shavings, bone and straw to create wonders of model building. This collection of 39 miniscule warships and boats is one of the museum’s outstanding treasures.

Little is known about the captives who honed their skills to create masterpieces which they could sell or barter to improve their poor food, illustrating that hunger is a great motivator. The talents of the model-makers indicate that they may have been trained as jewellers or watchmakers. The prisoners were held in Britain during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars which lasted between 1790 and 1815.

Many French prisoners were held in Liverpool as well as other places around Britain. There is no evidence that the models in the Pilkington collection were made in Liverpool. They were discovered in Dublin and brought to England on behalf of Sir George Pilkington in the early 20th century. The models were in poor condition and they were skilfully restored by renowned model-maker AW Kiddie, of Southport. He used hair from the heads of his wife and daughter to repair the rigging – a very unusual practice at that time. 

Kiddie (born 1844) had had an extraordinary life, serving three years on sailing ships when he was regularly beaten and flogged. He jumped ship and trained as an engineer which no doubt sharpened his eye for detail and trained his nimble fingers.

The collection was bequeathed to Liverpool Museum in 1921 by Lady Dame Mary Elizabeth Pilkington, of the St Helens-based glass-making family.

The models on display are built to different scales. Some are in miniature wooden glass cabinets, others under glass domes.They range from men o’war and other ships of the line bristling with cannons to two-masted brigs and rowing boats.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

October's 'Name That Object' competition starts today. Here's the first clue with a slightly larger version on the competition page. As ever there'll be another clue every day this week with the answer on Saturday. The first person to mail me the correct answer, using the contact form on the competition page, wins the prize which this month is a copy of the John Moores 25 exhibition catalogue. Lotsa luck.

The clue for day 1

Yes, today is National Poetry Day and the theme this year is work! Not too sure how inspiring that is as a subject, however, the aim of this day is to get poems into places you may not normally expect to find them. This might be; on toilet doors, on trains, on tablecloths in cafés and anywhere else that a poem will fit!

Here at the Walker Art Gallery, we have a free poetry workshop today from 2-4pm, with local writer Gladys Mary Coles. She will be taking a group of visitors around the gallery to hopefully get some inspiration from the paintings and then assist the group in writing some poetry. To book, call 0151 478 4178.

Get inspired!

The Bluecoat's first Chapter & Verse Literature Festival also kicks off today and you can go to free workshops and cool performance nights there for the next ten days. The final night of the festival, on Sunday 19 October, will be taken over by Heart Beats Poetry Night. This night will feature three exciting young poets, a band and free cake.

You can also send a free e-card, featuring poems from well-known writers if you want to spread some poetry love today. Just go to the National Poetry Day website.

Or if all this seems like a bit too much effort, why not just pick up some poetry and have a read at home with a cuppa? Sounds good to me.

All four European trophies - UEFA European Championship (EURO) trophy, UEFA Champions League trophy, the UEFA Cup and the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup.

Yesterday saw the official launch of our UEFA exhibition - Only A Game? at World Museum Liverpool. Focusing on the pride, passion, cups and culture of European football it's bound to be a hit in such a footie mad city. Ex-Liverpool player, Phil Thompson, was there to do the honours.

Only A Game isn't all Everton and Liverpool, although there's plenty from both clubs. There's lots for every fan of the game including all four European trophies (shown here) which are rarely displayed together. They're not all on show for the duration of the exhibition (dates are here) so if you want to see all four you'd best get down to the exhibition pretty soon. It opens to the public this Saturday (11th).

Wow. What a great feeling it is to give rather than to receive, yes?! Well you have the power to help decide who will get the grand sum of £2008! All you have to do is get voting in our Visitors' Choice award for the painting you like best in the John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery.

Take a good look through the exhibition and think about which painting deserves your vote. Which one jumps out at you? Which one leaves a lasting impression? Is there one that really gets under your skin?

Once you've made your decision, just cast your vote while you're in the gallery by filling in a Visitors' Choice card by Sunday 2 November 2008.

