National Museums Liverpool Blog - Thursday, October 23, 2008

This photograph may look like a scene from a horror movie but it’s actually just part of a fairly normal day’s work for driver and handling technician Andrew Mountfield. He captured the scene when the former Inspiration display at the Walker’s Craft and Design gallery was taken down and the new display of 1950s evening dresses was installed. I’ll let him explain:

"After the decorative art curators had taken down the old display, we turned up to transport the bodies (sorry mannequins!) from the Walker Art Gallery to their final resting place at the Decorative Arts department.

Dave Moffat, assistant curator of decorative art, was the technical adviser for the day, with myself and Richard Roberts on the Transport and Handling team’s van. As you might imagine the restraint techniques involved in securing the multi positioned mannequins proved problematic to say the least, but luckily I was able to draw upon my years of experience in shifting bodies... (just kidding!).

The mannequins were actually from France, apart from the heads, which were sourced from the UK, and they were dressed in clothes by designers from around the world, which made the whole thing even more cosmopolitan and surreal than it was macabre!!

After everyone (sorry, the mannequins) were secure in the back of the van, and a final check of straps and protective coverings were in place we bid a momentary yet fond farewell to Dec Arts and left the Walker, happy and smiling.

As Richard and I drove along Dale Street, we both heard some scraping noises from the back and then some banging, followed by voices screaming 'Let Me Out, Let Me Out!' from the back of the van. We glanced at each other but we were both too scared to stop, after all, it is Halloween next week..."

Just got hold of the video that greets visitors to the Only A Game? exhibition. There's a slightly larger version on the main site as well.

Only A Game? from National Museums Liverpool on Vimeo.

Watch the birdie!

I've always been fond of looking at old photographs. Whether it's a building which has long since been demolished, or a person from the dim and distant past, I've always found it interesting to wonder what they were like. 

In the Decorative Art Department, we have a large collection of photographs which we use for, amongst other things, dating our extensive costume collection. Some clothes in history were only fashionable for a short time and we can usually pin things down to a few years using the photographs. 

During a recent search through them, we came across this picture of one William Gihon. Taken on the 1st January 1864, it's fairly old for a photograph, but of more interest is the fact that in the photo (though he doesn't look it) he's 94. 

To think that we are looking at a image of someone who was born in the same year as James Cook's discovery of Australia, Mary Antoinette marrying Louis Auguste and William Wordsworth's birth is astonishing. 

Just seen a new activity pack we've put together and the illustrations alone are inspiring me to grab a pencil and get drawing, which is quite impressive when you consider I've two left hands.  Liverpool's Biggest Big Draw Activity Pack (you can download a copy) is full of good ideas to get your creative juices flowing, and the artist, Sally Pankhurst, has done a fab job. Some of the ideas, like 'draw your dreams as soon as you wake up' are pretty cool, while 'draw yourself thirty years from now' are definitely the stuff of nightmares.

The pack links in with Big Draw month (the last few activities are this weekend) but I guess is also Find Your Talent - I'd be really envious of anyone who discovered that their hidden talent was drawing. If the pack inspires you let me know and we might feature your masterpiece.

I'd seen the preview photos of the new 'unfolding' exhibition at Sudley House, but seeing the sculptures in reality was still quite a surprise! The sheer size of each piece was much bigger than I had imagined, which gave them real impact. Seeing them in situ at the house allowed you to see how they fit in with the building and its rooms. Each sculpture has subtle details that link them to each room - whether this is its furnishings or the original use of the room. At the same time, each piece has been designed to represent different aspects of the mind. 

Below is the 'Shell' sculpture that is in the morning room (also known as the study), which you can see has a floral pattern on the inside. This is inspired by the wallpaper that is in this room.

The red pointy creations seen below are laid out on the dining room table of the house.You can see that the darkest shades match the red upholstery on the chairs.

These sculptures represent the industrious self (left) and the social self (right).

It is as if the sculptures are almost chameleon-like, taking on a feature of the room but still standing out as they are so contemporary in comparison.

It makes you wonder what the Holt family might have thought if they came downstairs for breakfast and saw these sculptures on their dining room table!

