National Museums Liverpool Blog - Monday, June 15, 2009

'Smugglers unloading barrels in a rocky cove entrance' by Thomas Luny

Two of my ancestors, John Guy (1731 – 1792) and his younger brother Peter (1736 – 1791), were Customs officers in Liverpool during a period of great growth in the port.

They were both tide waiters who would meet incoming vessels arriving on the high tide and make sure they tied up at the right place on the quayside. Tide waiters needed to ensure that the cargo was not unloaded out of sight of three other officials – the Customs controller, collector and surveyor. 

The brothers also spent periods as mariners. Peter was Liverpool’s only letter carrier (postman) about 1775 when the people of Liverpool applied to the Post Office for more postmen to be appointed. However, the application was rejected because only one was allowed in any town in England.

Only two years earlier Liverpool street names were marked and the houses numbered, making Peter’s life a lot easier.

Since the days when tobacco and brandy were landed on remote beaches from sailing ships, beating smugglers at their own game has taken ingenuity and daring. Watching what is going on at our ports, airports and other access points is where much of the day-to-day work lies.

Front line officers check containers, vehicles, ships and aircraft – sometimes examining their contents. They are on constant lookout for suspicious-looking passengers and goods, often acting on information received from law-enforcement agencies abroad. Until the 1960s this was a male-dominated world. It’s only recently that female officers have joined the front line.

These days some tasks once undertaken by Revenue & Customs are carried out by the Border and Immigration Agency.

There are fascinating displays in Seized: Revenue & Customs Uncovered, the gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum.

There is a tuck stick disguised as a walking stick. Manufactured by the Dring and Fage instrument company of London in the late 19th century, it was used by Customs officers to detect contraband. It would be used to probe bundled products such as tea and cotton.

An oil painting, Smugglers Unloading Barrels in a Rocky Cove Entrance by Thomas Luny (pictured), captures the atmosphere of covert contraband operations.

There are examples of seals used by officials. A waterguard’s button seal was used to stamp red wax seals on taxed goods after inspection after 50 years ago. There is an official reference manual from the same period.

A 1960s Customs officer’s cap shows a portcullis topped by a crown, the symbol of Customs until 2005 when the new Revenue & Customs service was created.

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).

Pauline with a fab sparkly dress from the Mrs. Tinne collection.

From an early age I was interested in vintage clothes, fashion and customising. I liked nothing better than rummaging in my Mum's (cool) friend's cast-offs and cutting big holes in tops so that I could look punky - or something close! (I was obsessed with the cartoon Jem and the Holograms).

So it's no surprise that for the first Ask the curator feature I asked Pauline Rushton, curator of costume and textiles, to be in the hot seat.

If you have a question about the fantastic range of costumes in our collections (from Edwardian frocks to Vivian Westwood suits) then take part in Ask the curator, which gives you the chance to ask our featured curator anything you like.

Send in your questions to Pauline by midnight on Sunday 21 June and we'll choose the best ones to ask her in a video interview, which we'll put on the site.

Although curators do gallery tours at the museums and galleries, most of their time is spent working hard behind the scenes. So we are lucky to have Pauline for this short period of time for you to ask her questions.

The video of Pauline's interview will be up from Monday 6 July so come back and check it out. You'll be able to find out her answers and listen to her talking about one of her favourite objects from the collections.

Have a listen to Pauline and I talking to Claire Hamilton about Ask the curator, on BBC Radio Merseyside. (Interview starts at 50 minutes into the program.)

In the centre of Francesco Mellina’s Sound & Vision exhibition there’s a screen slideshow which is well worth dwelling over. There are some really impressive names in terms of rock pedigree – people like Joey Ramone, Johnny Thunders and Joe Strummer.  However, the person who took my eye was a youthful, mop-haired Wayne Hussey propping up the bar in The Pyramid Club alongside Pete Burns. I completely forgot that before creating goth band The Mission and spawning a legion of devoted fans Wayne had been a member of both Sisters of Mercy and Dead or Alive. I really like the picture because he looks like an average guy – not the untouchable, lamenting, god-like stage persona that my friends and I worshipped. (Or maybe it's just because he is standing next to the ever-flamboyant Mr Burns!)

