National Museums Liverpool Blog - Thursday, March 12, 2009

It's Science Week so, as you'd expect, the folk in World Museum have had lots of free activities for budding scientists. Here's a pic of visitors making and painting plaster casts of fossils in the Clore Natural History Centre last weekend. If you missed that then don't worry, you can have a go this weekend.

There will also be a range of quizzes and colouring sheets and the chance to meet our resident dinosaur expert Dave Roberts who will be bringing out some specimens, including dinosaur poo. Full details are on the World Museum Liverpool events and activities page.

The handling team carefully wrap Jude the Giant's head in plastic sheeting

As I've mentioned many times before, life for National Museums Liverpool's handling and transport technicians is certainly never dull. This Flickr set of photographs of their activities this week look like scenes from a Victorian murder mystery - with dark, mysterious tunnels and body parts being wrapped.

The team were actually moving the mobile statue Jude the Giant. Many people will remember Jude, who was made in workshops at World Museum for the city's 800th birthday pageant in 2007, and has recently been on display in St Georges Hall.

She has now been dismantled, wrapped in protective packaging and taken to the National Conservation Centre for treatment before going back out on display in a new location later this year.

The handling team were assisted by textile conservators, especially when moving Jude's dress, which is a painted item that needs special care and attention. Handling technician and senior driver Paul Kelly thinks that the whole team deserves a big hand for doing such a great job.

Neon brights and clashing colours ruled the catwalk at the sports/casual show.

Following the fashion theme from Dawn's previous post, today it was Liverpool One's turn to host a series of fashion shows as part of Liverpool Fashion Week. Performing arts students from LIPA worked the catwalk (with plenty of attitude) wearing sports and casual wear from brands such as Blue Ink, Henleys and Fred Perry. Trainers were a big feature, with models carrying them around their necks while walking barefoot! Neon colours featured heavily, perhaps a hangover from the recent nu-rave trend, giving the whole show a bright, spring-like feel. It think my favourite t-shirt from the show was the Mr Men one from Blue Ink with the slogan 'I left Mr Grumpy at home', very cool.

If you are mad about sports/casual wear then take a few photos of your favourite tops or trainers and join our Metro V Retro Flickr group. Or drop in to see our Fashion V Sport exhibition and drool over the funky customised trainers.

Fila Collection. Copyright V&A images, Victoria & Albert Museum

Back in 1984 all the coolest boys at my school would spend their time practising the windmill and body popping to Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa. They idolised Turbo and Ozone from Breakdance (remember the Tour de France scene with the broom?), Beat Street and local crew Broken Glass. They wore Nike Windrunner jackets, Fila BJ tracksuits, Lacoste and Fred Perry t-shirts. There were more trainers than I can remember – from Puma California to Adidas Samba, Bamba, Mamba, Trimm Trab, Forest Hills, Palermo, Corsica and Tenerife. The highlight of any school disco would be a highly anticipated uprock between two of the best poppers. To this day I still get a little flutter when I see a Fila sign. 

When Fashion V Sport opened at the Walker, the memories came flooding back, and it got me thinking about all those brands and clothes - how they still resonate with my particular generation, and what sort of clobber kids get excited about nowadays. So we’ve set up a Flickr group – Metro V Retro – where you can upload, post and reminisce about your sports casual gems or tell us about a future classic. If you’ve got something great in your wardrobe, we’d love you to share it – whether it is a cutting edge release, or a retro design.

As fortune would have it, Fashion V Sport also coincides with the Adidas ‘60 years of soles and stripes’ campaign for which they produced this fantastic TV commercial. It’s a powerful combination of an amazing soundtrack (Pilooski mix of Beggin’ by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons), a plethora of celebs including Method Man, Katy Perry, Estelle, The Ting Tings, DMC (of Run DMC), Missy Elliot and David Beckham, and of course some very cool trainers.

At the same time, an edgy new movie called ‘Awaydays’ is drawing on the earlier influence of the 80s casuals scene (which is widely thought to have originated in Liverpool) set against a backdrop of football rivalry and violence. I recently saw an interview with the wardrobe advisor for the film who talked about how difficult it was to source all of the gear. So if you’ve got something special, keep hold of it. It could well be in demand in years to come.

Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo.

At one time I had a yen to be a commercial artist but decided, at the age of 12, to become a reporter instead.

Public artworks that made the biggest impressions on me were the huge posters that screamed at you from Liverpool’s many cinemas. One I particularly remember for its wonderful colourful images advertised the classic double horror feature “The Blob” and “I Married a Monster from Outer Space”. It certainly grabbed everyone’s attention on the bus.

Later I learnt about the big contribution artists made to the war effort by boosting morale and passing on information.

Liverpool was Britain’s most important port in the Second World War, handling at least one third of the country’s imports brought in by convoys running the gauntlet across the Atlantic. Greatly assisted by other west coast ports, she was the main terminus for the convoys. By early 1941 Liverpool had also become a major naval base and the HQ of Britain’s North Atlantic campaign.

Recognising the port’s key role, Germany made her the target for 68 bombing raids – more than any other British port outside London. Liverpool’s ships and merchant seamen played a crucial part in ensuring Britain’s survival, as did her dockers, ship builders and repairers. 

Posters on display in the Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Battle of the Atlantic gallery highlight key areas. There are two showing variations of the Careless Talk Costs Lives campaign, perhaps the most famous in the Second World War. One shows a group of men talking in a pub and a picture of a ship sinking with the slogan: “She sails at midnight. He talked … this happened”.

The second is headed S.O.S and includes the lines:

Idle words – things heard or seen
Help the lurking submarine

A colourful poster shows ships entering harbour and being unloaded. The cargoes are put directly into steam trains similar to the ones that steamed along Liverpool’s dock road until the 1960s. In another, shown here, a cloth-capped dock worker is told by a soldier:

“Go to it chum! That’s war work – we get munitions in return for that lot!”
Our good go out. Food and munitions come in.
"We must have exports", Ernest Bevin

One declares: “Dockers help nail these lies! Back up the seamen – speed the turn-round.” This His Majesty’s Stationery Office (HMSO) poster is illustrated with a German propaganda leaflet dropped over Britain in 1941.

Merseyside’s 30,000 dockers, whose average age was over 50, played a vital role in the unloading of cargoes. Younger men joined the armed forces or went to other industries.

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).

This week's snaps from the Museum of Liverpool building site have a definite smell of spring about them; sunshine, blue sky and crocuses. Pity this weekend's weather forecast is so lousy. I especially like this picture; the texture of the cladding highlighted by the morning sun. The lines are the rigging of the ship, De Wadden, in the adjacent graving dock. As ever higher-res versions this snap and more are in the Museum of Liverpool flickr set.

The build itself marches on. Our Twitter page charts the progress - become a follower.

Introducing Ed Casson, a new addition to the press team at NML:

When strolling around Liverpool I have always been told to look up to see the city's stunning architecture and history - now I'll find it hard to resist looking down. Last week I spent the afternoon on a guided 'fossil walk' with Tony Morgan, a geologist in the Clore Natural History Centre at World Museum Liverpool.

Starting at the top of William Brown Street, Tony pointed out a marking on the pavement (to the untrained eye a mere groove) which was in fact a 320-year-old fossilised fallen tree. Across St John's Gardens were distinct clam markings from the Jurassic Era - 150-million-years-old - on the William Rathbone statue.

Possibly Liverpool's oldest rock (although there are older examples in the World Museum's Clore Department) stands at an astonishing 1.5-billion-years-old. The Rapakivi Granite, from Finland, was used to build the former Allied Irish Bank in Dale Street. On to the Abbey National and jewellers Boodles in North John Street, and snail fossils can be found in the limestone.

Even stranger, as passers-by who watched as we studied the building will testify, are the fossils on the Met Quarter shopping centre in Whitechapel. The Bavarian granite contains large fossilised molluscs and cuttlefish-related creatures (again from the Jurassic Era), more examples of which can be seen at the World Museum. Tony, a member of the Liverpool Geological Society, explained that the molluscs could have grown to as large as two metres in diameter.

