The Prince of Wales Investiture chair Mark Lucas, 3 July 2019 This chair was designed by Lord Snowdon for the investiture of Prince Charles on 1 July 1969. 4,600 of these chairs were made for seating guests inside Caernarfon Castle. The chair was used by Iorwerth Howells, director of education for Carmarthenshire, who was invited to the investiture as one of the representatives for that county. The frame is made from steamed beech and the seat and back of preformed plywood veneered with olive ash. The whole is stained vermilion and sealed with a clear acid catalyst lacquer. The chairs were made at Remploy factories in Treforest and Wrexham. The investiture of Prince Charles on 1 July 1969 at Caernarfon Castle The fabric is made from Welsh red flannel made by David Lewis Limited of Cambrian Mills in Drefach Felindre, now home to the National Wool Museum. 2,650 yards of cloth were produced at 18/- per yard. The Prince of Wales’s feathers were embossed in gold leaf by the Ferndale Book Company. After the ceremony the chairs were offered for sale at £12.00 each. Invited guests had first refusal and the remaining chairs were sold to the public. The original sample sent to the department of works for checking
Cymru Yfory Jennifer Evans, 5 June 2019 The Investiture of the Prince of the Wales at Caernarfon Castle made 1969 a particularly exciting year in Wales. And an exhibition held at National Museum Cardiff reflected the patriotic fervour of the investiture with the wonder and excitement of the first humans on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission with Cymru Yfory – Wales Tomorrow. It was held in the Main Hall and was the museum’s official contribution towards the celebrations of Investiture Year. As the forward in the catalogue put it: "If a National Museum chooses to open its doors to contributions from the designer’s studio, the market place, the planner’s office or the research laboratory, no precedent is necessary. The Victoria & Albert Museum did these things excitedly in 1946 in the exhibition, Britain can make it . We saw then, after many drab years, a splash of enterprise and colour and an unexpected promise for the future. For its main contribution to the year of the Investiture and of Croeso ’69 [a year long campaign to promote Welsh tourism and business built around the Investiture], the NMW has chosen deliberately to look beyond its ordinary boundaries and also to look into the future. It has invited contributions from organisations of all sorts and the brief has been simple: that the ideas presented should be imaginative and for the future. They are not promises; they may not even be pleasant, but at least they refer to aspects of a possible future…" Stands and ceiling display [with the General Post Office stand to the left] The exhibition represented a major break with the traditions of the Museum; it was showing that it had an interest not only in the past, but in the life of the community in the present and the future. The whole of the Main Hall was used – isolated from the rest of the Museum by hanging drapes and a magnificent inflated plastic ceiling. For the first time professional designers were commissioned to design and plan the exhibition; Alan Taylor (Senior Designer, BBC Wales TV) and John Wright (Principal of Newport College of Art) co-ordinated the design of exhibits contributed by over twenty organisations. The results were spectacular, an immediate surprise to every visitor who had known the Main Hall as a dignified setting for classical sculpture. The range and imagination of the stands on display at this 1969 exhibition were vast; they included ideas and plans for the Cardiff of the future, for the valleys, for the Severn Estuary and for housing and schools. Some were realistic but most were fantastical and frivolous – especially exhibits illustrating clothing, furniture and domestic habits of the future. A major contributor was General Industrial Plastics Limited, manufacturers and designers of plastic products who made the magnificent inflated ceiling display, pieces of air filled furniture and the plastic carrier bag provided with the official catalogue. Cardiff College of Art, the National Coal Board, the City of Cardiff, the General Post Office and British Rail also contributed stands. As part of the fun atmosphere, a spoof contributor named Kumro Kemicals Corporation was created. The catalogue states they were established in 1999 (bear in mind this event took place in 1969!) and that their products were “the result of the most intensive research programme ever undertaken by any corporation in the Western Hemisphere…” As part of their contribution, Kumro produced sealed envelopes bearing the following message, DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 1999 – and the Library still holds one of these that remains unopened! When publishing images, copyright issues need to be considered and a number of these photographs are stamped on the reverse with either Hylton Warner & Co Ltd or Giovanni Gemin (Whitchurch Road, Cardiff). Internet