National Museums Liverpool Blog - Monday, April 20, 2009

I have always wanted to invent something that cannot be bettered - the best ideas are always the simplest. What could possibly be better than the wheel? Another idea that I think will never be improved is the wash basin plug. You could think of all sorts of weird pumps and other devices to do the same task but not so simply. Traffic lights solved a problem people had agonised over for years before discovering the (now) obvious solution. The anchor is another simple foolproof invention.

HMS Conway anchor. Image courtesy Liverpool Daily Post and Echo.

Anchors must have been created shortly after the invention of the boat and the earliest ones were hauled up by hand. Ship models found in Ancient Egyptian tombs dating from around 1600 BC have grooved or perforated anchor stones. By 800 BC bronze anchors were being produced in Malta. By about 300 BC anchors, now made of iron, had a more modern appearance. A 16-foot long anchor from a ship of the tyrannical Roman Emperor Caligula – dating from about 40 AD - was salvaged from an Italian lake in 1929.

It is said that the first iron anchors forged in England were made in East Anglia in 573 AD. There is a modern-looking anchor in the Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

As ships and anchors got bigger, a device needed to be invented to haul the anchor up – thus the capstan was born, probably more than 2,000 years ago. This is a vertical rotating drum originally operated by sailors using removable levers known as handspikes. Crew members would sing popular songs and sea shanties as they raised the anchor - probably the best known is The Drunken Sailor. These days capstans are powered by petrol motors, electricity, hydraulics or even pneumatics.

A large anchor outside the main entrance to Merseyside Maritime Museum  came from HMS Conway, a 92-gun wooden battleship built in 1839. Surprisingly, it is about the same size as the one from Caligula's Roman ship.

In 1876 HMS Conway became a school ship where thousands of Royal Navy cadets were trained. She was anchored in the Mersey for many years before being moved to North Wales. She was wrecked in the Menai Straights in 1953 and later broken up. The anchor, saved from the wreck with other relics, was later donated to the museum by the Conway Club – a group made up of former cadets.

Merseyside Maritime Museum is open seven days a week, admission free. 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).

I cannot apologize for what has happened in the past - But I can do my best to never let it happen again.

It's always interesting and sometimes extremely moving to read the comment books and cards in our venues and get direct feedback from visitors. Some of the comments cards that I noticed in the International Slavery Museum this week for example have been extremely poignant and are a testament to the power of the incredible real life stories told within the museum's walls.

You can read a small selection in our visitor comment card set on Flickr.

Yesterday people were invited to Merseyside Maritime Museum to indulge in some creative writing with a difference. 

As part of The Liverpool Map project, we asked the public to come along and write about their favourite and most memorable places in Liverpool, with the opportunity to become part of a Liverpool legacy. 

The Liverpool Map has been researched and developed in conjunction with the people of Merseyside, and will go on display in the new Museum of Liverpool when it opens in 2010. 

International glasswork artists Inga Panels and Jeffrey Sarmiento will use pioneering techniques to create a large multi-layered glass monolith, and want the public to continue to be involved in its design.

The map will be a 3D structure featuring many layers of sheet glass fused into a solid block, each printed with a variety of images and designs showing Liverpool as a city defined by culture and heritage rather than lines on a map. One of these glass layers will be a community layer, including some of the handwriting captured in yesterday’s workshop.

Nell and baby John from Maghull take part in the handwriting workshop for the Liverpool Map

Ideas for favourite places included the Albert Dock, Greenbank Park, the former St Martin's Bank building on Water Street, and Bold Street with its local landmark St Luke's Church - or as locals call it the 'bombed out church'.

 

You can still put your handwriting forward for inclusion in the Liverpool Map, by visiting the Performance Space at BBC Radio Merseyside on Friday 24 April between 10am - 5pm.

 

Come along with ideas of your special places on Merseyside, or if you need further inspiration you can copy out extracts of the Liverpool Saga; an 800 line poem written by people from Merseyside to celebrate Liverpool's 800th Birthday in 2007. It includes some brilliant examples of special memories of places in and around Liverpool!

Photo by Ibrahim Rahmin and Ian Burns, from the Street Life exhibition

Liverpool street fashion has always been an inspiration for professional and budding photographers alike. In 2006 we held the Street Life exhibition at the National Conservation Centre, which celebrated the unique styles of the residents of Liverpool no matter what their age. Our current Fashion V Sport exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery has inspired Creative and Media Diploma students from Liverpool Community College to create some striking images that explore current fashion trends among young people today. These images have been brought together to form Street Fashion, an exhibition in two parts; photographs by Level 2 students are currently on display until 29 April and Level 3 students will show from 1-31 May.