Think this is the lamest title we've ever used for a blog post, but in true alliterative tradition I've gone with it anyway. Saw two unrelated but interesting bits today:

1. The Incoming Passenger Lists for 1878 - 1960 are now available on www.ancestry.co.uk. The records of around 16 million immigrants, business travellers, tourists and returning ex-pats and their descendants are available for you to peruse. This is good news for those of you researching your family tree as you can search by port of arrival, name of vessel, shipping line, port of embarkation and date of arrival. And as well as passenger names, you can discover historical information such as the date of birth, occupation and, from 1922 onwards, intended UK address of each passenger. 

2. The boston.com website has some fabulous photos of Sun activity including close-ups of magnetic structures, a sunspot, an erupting solar filament and a solar eclipse. Fascinating and beautiful and well worth a look.

Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

Looking at this masterly portrait, I have to admit a certain liking for Captain Hugh Crow.

He was very much a man of his time and did what he did efficiently and well despite condemnation in his own day and now. Of course he was wrong in his actions and, with all his charm, personified the end of an evil era.

Captain Crow stands wearing his top hat and clutching a cutlass, sporting a billowing white linen shirt and blue trousers with matching necktie – a man at ease in retirement. At his feet are other relics of his prime - a pistol and a megaphone used for enforcing orders on a sailing ship ploughing across the ocean.These are subtle clues to the former occupation of this distinguished-looking man in a finely-observed watercolour portrait painted by A R Burt in 1820. 

Captain Crow was the last of the slavers.

The picture is among exhibits at the International Slavery Museum in the Merseyside Maritime Museum building.

Crow (1765 – 1829) is best known as the captain of Kitty’s Amelia, the last British slave ship cleared for sailing from Liverpool in July 1807 just before the trade was outlawed. Crow was master on six other slaving voyages. On retiring from the sea he wrote his memoirs – an engaging, rare first-hand account. He remained a staunch supporter of the slave trade.

Crow claimed he treated both the crew and enslaved Africans on his ships comparatively well. However, like other ships’ masters, it was in his interests to keep the captives healthy so they would fetch a better price. The voyage of the Kitty’s Amelia was eventful – she caught fire and they also rescued the crew of another ship that had been wrecked.

Another exhibit is the original account book of the Liverpool slave ship Enterprize for a voyage in 1794-5. The accounts reveal that the ship’s carpenter Daniel Small was perhaps considered the most important person on the ship – he was paid £5 10s (£5.50) per month. He could save the wooden ship if she sprang a leak or was damaged. Surprisingly, the captain, William Young, was paid less - £5 a month. However, a captain was entitled to commission on slaves he sold plus one or two privilege slaves he could sell himself. This was probably worth up to an additional £200 per voyage.

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).

Art attack: brightening up Ropewalks Square

It was Saturday. I had just finished watching ace band, Long Finger Bandits (painted faces, blues guitar, trumpets) at the Atelier Bow Wow Rockscape, when I saw these pavement artists at work. Taking over the whole of Ropewalks Square (that bit between Bold St and FACT) they were using pastels to create colourful masterpieces, despite the rather rubbish weather.

It turns out that this was part of something called the Carling Pavement Art Competition, named after a 19th century pavement artist called James William Carling. He used to 'screeve' chalks and pastels onto the pavements of Liverpool to earn money.

There were quite a range of artworks, from contemporary to more classic styles. One artist was doing an interpretation of 'Portrait of Mrs Catherine Smith Gill and two of her children', byTissot, (pictured here) which we have here at the Walker Art Gallery.

I can hardly contain myself. I am in a state, somewhere between excitement, panic and terror. You see, AC/DC concert tickets go on sale tomorrow and I will be frantic until I have acquired my little piece of heaven. (Why on earth am I telling anyone this? I should be keeping it secret ... more tickets for me). I’ve been waiting 8 years for them to tour again and it is 20 years since I first saw them – I’ve been there, done that and bought the t-shirt (infact I’ve still got the 1988 t-shirt but it’s got moth holes in it). I even called my little boy Bon after the legend that is Bon Scott. So you could say I consider myself something of a fan.

But even I was surprised to see an image of AC/DC bass player Cliff Williams in The Beat Goes On exhibition at World Museum Liverpool. What could these hard rocking Aussie / Scots (with a Geordie twist) have to do with Liverpool?