I’m still a little bit fond of Wayne as he touched our lives albeit briefly. Tasked with devising a social studies project at school, we set out to find how music impacts on youth culture. While I interviewed local Smiths' fan ‘Sad Eric’ and a Lemmy-alike Motorhead fanatic, my buddy set her sights a little higher and wrote to Wayne to find out how music had helped to shape his identity. Imagine our joy (and I mean the sort of ecstasy that only an unhealthily preoccupied teenager can experience) when a pale purple envelope dropped through the door containing an eloquent, beautifully handwritten letter on Mission branded paper! Pure bliss.

The Sound & Vision exhibition has sparked a lot of gigging memories for me. So much is captured on digital cameras and phones and uploaded to Facebook nowadays, whereas I have rely on my rather grainy recollections. I have this mad idea that I saw The La’s supporting The Mission at the Royal Court and there was a power failure. Someone jumped on stage and did an acoustic spot until the lights came back up and I heard it was Pete Wylie – another Liverpool star that features in the exhibition. It all sounds so unlikely now ... whether or not it was really the case, I can't say. Does anyone else remember?

Anyway, thanks to Francesco I’ve dusted off my God's Own Medicine album and given it a twirl and it still sounds amazing. I’m just glad someone had a camera handy as well as the talent and inclination to capture some of this bygone era.

Here at the press office it can get pretty busy at times, so we are very grateful for the generous help of our volunteers. Matthew Linden has been with us for several months so we felt it was time he had a break from the office and took a trip around the venues. Here is what he discovered:

Henry Moore's The Falling Warrior (bronze)

I’ve been carrying out voluntary work in the Press Office since February 2009.  I have a degree in the History of Art, and was asked to write a piece on a favourite artwork at the Walker Art Gallery.  On visiting I was immediately affected by The Falling Warrior (bronze), originally a public sculpture created by Henry Moore between 1956 and 1957.

The sculpture is seen standing on the first floor, placed centrally, an ornament dominating the interior landscape, and an object designated as the intended focal point of the audiences’ attention.

The sculpture seemingly ‘rests’ on a platform, it possesses a dark, decaying exterior, with a contrasting smooth and rugged organic surface.  As one approaches the enigmatic form, one is drawn in; but on closer inspection, the figure is not ‘resting’ – Moore’s human form is abstract, dynamic, expansive, protecting itself with a shield, struggling for life, close to death, a body with no identity, full of ambiguity.  Who is this stranger, this ‘falling warrior’?

The sculpture suggests the simultaneous act of birth and death, an infant and a corpse, the beginning and the end, echoing Moore’s experience of the pain and trauma of the two World Wars.  ‘I wanted a figure that was still alive…in the act of falling…emphasising the dramatic moment that precedes death’, says Moore.

As the viewer walks away from ‘the falling warrior’, the figure remains on the horizon, evoking history and the past, the memory and experience not forgotten

Press Assistant Alison Cornmell has been looking after the publicity for the exhibition Sound and Vision at the National Conservation Centre. Last week she took a special visitor around the exhibition for the first time:

Jill Furmanovsky visits Francesco Mellina's exhibition

They say that there are no more than six degrees of separation between all people, and I think there is some truth to this. My mum’s sister’s husband’s auntie knows Ben Shephard’s Nan, thus meaning that me and that fine-looking GMTV presenter are practically best mates!

Ok that was a tenuous link but after my meeting with rock photographer Jill Furmanovsky there is now only one degree of separation between me and some of the greatest musicians in the world…of all time...ever!

On Friday 5 June I was lucky enough to be introduced to Jill Furmanovsky by Francesco Mellina. She has captured many of the biggest names in rock music, including Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Mike Oldfield, Bob Marley, Eric Clapton, Blondie, The Police, The Sex Pistols, The Pretenders, and the night before I met her she had been photographing Oasis at their gig at Heaton Park in Manchester.  

Francesco and Jill know each other from many years ago when Francesco was manager of Dead or Alive and hired Jill to photograph them. Now years on they  have re-established contact and Jill came to visit Francesco’s exhibition Sound and Vision at the National Conservation Centre.

After having a brief chat with her me and Francesco left her to have a look around the exhibition by herself. Twenty minutes later she emerged from the gallery telling us that she thought the exhibition was fantastic, and was filled with quite technical questions, none of which I could answer. So after grabbing a quick picture of them both I let them have some time to catch up and discuss all things photographic.