Also inspired by Fashion V Sport is our style-spotting competition! We are offering fashionistas the chance to win a £50 voucher for All Saints, Nike or Urban Outfitters or you could win tickets to see Pink or  Blur.  To be in with a chance of winning, come along to the gallery on Saturday 18 April when style-spotters from the Radio City Ground Crew will be at the exhibition. If you dress to impress then they might choose you to be a winner…

The crew of a Norweigan tanker with their simian and canine crewmates.

I remember the widespread introduction of containers on ships in the late 1960s but little realised how it would transform the character of Liverpool.

Seafarers were once highly visible around the city with their distinctive clothing and style. This photograph of Norwegian tanker crew members with a monkey and dog reminds me of similar scenes once common around the dock road. The almost universal use of roll on – roll off ships means that crew members now rarely spend much time ashore. We have lost much of the colour and vitality mariners brought to our streets by their presence.

In both the First and Second World Wars members of Britain’s merchant navy and those of its allies were on the front line in the struggle for survival. Until 1939 most people involved in British shipping used the terms Merchant Service or Mercantile Marine in relation to the merchant fleet and its sailors. It was only in the Second World War that the title Merchant Navy became the accepted usage. This development was greatly influenced by the issuing of a Merchant Navy buttonhole badge to be worn voluntarily by seamen from January 1940. There is one on display in the Battle of the Atlantic gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum.

In 1938 the British Merchant Service employed more than 190,000 seafarers. Of these, more than 130,000 were British residents while 50,000 were Indian and Chinese mariners. Women seafarers were relatively few and were usually employed either as stewardesses or children’s nurses on passenger liners. When the war began, most of these women lost their jobs as ships were converted to troop carrying and other duties. Some, however, continued to go to sea throughout the war.

The fiercely-independent, multi-racial body of civilians sailing under the Red Ensign had a long history of poor pay and working conditions.

In 1917 Parliament approved a standard uniform for general use by the Mercantile Marine. But during the Second World War most seafarers on British merchant ships wore either the uniforms of their own shipping companies or just ordinary clothes. A display of archive photos of merchant navy uniforms was held recently at the Maritime Archives and Library.

In May 1941 a shortage of manpower prompted the Government to set up the Merchant Navy Reserve Pool. By this, all seamen and some 60,000 former seafarers were obliged to register with the Pool.

Other exhibits include a Ministry of Information poster showing two gunners on an armed merchant ship with the slogan: “To the Merchant Navy – thank you!” and an officers’ Mercantile Marine cap badge from 1917 onwards.

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).

Press officer, Ed Casson, tells us about a fascinating soundtrack that has been created to accompany one of our most popular paintings...

'And When Did You Last See Your Father?', William Yeames

Aigburth-born Alison invited visitors to the Walker Art Gallery to give descriptions of the famous William Yeames painting 'And When Did You Last See Your Father?' While some people were happy to give brief explanations of what they saw, others spent up to an hour outlining each precise detail of the piece. Alison edited these together to create a soundtrack, which was then played in front of an imprecise line drawing of the painting at a Liverpool DaDafest exhibition.

This fascinating recording has now been added to the 'And When Did You Last See Your Father?' page on our website where you can also see the painting, which shows a Royalist house under occupation by Parliamentarians and a young boy being interrogated as to the whereabouts of the master of the house.

Alison – the arts manager for Liverpool DaDa (Disability and Deaf Arts) – has recorded an interview with Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour about the project, which will be broadcast later this year.

Better late than never I've put up last week's Museum of Liverpool progress snaps on Flickr. Everything is still progressing swimmingly. Last week's progress included cladding to the reveals of the end gables with corner pieces being fitted this week; pressure testing of pipework; installation of external drainage and services ducts; the suspended ceiling started to go in; concerte work on the north and south ramps, and concrete fire sealing works to structure/building cavities.

Update: Was so late with that last set that this week's have turned up as well - have just uploaded them. They include some nice shots of the interior so are well worth a look.

Guy Knight shows us some bees

This week I got to look around the entomology lab at World Museum Liverpool, at one of the creepy crawly tours that are available to visitors during school holidays. Zoology curator, Guy Knight, took us around the lab so we could see some of the thousands of mounted specimens housed in the back of the museum.