searches brought up a little information on Hylton Warner but nothing current and no information at all was found concerning Giovanni Gemin. Therefore, a notice was placed on the Photo Archive News website requesting communication from anyone who might be familiar with these two photographers. After some time, we were contacted by the son of Giovanni Gemin. Award-winning author Giancarlo Gemin was kind enough to grant permission to publish the photographs and also tell us the following about his father: "He was an industrial and commercial photographer based in Cardiff from 1961. He worked regularly for BBC Wales, and was one of the official photographers at the investiture of the Prince of Wales. He was awarded the Chartered Institute of Incorporated Photographers (AIIP) and an Associate of Master Photographers (AMPA)". Models standing beneath the clear plastic ceiling installation As well as items of ephemera such as the official catalogue, carrier bag, stickers etc. we are fortunate to hold two volumes of comments books. These are a fascinating record of visitors’ thoughts and the majority are very positive but, not everyone appreciated looking to the future instead of a classical past and to end this post, here are just a few that have made us smile: BW, Rhwibina – "Awful" RM, Rhondda – "Not as good as the British Museum" MB, Cheltenham – "Baffled!" MD, Durham – "I prefer the face of OLD WALES proud and noble not false and plastic" CS, Cardiff – "Needs dusting" L, Cardiff – "Rubbish, waste of good museum space!" TO, County Cork – "TRASH" Inflatable ceiling display in process of construction We also recently made contact with Drake Educational Associates who purchased Hylton Warner along with copyright of all their photographs a number of years ago. We thank them also for allowing us to use the images in this article.
Apollo 12 Moon Rock 12 March 2019 Moon rock displayed at National Museum Cardiff. The rock comes from a mound of material thrown out by the impact that made Head Crater. Apollo 12 was the sixth manned flight in the United States Apollo programme and the second to land on the Moon. It was launched on 14 November 1969, from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, four months after Apollo 11. Astronaut Alan Bean collected samples from the moon to bring back to Earth for research.The rocks on the Moon are roughly the same age as the oldest rocks found on Earth. They range from about 3.2 billion years up to about 4.5 billion years old. However on Earth rocks this old form just a small part of the surface geology. Most older formations have been destroyed and recycled by plate tectonics.Today, a piece of Moon rock from the Apollo 12 mission, on loan from NASA, is on display as part of the exhibition The Evolution of Wales at National Museum Cardiff.The precious rock is kept in a special airtight container to protect it from contamination. At 3.3 billion years old, the Moon rock is considerably older than the most ancient Welsh rock, a mere 711 million years old, is roughly the same age as Lewisian Gneiss (from north-west Scotland), the oldest identified rock in the UK, and is younger than the oldest rock known from Canada (Acaster Gneiss) at 3.9 billion years old. Examples of these three rocks are all displayed alongside the Moon rock.
Welsh National War Memorial Jennifer Evans, 6 November 2018 The Library archive holds material that brings vividly to life the early history of the Museum and of life in and around Cardiff during the early 20th century. As we approach the centenary of the end of the First World War, we take a look at the efforts to create a Welsh National War Memorial. The movement to establish a national memorial in Cardiff was instigated by the Western Mail in October 1919. A committee was established to oversee the project with the then Lord Mayor, G. F. Forsdike, at its helm. The fund closed in 1921 having raised £27,500 and a commission to design the monument was offered to Sir Thomas Brock, designer of the Victoria Memorial outside Buckingham Palace. However, Brock’s original design, although considered “very beautiful and imposing” [1], proved to be too expensive and he died before submitting a further proposal. Therefore in 1924 the committee invited a select group of architects to submit designs in a limited competition. The winning design was by Ninian J. Comper, acknowledged today as one of the last of the great Gothic Revival architects [2]. The committee wanted to place the memorial on a circular plot of land directly in front of City Hall. The Library holds original drawings that show the proposed site. They are signed by A. Dunbar Smith who, along with his partner Cecil Brewer, designed our very own National Museum Cardiff building. At some point someone decided to get creative and produce a photo-collage to illustrate how it might look. We have a number of A3 sized photographs of the view in front of City Hall, with a photograph of a model of the memorial cut out and slotted into place to show it in situ. We don’t know who the