The W. J. Grant-Davidson gift of Swansea and English pottery 5 July 2007 In 1994, forty pieces of pottery and porcelain were given to Amgueddfa Cymru. They were the gift of W. J. Grant-Davidson a distinguished historian of the Welsh potteries. Amongst the collection were several unique and important items, manufactured in Swansea in the early 19th century. The Swansea earthenware tankard by William Weston Young. Generous gifts One of the most interesting pieces is a large earthenware tankard. It was made at the Cambrian Pottery, Swansea, in the opening years of the 19th century. It is decorated with the head and shoulders of a druid. We can tell from the inscription that this was painted by William Weston Young (1776-1847). The decoration is unique, though Weston Young also painted a plaque with a druid cutting mistletoe (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London). William Weston Young William Weston Young worked at the pottery from 1803 until 1806 as a painter and as assistant to the owner, Lewis Weston Dillwyn. A land surveyor by profession, Weston Young was subsequently a partner in the Nantgarw China Works. A pictorial puzzle Other household items in the collection include a milk-pan, egg cups and a jug inscribed 'John Jinken 1793'. There is also a punchbowl decorated with a swan and a pike. This may have been made especially for the Pike family, who came from Dorset and shipped clay to Swansea. An image used as a pun like this is called a rebus. Pioneer potter Mr Grant-Davidson was also interested in English ceramics. There are ten examples from the mid 18th century in the collection he gave to the museum. As well as three fine Staffordshire stoneware teapots, there are two documentary pieces of Josiah Wedgwood's creamware. The collection includes one of the four known pieces of manganese decorated creamware, made by the potter Enoch Booth. Made in the first half of the 1740s, these may be the earliest examples of an earthenware body which is one of Britain's principal contributions to ceramic history. Historian and collector W. J Grant-Davidson was a distinguished historian of the Welsh potteries. He collected British ceramics from the late Middle Ages to the early 20th century. His best known publications are the article 'Early Swansea Pottery, 1764 - 1810' and the book ‘The Pottery of South Wales’. These feature many pieces from his collection.
A new lease of life for Cambrian Railways Coach No.238 4 July 2007 The coach before work began The interior of the main part of the coach The completed coach A 19th-century railway coach has been at the centre of one the largest conservation and reconstruction programmes undertaken by Amgueddfa Cymru. 19th-century passenger railways At the end of the 19th century, Cambrian Railways covered much of mid-Wales. Unlike the lines in south Wales, whose main purpose was to carry iron and coal from the valleys the short distance to the coast, Cambrian Railways provided long-distance passenger services. They connected coastal resorts such as Aberystwyth to the large cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and London. Quality and luxury In comparison to today's trains, passenger coaches in the 19th century were quite complicated. Coach No.238 had a small luggage compartment at one end, then two first-class compartments and four third-class compartments. There were three toilets, one allocated to first-class use only. To make sure there was no mixing of classes, the corridors for first and third-class compartments were on opposite sides of the coach. Coach No.238 was built in Birmingham in 1895 to very high standards, its original plans stating: “Interior panelling of polished sycamore framed with walnut wood and gold lined”. From luxury coach to hollow shell The coach entered service in 1895 and was used mainly between Aberystwyth and Manchester before finally being withdrawn in 1939. During the Second World War it was converted into a wireless van. Later it was put into storage before being transferred to Amgueddfa Cymru in 1991 by which time the coach was essentially a hollow shell. The Museum decided to restore one first-class and one third-class compartment at either end of the coach, with the rest of the space to be used for groups of visitors. A special canopy was constructed to house the coach, allowing the restoration to go ahead even in bad weather. Restoration of the coach Work began with re-roofing the coach, then replacing the floor with 'tongue and groove' planks. The first-class compartment was found to have one set of planks laid at 45 degrees to the body of the coach, with a top layer laid at 90 degrees to the lower layer. Apparently this gave a quieter ride for the first-class passengers. Next to be renewed were the external panelling and mouldings, then the internal partitions and seat frameworks, all following the original plans. Such was the attention to detail that the metal brackets supporting the luggage rack were copied from an original with replicas being made in the brass foundry at the National Slate Museum in Llanberis. The coach originally had 14 coats of paint; fortunately, modern paints do not require such methods. The lower half of the coach is finished in Cambrian Green, with an original sample of paint used to produce the appropriate shade. Finishing touches The coat-of-arms of the Cambrian Railway Company and the Prince of Wales feathers provided the finishing touches. These were taken from originals that were photographed, scanned and laser printed to provide identical copies. The glory of this coach will serve as a reminder of the halcyon days at the beginning of the 20th century when people travelled from all over England to visit Cardigan Bay.