He showed us a case full of crickets that were found in Liverpool after they hitch-hiked here on some bananas. Then there were questions from some of the eager smaller visitors on the tour – my favourite being; ‘What happens if they come back to life after you’ve killed them?’ Maybe they had been to the Ancient Egypt gallery beforehand and had learned about the afterlife! Bees were next on the agenda – we have around 10,000 bees in our collections apparently. We learned that there are 250 different kinds of bees, but wild bumblebees are getting rarer due to the countryside changing and there being less wild areas for bees to live in.

In other bug news, you can now come and see a new ‘living display’ in the bug house gallery featuring the Indian Ground Beetle (Anthia sexguttata). The beetles’ new home has been created using a special sand and cement mix, which will allow them to dig burrows to lay their eggs.  Indian Ground Beetles are a large predatory beetle, which actively hunt down their insect prey and this species has never been bred in captivity. They can also spray an acidic liquid accurately into the eyes of their enemies if they feel threatened. Unbee-lievable!

Dr Alexine Tinne in front of one of her older sisters’ dresses

For Mrs Tinne shopping was more than just a necessity or a hobby, during the Depression she even elevated it to a charitable event. She was very concerned about conditions for women, especially the unmarried girls working in shops who received no salary and relied on the commissions from sales to make ends meet in those difficult times. Mrs Tinne would often buy expensive items like fur coats and glamorous evening gowns just so that the shop assistants would get the commission, even though she never wore many of these extravagant purchases.

Not surprisingly she amassed a huge collection of clothing for herself and her large family during the period from her marriage in 1910 until the outbreak of war in 1939. Many years later her youngest daughter, Dr Alexine Tinne, donated this collection to the decorative arts collection at National Museums Liverpool. Numbering more than 700 items, this is now probably the largest surviving collection of period clothes from one person's wardrobe in Britain.

Many people will remember the first exhibition about the collection, A Passion for Fashion, which was held at the Walker in 2006. Since then a large collection of letters has been discovered, which reveal a lot of background information about the well dressed family. Insights from this correspondence have been used to build up a broader picture of their lives for a new exhibition, A Sweet Life, at Sudley House

I was lucky enough to meet Dr Alexine Tinne when she came in today to give her approval to the exhibition before it opens to the public tomorrow. She talked fondly about her mother, who she remembered as being a very kind hearted and generous lady. Alexine's father, Philip Tinne, came from a wealthy family of sugar importers, a source of income that was relatively unaffected by the Depression in the 1920s. Besides doing her bit to support shop assistants, Alexine remembers that her mother was involved in running a couple of hostels for women where she was not afraid to roll up her sleeves and get stuck in with the practical work. She also worked with Bessie Braddock campaigning for pensions for spinsters. The whole family were involved in hosting garden parties for pensioners from Toxteth and Garston in the summer, which people queued for 2 hours beforehand to get into. Alexine and her sisters would prepare bunches of flowers for the guests in jam jars on the table, then give tours of the garden. The family also took part in Christmas concert parties at Garston hospital, inviting the whole cast back to the house for a cold turkey dinner afterwards.

Pictures of family life, including Alexine herself as a baby, and a number of accessories from the collection, help to round off what could only be described as a very sweet exhibition. You can have a sneaky preview peek at some of the displays in our A Sweet Life exhibition Flickr set.

At the end of March, we held a launch party to celebrate the release of 'Something Wild… at the Walker Art Gallery' - the very first storybook that National Museums Liverpool has published. Public Programmes Officer Nicky Fawcett can tell us what went on at the launch...

Jenny the Artist with two little artists...

We wanted to hold a launch party to thank everyone who had helped create the book and to encourage Liverpool primary schools to take up their entitlement to a free copy of Something Wild… All the children from St Pascal Baylon and St Columbas Out of school clubs were invited as they had worked with Kate Pankhurst to help draw the illustrations for the book.  The Mayor also came to the launch and gave out free copies of the book and a goody bag to everyone that took part. He congratulated the young illustrators on all of their hard work in bringing the book to life.

The launch was lots of fun as we had organised plenty of activities that families could take part in. The storytelling sessions proved most popular and 'Jenny the Artist', one of the characters from the book, led an exciting tour of the gallery to find all of the paintings and objects featured in the book.  We also had a mask making workshop and afterwards many of the children were wearing the horse, pig or bird masks they had made around the gallery!

The launch was a huge success and it was great to see just how much everyone enjoyed the night and most importantly the book itself.  We’re all looking forward to seeing families and schools having fun using the book at the gallery.

If you are a teacher in a Liverpool primary school, you can are entitled to a free copy of the book. If you are a parent who would like a copy to use with your children, you can buy a copy from the Walker (or any of our venues) or by mail order.