National Museums Liverpool Blog - Monday, October 27, 2008

'The barque Rockshire off a rocky coast' by Jospeh Heard. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo

I have always wondered about my reactions if I was shipwrecked but thankfully this is one particular challenge that hasn’t come along yet. I don’t think any of us could say with any accuracy how we would behave in that sort of situation.

Full fathom five they lie, shipwrecks of all types scattered over the floors of the world’s oceans and seas along with the bones of countless seafarers and passengers. Each is testimony to disasters, accidents and mishaps caused by age-old dangers such as foul weather, fire, war, collision, bad navigation, stupidity or simply bad luck.

The safety of everyone on board a ship depends on good navigation - knowing where you are and where you are going. This is a simple truth that has been disregarded on innumerable occasions.

Before 1850 bad navigation alone caused the loss or damage of many British ships. Captains and other senior officers often had inadequate navigational skills and equipment. There were no clear rules to prevent collisions. After 1850, however, masters and mates had to be trained and examined in navigation. Methods and equipment were improved. By the 20th century ships became much safer due to radio, radar and other electronic equipment. Today most ships depend on satellite navigation systems.

In the past seafarers also faced hazards from pirates and privateers. Pirates such as the legendary Blackbeard, Henry Morgan, Anne Bonny and Captain Kidd stole or took control of ships from their lawful crews. Privateers operated in times of war up to the 1850s. They were armed merchant ships which attacked enemy merchant vessels. There's more on privateering on our main site.

Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Life at Sea gallery has a display which focuses on navigation and safety at sea. A lifelike portrait of a sea captain, painted in oils about 1900 by WH Walton, captures the character of the veteran ship’s master.

There is a telescope which belonged to Captain A W “Hellfire” Sinclair who came to Liverpool in the 1850s at the start of his seafaring career. Sinclair was the hard-driving captain of packet ships operated by the famous Black Ball Line.

A jug, possibly made in Liverpool around 1780, tells the sad tale of man overboard. The black-and-white image shows men in a rowing boat throwing a rope to a man in the sea.

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).

George Ferguson School of Irish Dance put their best foot forward

Visitors to World Museum Liverpool over the last couple of days will have noticed a distinctly Irish flavour to the events. Our very own leprechaun from the learning department, Ann-marie McGaughey, explains what was going on:

This year, we had a number of events including drama workshops, singing workshops and traditional storytelling, using the tale of The Children of Lir. George Ferguson School of Irish Dance returned for a second year running and treated us to a fabulous display of Irish dancing, before getting us all up to join in with the Ceili!

This weekend we also learned about a very special lady called Kitty Wilkinson, who was brought vividly to life by a roleplayer. Kitty was born in Derry, Ireland and came over to Liverpool in the late 1700s when she was still a child. Kitty settled in Liverpool in later life and lived here around the time of the cholera epidemic of 1832. At this time a lot of people in Liverpool were living in poor squalid conditions, with a lot of overcrowding in houses. Kitty was fortunate enough to live in a house with a hot water boiler (the only one in her street at the time) and she worked out that if people boil-washed their clothes and bed linen, they would be less likely to catch cholera, as the disease could not spread so easily. She invited families in the street to use her boiler to wash their clothes and as word spread, she eventually ended up with 80 families using her boiler! She began to charge families a penny to use the boiler and was able to set up the first public wash house in Liverpool. Kitty’s work played a massive role in stemming the cholera epidemic in Liverpool at the time and she is commemorated with a stained glass window in the lady chapel of the Anglican Cathedral in Liverpool."

'Virgin and Child in Glory' by Murillo

Here's a recommendation for anyone who like me (I'm ashamed to say) doesn't often make it further into the Walker than the exhibition galleries. If you venture as far as the far end of room 3 upstairs you can see a study for the Murillo painting 'Virgin and Child in Glory', which is really rather sweet.

The study is on long term loan to the Walker and is on display in a cabinet in front of the finished painting. Apparently the small oil sketch was probably painted as a 'modello' to show Murillo's patron Ambrosio Ignacio Spinola, Archbishop of Seville, before starting on the large altarpiece that is now in the Walker's collection. It's rather cool to be able to see them together and compare the two

Jurassic cloakroom

They might look like wild creatures but these dinosaurs seemed happy to oblige and form an orderly queue for the cloakroom!

This is a scene from World Museum Liverpool earlier today, when a delivery had arrived for the shop.

I'm a bit of a fan of Titian - an artist who I must admit I knew very little about before the fantastic Titian exhibition at the National Gallery in 2003. Since then I've enjoyed any opportunity to see his work, so was very excited when the painting 'Supper at Emmaus' came to the Walker on long term loan the following year (it's still there - have a look next time you're in and see if you can spot the cat under the table!)

So as you can imagine, I'm looking forward to a trip down to London next month when I'm hoping to catch the exhibition Campaign for the Titians at the National Gallery, which reunites two of his paintings for the first time in two centuries - 'Death of Actaeon' from the National Gallery's collection and the prequel painting 'Diana and Actaeon', which is visiting London for one month only. This is a rare opportunity to see both paintings together but hopefully wont be the last chance we get, as the National Gallery and National Galleries of Scotland are hoping to jointly purchase 'Diana and Actaeon'. Fingers crossed...

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.