As I walked out the Conservation Centre on Whitechapel I thought of all the people I am obviously now closely linked with…Debbie Harry, Sting, Chrissie Hynde, Noel Gallagher, Liam Gallagher. I’m now in very good company..although nothing tops Ben Shephard.

I can see it now – the strange carving of a man’s head on a stout wooden pole half hidden in the shady garden. It was one of the curiosities brought back by the man whose family lived at the house. He was a sea captain who did not return from the Second World War.

The head and pole looked Polynesian, hewn from the wood of a tropical forest before ending up in a Liverpool garden. The face would stare at me as I swung languidly in the hammock slung between the pole and a tree – an indelible childhood memory.

Before 1914, accommodation on British merchant ships was very primitive. Crews usually lived together in cramped quarters with basic washing, eating and toilet facilities. Even the cabins occupied by the captain and other senior officers were usually very small and basic.

Living conditions didn’t greatly improve until the 1950s and 60s when old steam ships were replaced by motor ships. On today’s ships crews have many facilities including comfortably-furnished cabins, excellent food and sporting and leisure amenities.

Displays at Merseyside Maritime Museum include a seaman’s hammock dating from about 1900. Hammocks were used for hundreds of years before bunks and beds became common. Seafarers would sling their hammocks in some convenient place and, when not in use, they could be easily stowed away. If a sailor died, his body was stitched up in his hammock and buried at sea. Hammocks were used on both Merchant and Royal Navy ships until the 1950s

A seaman’s horsehair mattress from the 1920s was used on the steam coaster, Enid. Wooden bunks were fixed to the sides of fo’c’sle (forecastle) below decks in the ship’s bow (front). Mattresses were placed on the bunks. They were known as “donkey’s breakfasts” because they were traditionally filled with straw.

1848 illustration of the fo'c'sle of a sailing ship.

An 1848 drawing (pictured) shows the basic conditions in the fo’c’sle of a sailing ship.  It graphically illustrates the damp, claustrophobic conditions. Two seafarers are seen trying to relax after a makeshift meal as the ship lurches heavily in rough seas.

Crews had to supply their own bedding, towels, soap, a plate, mug, knife and fork.

Photographs include washday on board a modern steamer in the 1930s. On many older ships dhobying or washing clothes was done in a bucket on deck. In contrast is the officers’ saloon on the BP tanker British Duchess in the 1960s. By this time, officers enjoyed particularly good living conditions on board ship.

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).

Obama mania hits Antwerp

Hello there

One of the most unexpected but satisfying things I have seen in my recent travels has to be during a trip to Antwerp when I was invited to speak at the 'What’s in a name? Knowledge and Research in Museums' symposium held in the library of the Rubens Museum. It was organised by MAS (Museum aan de Stroom) which opens in 2010. MAS staff members as well as speakers from Amsterdam (such as the National Maritime Museum and the Tropenmuseum), London (Museum of London and Greenwich Maritime Institute) and my good self presented a series of papers explaining how knowledge, information and research is dispersed within their institutions.  

I have to say that the majority of debate took place between the invited British speakers. All friendly of course and focusing on whether or not the google generation as they are called would have any reason to come to a museum in person as they could access everything off site. I agreed to a certain extent but I think we are some way off the majority of 16-18 year olds googling museum collections in their own time before they have ever visited in person. As a follow up to a visit with parent or school yes, but before they log onto Facebook etc etc I am not so sure. An interesting area for debate though. 

The sight of seeing the Obama Bar in a backstreet of Antwerp whilst enjoying some of city’s beautiful architecture brought a smile to my face. His election recently not only caused unparalleled scenes of joy in the streets of the USA but it affected someone enough to open a bar (or probably rename a bar) after him in Antwerp. Take it from me, the location was definitely not on the main thoroughfare and I could well imagine Antwerp locals rather than American tourists drinking under a picture of a smiling Obama.

If only we had someone of Obama’s stature in the UK now, especially after the worrying and frankly disturbing MEP election results which I woke up to this morning. Someone to bring hope to a wide range of voters rather than focus negatively like so many politicians today on peoples differences with the aim of polarising towns, cities, schools, work places etc. Differences are a good thing, different languages, different beliefs, customs and so on. That is why when writing this blog I cannot help but sigh in despair at the fact that a representative of a so called democratic political party here in the North West has gained a seat at the European parliament on an agenda of hate, distrust and manipulation. 