To get you thinking, here is a video with some of our judges;  Sacha Craddock, Paul Morrison and Graham Crowley, talking about some of their favourites:

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Here's an update from curator of Egyptology Ashley Cooke about the work on the new Ancient Egypt gallery which opens at World Museum later this year:

"Last week a team of forensic Egyptologists from the KNH Centre for Biomedical and

Forensic Egyptology at the University of Manchester came to visit two mummies in our collection. The one you can see in the photograph will soon be displayed in the new Ancient Egypt gallery that opens on 5th December. It is the mummy of a young adult woman of the Roman Period (probably about AD 100 - 400) but actually quite little is known about this type of mummy and this is why the team from Manchester came to visit us. Painted bandages carefully reproduce the shape of her body and her feet have been wrapped to appear as if she is wearing sandals. Across the chest of the mummy a plant fibre framework supports gilded amulets to protect the dead person in the Afterlife. Unlike other Egyptian mummies the top of the skull is left uncovered and her hair is still preserved in places. The other mummy the team looked at shares similar characteristics.
 
The mummies were donated to the museum in 1867 by the goldsmith and antiquarian Joseph Mayer. He purchased the mummy from the collection of Joseph Sams (1784-1860) who visited Egypt in 1832-3 and brought back an important collection of antiquities, much of which is now in World Museum, Liverpool and the British Museum. The mummies belong to a group of eight that all share distinctive characteristics and may indeed all be related. The mummies are divided between 5 museums: 2 in Liverpool, 3 in Leiden, 1 in London (British Museum), 1 in Rio de Janerio and 1 in Avignon. Over the next few years we are looking forward to learning more about these remarkable mummies that are quite unlike others in our collection."

Modern Liverpool 1907 by Walter Richards

I am particularly proud that Modern Liverpool 1907 (shown here) was acquired by Merseyside Maritime Museum last year as a result of my Maritime Tales column in the Liverpool Echo. The owner of this important oil painting rang me after I wrote about several historic views of Liverpool in our collections. He revealed that he had this large oil painting showing the city at the height of its Edwardian prosperity.

Ships of all sizes can be seen around the waterfront in this stunning aerial view of the bustling port. The city panorama was painted by Walter Richards as part of Liverpool’s 700th anniversary celebrations. There is a fascinating wealth of detail, particularly around the Pier Head, Prince’s Stage and nearby docks, some of which have long vanished.

A huge four-funnelled Cunard liner is moored alongside the Prince’s Stage. No name can be seen on the bows so it could be either the Mauretania or her doomed sister Lusitania, sunk by a German submarine in 1915. Many other ships can be seen, some from shipping lines identifiable by their funnels.

Three ferry boats, including a paddle steamer, are moored at the Pier Head while passengers come and go. In 1907 there were many more ferries than today, including services to New Brighton, Egremont, Rock Ferry, New Ferry, Seacombe, Birkenhead and Eastham. When the ferry service to Eastham ended in 1929, it marked the last use of paddle steamer ferries on the River Mersey.

Other ships depicted in the painting include tugs and tenders which assisted the big liners. Most of the vessels are steamers but there are a few sailing ships moored in the docks. Among the vanished docks depicted in Modern Liverpool 1907 is the George’s Dock standing between the Liver Building and the Port of Liverpool Building.

I recently went into the basement of the Cunard Building, which now stands on the site, to see a surviving section of the George’s Dock wall. I closely examined the huge sandstone blocks which are almost seamlessly mortared together. It was quite emotive for me because my Guy ancestors were living and working within sight of the dock when it was built. One was mariner Peter Guy, who was 35 in 1771. He worked as a tidesman – a customs officer who boarded merchant ships. For a time he was also employed as Liverpool’s postman or letter carrier – when only the rich and influential generally received letters.

Modern Liverpool 1907 is currently on show at the Walker Art Gallery in the 'Historic Liverpool Cityscapes' section of the Ben Johnson's Liverpool Cityscape 2008 and the World Panorama Series exhibition. The exhibition is open until 2 November.

A new Maritime Tale by Stephen Guy appears every Saturday in the Liverpool Echo. A paperback – Mersey Maritime Tales (£3.99) – is available from the museum, newsagents, bookshops or from the Mersey Shop website (£1.50 p&p UK).

The QE2 in Liverpool with the Museum of Liverpool in the foreground

The latest batch of Museum of Liverpool construction progress snaps is on our Flickr page. The cladding is going on and the end is in sight!

On a vaguely related subject (I say vaguely because I hurriedly took this slightly blurry snap at the dock at lunchtime - it was very cold!) the QE2 is in Liverpool at the moment. The Liverpool Echo have a video of it sailing into the Mersey, past Crosby Beach and the Antony Gormley ironmen (or 'Another Place' as they're officially known). Wonder how close the two ships in the video really were? Anyhoo, it's a good vid and worth a peek. 