He said: "There are an amazing amount of fossils in the buildings across Liverpool, you just have to know what you're looking for and keep an eye out for them."

So then fossil-hunters, as they say at the bingo - "Eyes down!"

* An in-depth feature on the fossil walk, by journalist Emma Pinch, appeared in Tuesday’s Daily Post.

Me waiting in the wings before my Clare Balding interview at Aintree

All reporters remember big stories they worked on and the 1993 Grand National was for me one of the most memorable. It was the year the race was famously declared void after demonstrators disrupted the world’s greatest steeplechase.

This week I was quizzed by BBC racing presenter and former top amateur jockey Clare Balding about my memories of that amazing day. It was for an edition of The One Show being screened in the run-up to this year’s big race.

The show’s producers were prompted by my collection of passes, pamphlets, statements and press releases amassed on that day in the mayhem of the press room at the renowned Liverpool racecourse. Some years ago I donated them to National Museums Liverpool and they feature on our website where BBC researchers spotted them. This 1993 ephemera is destined for display in the new Museum of Liverpool opening next year.

It was decided to do the interview in the bitter cold in front of the County Stand. I admitted to Clare that the last time I had been to the course was when they secretly buried legendary winner Red Rum at the winning post. Since then I had watched the race from the Blue Anchor Bridge, a spot where you can be a spectator for free and avoid the crowds.

As we talked, my memories stretched back to my first visit in 1961 when Nicholas Silver won and I placed an unsuccessful sixpenny bet with exotic tipster Prince Monolulu.

I was there when Gay Trip won in 1970 but remember most the tiny comedian Jimmy Clitheroe, dressed in a suede coat, with his horse. That year I walked around the track with local MP Dick Crawshaw attempting an endurance record. I interviewed the formidable owner of Aintree Mirabelle Topham on the telephone – a major coup. 

In 1978 we had the ‘will he, won’t he?’ saga of Red Rum making his final appearance at Aintree. I met TV personality Angela Rippon when she cantered on Rummy along Southport sands.

I was there in 1981 to see cancer victim Bob Champion’s epic win on Aldaniti on a glorious sunny day.
 
But nothing could prepare me for the Race That Never Was. I told Clare it was like being on the Titanic steaming on regardless after being mortally wounded.

Nobody seemed to know what was going on in the press room until racecourse chairman Lord Daresbury took the helm at a news conference. The race was declared void because of two false starts.

This picture was taken by assistant director Sophie Wallace-Hadrill and shows Clare preparing to interview me as cameraman Tim Sutton and director Hamish Summers get things right. The structure in the background is the biggest marquee I’ve ever seen.

A street trader at St George's Dock, Liverpool in 1895. Courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo.

When I was young, slavery was rarely mentioned either at home or in school – it was rather a taboo subject. Grown-ups would point out parts of Liverpool, saying things like “That’s where the slaves were sold”. In reality very few enslaved Africans were sold in the port although merchants, traders and ship owners grew rich on the trade.

Liverpool was the leading European slave trade port in the later decades of the 18th century and people of African descent were living in the town from at least that time. A number of merchants brought slaves from the West Indies to work as servants in their homes.

Some African chiefs sent their sons to be educated in Britain. In the 1790s more than 50 of these children were at school in Liverpool.

With the development of the palm oil business after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, African seafarers were increasingly employed to crew the ships. Many of these seafarers settled on the outskirts of the town in the area now known as Liverpool 8.

There were significant numbers of Black people in Britain in the 18th century. By 1800 London may have had a Black population of around 10,000. Although they had a variety of jobs including serving as soldiers and sailors, most were domestic servants to the rich.

This is illustrated on a coffee pot among the displays at the International Slavery Museum in the Merseyside Maritime Museum building. Other exhibits include a print showing a dock and sailing ships which also features the first known images of Black people in Liverpool – two youngsters near the dock side.