Now I am not going to go on a political rant, that is not my job, but as head of a museum which actively challenges racism and discrimination it is my duty to encourage all of you to tell your friends and families to visit the International Slavery Museum more than ever. Take a look at some of the displays and exhibits we have which focus on both the more heinous aspects of world history and contemporary society as well as some of the most uplifting. For every reminder of what hate can do by looking at an object such as the Ku Klux Klan outfit, you can see what the bringing together of cultures can do in our cultural transformations section. Take a look at the Black Achievers Wall, and in particular the Black British achievers and the inspirational sportspeople, actors, poets etc and tell me that their contributions have not enhanced Britain? It is frankly ridiculous to suggest otherwise.

An institution like International Slavery Museum will continue to do all it can to stop the growth and influence of individuals and political parties who espouse division and hate. So hopefully in the very near future the Obama camp will visit the UK as well as Liverpool, Merseyside and Lancashire and give people enough belief in hope rather than hate.

Bye for now.

Voting is high on the agenda with the election today and a new series of Big Brother about explode onto the nation's TV screen. I'd be interested to see how the number of voters compare given the difference in gravity ... Anyway, to enter into the voting spirit I thought it might be fun to have a light-hearted poll about some of the most popular pictures in the Walker Art Gallery. I haven’t picked paintings due to historical importance or artistic merit (of which there are many) but pulled out a handful that we know our visitors enjoy. After all, that’s what visiting a gallery all is about! It might be because of the story, because it features an animal or reminds them of their holidays. If you don’t know the painting follow the link to have a look at it on the website first. The ten paintings I've picked are:

Isabella – John Everett Millais

The Death of Nelson – Daniel Maclise

One of the Family – Frederick Cotman

The Fever Van – LS Lowry

Bathers at Dieppe – Walter Sickert

Interior at Paddington – Lucian Freud

Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool  - David Hockney

And When Did You Last See Your Father? – William Frederick Yeames

Snowdon from Llyn Nantlle – Richard Wilson

Two Jamaican Girls – Augustus John

Vote now and remember – it’s just for fun! If your favourite painting isn't listed here, email me with your suggestions and I'll give them a mention in the follow up post.

Which Walker painting do you love the most?(polling)

A posh pie and a hazlenut latte please!

We're very pleased that the tearoom at Sudley House has now reopened! After its recent refurbishment there is now an extensive new menu, an extra seating area and free wi-fi.

The new menu includes sandwiches, soups and 'posh pies' such as cod and chorizo, steak or spring veg hot pot. For afters you can try homemade cakes, munch on muffins or pastries and enjoy a hazelnut or vanilla latte.

Where else could you eat yummy food in a relaxed Georgian setting, before exploring the work of Turner and Rossetti in a gallery?

The tearoom is open daily from 10am - 4.45pm and you can look at our sample menu to get a taste of what's on offer.

Helen Halliwell and Bill Sillitoe installing the new display

Yesterday I saw the installation of a new display of Islamic ceramics in the Weston Discovery Centre at World Museum Liverpool. The display is a very personal project for technical services technician Helen Halliwell, as she has been closely involved from the outset.

Helen used to work as a demonstrator in the Weston Discovery Centre before joining the technical services team over at the National Conservation Centre recently. When the display of Islamic ceramics was proposed to tie in with the Arabic Arts Festival next month, Helen’s expertise was called on as she has a background in ceramics - she worked as a ceramics technician while studying for her Masters degree in the subject. So Helen worked with curator Emma Martin to select pieces of 13th and 14th century Islamic pottery from Iran, Iraq and Egypt for the display. The pieces, which have never been on display before, were chosen as they are great examples of the geometry and patterns in their designs, which Islamic ceramics are famous for.

After finalising the selection Helen joined technical services, which is the department responsible for creating mounts and installing displays. So she has been involved in that side of the project as well, including specifying the layout of the display case.

I caught up with Helen and senior technician Bill Sillitoe when they finished the display off yesterday. Bill made the supports for the wall mounted sherds in the display, using wire with a silicon tubing covering to protect the artefacts. Although they look quite simple, each one is specially made to support a specific sherd safely at the correct angle.

You can see more photos of the installation in our Islamic ceramics display set on Flickr.