Collecting the contemporary 14 June 2007 Well, I've taken the plunge, after years of resisting and cynically refusing to believe the hype regarding blogs. Read by millions? Scarcely believe. Change the world? In your dreams. Truth be known, I've just been appointed Curator of Contemporary Life at the National History Museum here at St Fagans, Cardiff, and my job application advocated that all curators should take advantage of new technologies. For example, I stated cockily, they should keep blogs so that the public could have "access" (spot the museum buzz-words) to aspects which will explain the collections.So when this opportunity came along, I thought that I would show the way, although now that I'm actually writing this, I feel quite scared.So, contemporary collecting - what exactly is that? Well, I've decided to split the job in two.The first part will be to work with curators from other fields to fill the gaps in the collections since 1950. We are quite strong on artefacts and oral histories from rural, Welsh speaking, agricultural backgrounds before 1950, but less so on urban, non-Welsh, industrial evidence after 1950, although the building of the Rhyd-y-car cottages, Gwalia Stores and Oakdale Workmen's Institute has begun to rectify that.We will have to be very selective while filling these gaps - the storerooms are bursting at the seams. So the idea is to pick and choose certain items e.g. a super 8 camera, and to weave histories and exhibitions around them.The second part is more problematic. What to collect? We can't collect everything that is produced by this wasteful society of ours, so we have decided to deal with communities, projects, initiatives and themes. This will narrow down the criteria quite nicely, but will also let us focus on certain objects or stories which will encapsulate the age.For example, every six months, a different community will curate objects to be displayed in our Community Dresser. The first group was Penyrenglyn Youth group, who displayed objects such as a Nintendo Gameboy, a signed football and a comfort blanket. The next group will be Johnstown History Group.Another method might be Digital Story telling, which involves capturing pictures on your mobile phone and producing a little film with the result. I'm off to a workshop and conference on this in Aberystwyth next week. I'll let you know how it went.My first big exhibition (hopefully), will be about Welsh Pop Music. I hope to include objects such as instruments, stage props and fanzines, show videos, play sound recordings, and hold rap and recording workshops.Watch this space...
Stunning plant portraits donated 12 June 2007 Common Fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris) by E.F. Crowley. Common primrose (Primula vulgaris) by E.F. Crowley. Botany was a popular and fashionable activity in 18th and 19th century Britain. It was a safe recreation for women of leisure in the middle classes and was encouraged as an exercise that taught moral and religious lessons and prevented idleness. In April 1927, two months after King George V officially opened the National Museum of Wales, Miss Gwendolen Crowley of Eastbourne wrote to the new museum's Keeper of Botany offering a collection of 200 botanical watercolour drawings. Included with Miss Crowley's drawings were similar paintings by her mother, Mrs Curtis Crowley, her sister, Marion and an aunt, Mrs E. F. Crowley, bringing the total number of watercolours donated to 367. Some years before, Gwendolen and Marion had started a Botanical Painting Club to illustrate as many wild flowers as possible and this collection was the result of that interest. An inscription on the back of one of Marion's paintings of a Grape Hyacinth (Muscari comosum) states, "Known also as Tassel-Hyacinth. See Curtis's Botanical Magazine." This reference alludes to William Curtis (1746-1799), who taught at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London. Curtis wrote one of the earliest illustrated floras in England, Flora Londinensis (1775-87), which includes all the wild flowers growing within 10 miles of London. Part of the work undertaken by the Museum is to maintain and conserve these delicate illustrations. The drawings have all been cleaned with vinyl erasers, stored in polyester envelopes to prevent abrasion and acid migration, before being rehoused in archival boxes designed specially for delicate material. The paintings are all original watercolours, measuring approximately 25cm by 18cm.
One collection - 786,000 shells - Cataloguing and curating the Melvill-Tomlin shell collection 12 June 2007 James Cosmo Melvill. John Read le Brockton Tomlin. Melvill's greatest prize specimen of Conus gloriamaris. Placostylus from Layard. When the Melvill-Tomlin collection of molluscs was received by Amgueddfa Cymru in 1955, it was the second largest shell collection in private hands in the world. The collection, begun by James Melvill in 1853 and passed to John Tomlin in 1919, represented all regions of the world and contained nearly half of all mollusc species known. Melvill described and named over 1000 species new to science. Tomlin continued to add important specimens from across the world until his death in 1954. On Tomlin's death in 1954, the Museum received the entire collection, his library and papers. Tomlin's allegiance with Amgueddfa Cymru is thought to have developed whilst teaching at Llandaff Cathedral School in Cardiff. Housing the collection The collection arrived in mahogany cabinets, but is today housed in a mobile storage racking system allowing the whole collection to be organised in a standard, systematic sequence, providing easy access to any taxonomic researcher working on the collection. Long and slow curation Modern documentation is achieved by entering information into a computer database, but in the past information was hand-written into large registers. Between 1978 and 1994, museum staff and volunteers verified, labelled, and secured specimens in the collection. The information on the collections was then published for taxonomists around the world for further study. If the process had continued in such a way, then a full inventory would have taken another thirty years. Computer databases completes the 'first' inventory In 1995, a computer database was purchased allowing many people to enter data at the same time. Over twenty staff and volunteers have since been involved in making an inventory of the collection. Since work begun in 1978, the first inventory has now been completed and any enquiries can now be answered accurately in minutes, rather than days or weeks. The first inventory has been completed and any enquiries can now be answered accurately in minutes, rather than days or weeks. Over 786,000 shells have been added to the database. New to science Within this collection, there are thousands of very important specimens that are referred to as 'types'. These are the specimens that were new discoveries to science when collected, and were usually described, illustrated and named by the collector. With many older collections, it is only the detective work of museum curators and taxonomists around the world that can help to verify this information. An electronic inventory makes this task much easier by making the entire database of a collection available to taxonomists worldwide.