An 1895 photograph, shown here, taken by Charles Frederick Inston, shows a Black street trader at St George’s Dock. An item from a 1756 edition of Williamsons Liverpool Advertiser announces  the sale in a shop of “three negro men, two negro women, two negro boys and one negro girl” along with quantities of raisin wine, cider and flour.

A notice of the sale of “11 negroes” at the town’s Exchange Coffee House appeared in the same newspaper in 1766. For wealthy English families, a servant was an asset to be shown off as evidence of wealth and status. These notices show how enslaved Africans were part of the consumerism of the time. Africans were exotic accessories and would often be exquisitely dressed to reflect the riches of their masters.This hid the reality that Black servants were often brutalised in their daily lives.

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 temptation to go overboard with footballing puns is almost overwhelming but I'll give it a go.

Only A Game?, the UEFA football exhibition currently at World Museum Liverpool, features lots of loaned objects including trophies, medals, shirts and football memorabilia. Over the coming weeks there are going to be more substitutions than you get in your average international friendly (well, not quite), with items going in and out of the exhibition. They are:

• Everton Collection objects, including the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup medal but excluding the Barcelona Cup - last chance to see these is 8 March 
• UEFA Cup - last day to see this is 3 March
• The following all arrive on 4 March -
  • UEFA Competition for National Representative Women’s Teams trophy (1982/84 - 1987/89)
  • UEFA European Women’s Championship trophy (1989/91- 1999/2001)
  • UEFA European Women’s Championship trophy (new trophy used from 2003/05 onwards)
  • UEFA European Under-21 Championship trophy and winners' medals

There may be other changes so if you are coming to see a specific object you might want to phone the museum or check the Only A Game? webpages to make sure it is available. Either way there is lots to see during any visit.

'George Always I' © Maggi Hambling (2007/2008), courtesy of The Ivy

The late George Melly had a long association with Liverpool's art galleries. This dates back to before the war when as a child he would visit his cousin Emma, who would tell him all about the paintings she owned and read him Beatrix Potter in her library. Cousin Emma just happened to be a certain Emma Holt and her library and painting collection were, and still are, part of Sudley House.

Years later Melly was a familiar figure at the Walker Art Gallery, whether on official duty as a judge of the John Moores 20 exhibition or opening speaker at the Aubrey Beardsley exhibition, or just as a visitor, unmistakable in his loud suits.

It's entirely appropriate then that an exhibition of portraits of 'Good time George' by the distinguished contemporary artist Maggi Hambling, is being shown together for the first time at the Walker. George always, which opens today, is a riot of colour and personality. Melly was a great friend of Hambling's and sat for her many times. After Melly's death in July 2007 she continued to paint a series of portraits from memory and imagination. The most recently completed triptych from this series has not been on public display before.

Calling all part time art and craft students - how would you like to have your artwork displayed in our venues during Adult Learner's Week in May 2009? You could if you win the 'Inspired by...' competition.

Entrants in this year's competition must submit a piece of artwork inspired by the collections, exhibitions or displays in either Sudley House, World Museum Liverpool or the National Conservation Centre. You may submit any art, craft, multi-media, digital work, video or animation. Participants must be over 18 and studying arts or crafts part time. Full entry criteria and downloadable application forms are on the Inspired by... web page.

Do not adjust your sets! A different view of the now familiar museum building reflected in the dock

As you will have seen if you've been down to Liverpool's waterfront recently, the structure of the new Museum of Liverpool building is really taking shape now. But what is going on inside those stone-clad walls? And how are staff preparing for the monumental task of fitting out the enormous galleries inside?

If you want the inside story there are two new ways to find out what's going on. Our quarterly e-newsletter has a summary of all the big news -  you can see the February 2009 e-newsletter online. To sign up for future editions complete the register with us form, remembering to tick the Museum of Liverpool box under 'Interests' and choose email updates under 'Contact options'.

You can now also follow the Museum of Liverpool on Twitter, for all the latest news about progress with the construction.

Don't forget, we'd like to hear from you as well if you have any photos of the museum building taking shape. You can add them to our Building the Museum of Liverpool group on Flickr.