Nate Rice and Robert Driver with some of the bird skins that they have prepared during their busy trip to Liverpool

A few weeks I introduced the Philadelphia ornithologists Nate Rice and Robert Driver, who came to World Museum Liverpool to skin and preserve bird specimens both for our collection and the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

During a busy few weeks in Liverpool they completed an incredible 150 specimens, all of which were salvage birds kept in frozen storage. Salvage birds are local birds that members of the public have donated to the museum after finding them dead. We had an excess of common local breeds in storage, which were not represented in the Academy of Natural Science's collection. So in return for being given the surplus salvage birds that we didn't need for our collections, Nate and Robert prepared 19 specimens for the World Museum collections.

There are too many bird skins to put into one small blog post, but you can see more in our Flickr slideshow of the Philadelphia ornithologists, including early photos of some of the first bird skins that they worked on pinned out to dry. There are also photos of Nate and Robert on their last day in Liverpool with all of the specimens that they prepared.

Nate would like to collect more European bird specimens, particularly species that were not available this time, and is hoping to return to Liverpool in a year or two. So if you find a bird then World Museum Liverpool would like to hear from you. Please don't bring any in without contacting the museum first. You can email Clem Fisher or Tony Parker in the zoology department to find out if the bird you have found would be of interest and to make arrangements.

The following poem was written in September 2008 by Matthew, aged 20, following a visit to see ‘The Liverpool Cityscape’ by art teachers and inmates from the Learning and Skills section at Thorn Cross Young Offenders Institute in Warrington.

In the video on the gallery Ben Johnson (who painted the cityscape) says he hopes that visitors will put themselves in the picture - populate it with their minds - and Matthew seems to have been inspired by this. We think his poem is really good and Matthew has been kind enough to allow us to share it with other visitors.

What if the painting was in our imagination?

What if boats docked at the train station?

What if the picture was just vegetation?

I wouldn’t be here with a look of fascination.

As far as the eye can see I stare

I am a massive work of art

I was made with pencils, paints and stencils

I am a piece of Ben Johnson’s heart

Further to my earlier Mandy Mandala Superlambanana post, I've now been told that Mandy is such a superstar that she even has her own website! You can check out pics showing how she was made and read more about the artist that created her...

Here's a special report from our curator of port history Ian Murphy, who has just got back from Norway:

"I was lucky enough to visit the Norwegian Maritime Museum (Norsk Sjøfartsmuseum) in Oslo last week to attend the opening of their Båtfolk (Boat People) exhibition, which explores the refugee experiences of Norway's Vietnamese communities. I'd been invited as they had loaned a Vietnamese fishing boat from the Maritime History collection at Merseyside Maritime Museum, which was a centrepiece of the display.

The exhibition is part of Norway's Year of Cultural Diversity which is a national initiative, and has been created using the stories and memories of the Vietnamese Norwegians who - as the exhibition puts it - used "the sea as an escape route" in the 1970s and 80s. The exhibition also looks at other uses of boats by refugees, including a display of a boat that was rowed from Norway to Shetland during World War 2, but the main focus is on the experiences of Vietnam's boat people.

I was shown around the museum by senior curator Peder Figenbaum, which gave me a chance to see their excellent displays which cover traditional Norwegian vessels, the country's fishing industry, marine art and a number of interior ship recreations. I never managed to see the museum's 20 minute panoramic film of Norway's coastline unfortunately, which sounds fairly spectacular. After the opening I then travelled across to visit the Bergen Maritime Museum, which is also hosting an associated boat people exhibition.

The exhibition in Oslo runs until August 2009 and is well worth a visit, as is the rest of the museum. I can also recommend taking the train to visit the exhibition in Bergen; it's an eight hour journey, but the scenery is truly stunning."

Update:

We've just received this photograph of our fishing boat receiving two very important visitors. Ian says:

"The exhibition was opened by Norway's Queen Sonja, which indicates the level of importance attached to the exhibition as part of the year long diversity initiative." 

Khang Ngoc Ngyen, one of the Vietnamese contributors to the exhibition, with Norway's Queen Sonja at the royal opening. Photograph courtesy of H-E Hansen.