creative was, but it obviously did the trick, as the next stage was to build a life sized frame of the monument in position. We hold photographs showing it in place and partly covered in canvas to represent its solid form. However, this had the opposite of the intended effect by prompting both the Museum and City Hall to object [3]. One would have to agree with them looking at how close the formidable sized memorial would have been to these buildings. So, our mystery creative got to work again with another collage showing the memorial in a different location. This photograph, taken from Queen Street looking towards Cathays Park, has a cut out of the model glued into place in Friary Gardens. Frustratingly, this location was objected to by the Marquess of Bute because it had been specified in the documents of transference of Cathays Park to the city, that no buildings would be erected on that site [4]. Thankfully by August 1925 the present site in Alexandra Gardens was chosen and Comper was finally instructed to proceed with the work. This commenced in March 1926 and was completed by early 1928, with construction carried out by E. Turner & Sons. Newspaper cuttings report that the ceremony of unveiling and dedication was carried out by the Prince of Wales on 12 June 1928 in front of nearly 50,000 people. One report tells how the Prince was given a Welsh lesson by David Lloyd George in the train on their way down from London so that he might deliver part of his speech in Welsh [5]. Photo: By kind permission from the Western Mail Other items of interest held concerning the memorial and the First World War can be found online here. References Welsh National War Memorial Official order of service at the ceremony of unveiling and dedication by H.R.H. The Prince of Wales on June 12th 1928. Cardiff: Western Mail, p.8. Symondson, A. & Bucknall, S. 2006. Sir Ninian Comper: an introduction to his life and work with complete gazetteer. Reading: Spire Books, p.198. Welsh National War Memorial Official order of service at the ceremony of unveiling and dedication by H.R.H. The Prince of Wales on June 12th 1928. Cardiff: Western Mail, p.10. Gaffney, A. 1998. Aftermath: Remembering the Great War in Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, p.45. Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales Library cuttings file [Daily Chronicle 15/06/28].
View of Swansea in 1858 Mark Etheridge, 20 July 2015 Recently working through the John Dillwyn Llewelyn collection, I was reminded of this amazing photograph of Swansea taken in 1858. The image was taken on the 15 March 1858 at 1 o'clock with an exposure of 15 minutes. It was taken by Welsh photographer John Dillwyn Llewelyn using a ground breaking process invented by him in 1856 called the Oxymel process. This was a development of the wet collodion process and used a solution of acetic acid, water & honey to preserve images. This meant that glass negatives could be prepared in advance and exposed in the camera as required, and produced a dry plate that could be kept for days. This new process meant landscape photographers no longer needed to carry with them portable laboratories and darkroom tents.The photograph shows Swansea taken from St. Thomas on the 15 March 1858. To the far left, above the roofline, Mumbles Head can just about be made out. In the background (slightly to the right) can be seen the North Dock with buildings around it, and sailing ships in the dock. In front of that is the railway embankment alongside the New Cut of the river Tawe. In the foreground can be seen a number of houses, including the 'White Lion Inn', and to the far right it is just about possible to make out the remains of Swansea Castle.I thought that it would be interesting to try and identify the viewpoint from where this photograph was taken and to see how the view might have changed since 1858. I therefore contacted my colleague Andrew Deathe at the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea to see if his knowledge of the area would allow him to identify the viewpoint.Living locally Andrew was able to take this modern view in May 2015. He took the photograph by standing on the road which is in the foreground of the 1858 image, which is called Bay View, in St. Thomas. The house in the original image is just behind his viewpoint. John Dillwyn Llewelyn seemed to be standing half way between Bay View and Windmill Terrace (which wasn't built for another 20 years).The skyline of Swansea has seen many changes over the years and it is difficult to tell that the two images are taken from the same viewpoint. However it is still possible to make out Mumbles Head to the left and part of Swansea Castle to the right. The railway embankment has been completely removed, and there is no trace or it or the tunnel today. In place of the old North Dock buildings, you can see the glass pyramid of Plantasia. The tower of St. Mary's church can't be seen unfortunately, as it is behind the BT Tower. Mark Etheridge Curator: Industry & Transport Follow us on Twitter - @IndustryACNMW