Well, the story goes that Cliff (who was born in Romford) moved to Liverpool at the age of 9. His first band were based here and ironically named ‘Home’. (Even more bizarrely, his next group Bandit featured eighties crooner Jim Diamond and Bucks Fizz drummer Graham Broad – but that’s another story). I’m really intrigued as to which school Cliff went to and which area of Liverpool he lived in, so if anyone remembers him or better still has photos, I’d be very interested. Maybe he has even been to the museum … perhaps the new single Rock N Roll Train is about Lime Street  … my mind is positively buzzing with the possibilities!  

Anyway, if like me you cannot wait for Monday’s release of ‘Black Ice’ you can listen to it for free at AC/DC’s official site. But there’ll be none of that new-fangled downloading as AC/DC only release ‘real’ albums. Perhaps next time they tour Cliff could schedule a gig on his ‘home’ turf. (Of course, there may not be a next time. Angus is 53, despite the school uniform).

Cliff Williams – we salute you!

PS - We have recently added a fanatstic musical resource to our website. You can find out more suprising information about Liverpool's rich musical heritage at The Beat Goes Online.  

Despite being an Evertonian through and through, last week was quite a week for me in terms football encounters of the red variety.

Ben Johnson helps Rafa Benitez draw his square for the People's Panorama

First we had ex-captain and coach of Liverpool FC Phil Thompson attending the press launch of our new UEFA exhibition Only a Game? at World Museum Liverpool, and then I was lucky enough to meet some other famous LFC faces for a completely unrelated project.

This month’s national Big Draw campaign is aimed at getting people across the country to uncover their artistic abilities through a variety of creative projects, and in its 2008 Capital of Culture year Liverpool is having its Biggest EVER Draw.

Teaming up with a number of cultural centres around the city, NML has put on a programme of events which included a return visit to the Walker Art Gallery from Liverpool Cityscape artist Ben Johnson at the weekend.

Ben has worked with NML to encourage people to take part in an exciting project to recreate his Liverpool Cityscape as The People’s Panorama; dividing it into 400 squares and inviting Liverpool’s people - including Liverpool Manager Rafa Benitez! - to each draw a square…

So, in the name of art I swallowed my blue-pride and accompanied Ben Johnson on a trip to Liverpool FC’s Melwood training ground last week to get Mr Benitez to draw his square. Stepping into his office I couldn’t have gone any further into the heart of the ‘enemy’ if I’d tried, and the disloyalty to my team felt almost too much to bear. This feeling quickly vanished however on ‘bumping into’ Sammy Lee and the legend that is Kenny Dalglish as they left Rafa’s office. So, feeling quite overwhelmed, I resolved to enjoy the encounter…and help complete the mission to get Rafa to draw his little piece of Liverpool!

Rafa's drawing of North Western Hall on Lime Street

Rafa’s artwork can now be seen in the Liverpool Cityscape gallery at the Walker, alongside that of the Lord Mayor’s and 398 other people of Liverpool!

Just seen a Black history interactive on the Guardian site that's worth a look. It's a timeline that runs from AD43 and the arrival at Hadrian's Wall of an African auxiliary unit from the Roman Army, to Barack Obama securing the Democrat's nomination. There are also links to Guardian articles of relevance and a guide to key Black figures - not unlike our own Black Achievers Wall at the International Slavery Museum. Have a look. It's been produced to coincide with October being Black History Month - we've a full schedule of events to link in as well.

It now seems but a dream, but I'm told that the other day it was sunny. These latest snaps of the Museum of Liverpool construction seem to bear that out. Check out the Flickr set - you can almost feel the heat! 

We're still looking for Flickr snaps from the public - there are some beautiful efforts in this group.

The build is progressing well. The cladding is still going on, the window frames are going in and internal walls are going up.

If you have you ever wondered what the North West was like millions of years ago then get yourself down to 'From coal to carnations', the new exhibition at the Grosvenor Museum in Chester, which runs until 30 November 2008.

The exhibition tells the story of plant evolution starting more than 500 million years ago, when the local area was positioned on the equator on a dense forest-covered plain. The displays include fossilised evidence of the ancient plants that thrived in this environment, including material from a recently discovered fossil forest near Wrexham.

A number of items from National Museums Liverpool's Science collection are on loan to the exhibition, including seven Brendel plant models from the Botany department which are shown in this photo. The Geology department have also loaned nine fossil plant specimens, the oldest of which is around 370 million years old, and a replica of an ancient Argentine arthropod called Megarachne, that lived in forests during the Carboniferous age.

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).