Torfaen Treasure day

Stacey Owen, 12 April 2017

Last Friday we attended the Torfaen Treasure Day at Pontypool Museum, where the latest treasure finds from the Trevethin and Henllys area were presented.

The treasure included a decorative gold finger-ring from the late 16th or early 17th century, as well as Bronze Age artefacts, which date back 3,000 years. The Bronze Age hoard consists of five Bronze Age artefacts, including three socketed axes and two spearheads and these will be the first Bronze Age items to be displayed at Pontypool Museum.

Adam Gwilt is about to present treasure finds. This treasure find is a hoard of Bronze Age artefacts.

Adam Gwilt, Principal Curator (Prehistory) at Amgueddfa Cymru, presenting the Trevethin Hoard.

Rt Hon. Lord Paul Murphy of Torfaen, President of the Torfaen Museum Trust, welcomed in the event warming up the audience before presentations from Adam Gwilt and Rhianydd Biebrach from Amgueddfa Cymru and local MP Mr Nick Thomas-Symonds followed.

The newly declared treasure was presented to the museum by Adam Gwilt, the Principal Curator of Prehistory in the History & Archaeology Department. Adam talked about the history of the treasure and provided background information so the audience could gain a further understanding of the items. Since the items were acquired by Pontypool Museum with grant funding from the Saving Treasures;Telling Stories Project Dr Rhianydd Biebrach, the Saving Treasures; Telling Stories Project Officer discussed the key messages and aims behind the project.

Rhianydd Biebrach, who is the project officer of the Saving Treasures Telling Stories project at the National Museum Wales, is giving a presentation about the project.

Rhianydd Biebrach, project officer for Saving Treasures Telling Stories at Amgueddfa Cymru, giving a presentation about the project.

The Saving Treasures; Telling Stories project is currently working with the University of South Wales assisting student journalists for a two-week work placement where they can use their journalistic writing and interviewing skills to help tell the stories behind items. We thought it would be a good idea to send them up to Pontypool Museum before the event to talk to the curators at the museum and the finders of the treasure.

They spoke to Gareth Wileman, a metal detectorist in the Pontypool area who found the hoard back in November 2014, and asked him how he felt about his discovery being exhibited. While we would have loved to hear from Simon Harrison, the finder of the gold finger-ring, he wasn’t available at the time so a potential phone interview looks likely for the next batch of students.

The students are still currently working on this project and will provide us with written and video content of their interview - so keep your eyes peeled on our Twitter and Facebook account for more content and videos coming your way!

The hoard is being acquired by Pontypool Museum with grant funding from the Saving Treasures;Telling Stories Project. This project, funded via the Collecting Cultures programme of the Heritage Lottery Fund, is acquiring archaeological objects discovered by members of the public for public museum collections across Wales. The project is also encouraging communities to engage with their pasts and portable archaeological heritage, by funding a programme of community archaeology projects led by staff in museums throughout Wales.

 

More than meets the eye

Sally Whyman, 7 April 2017

An insight into our display at the 2017 RHS Cardiff Flower Show

Visitors come into our marquee to see a display about wood & Welsh woodlands. There is an array of wood samples, wax models, taxidermy, insects, as well as live and pressed plants. Visitors know they are seeing a display by Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, but do they realise that if they look a little deeper, in the same way that one of our scientists does down a microscope, it is showing them the daily work of the museum too?

The Flower Show to us is similar to one of our temporary exhibitions, but lasting three days instead of six to nine months, and we get ready for it in much the same way. Items for display are chosen and located, sometimes not a simple task when you look after 1 million or so botanical specimens. The correct sized cases need to be found to stop people from touching the historic specimens (which in the past may have been treated with chemicals to guard against pests). Delicate wax models, which have been made to show museum visitors plants all year round, need to be protected from the elements. Tiny preserved insects have to be extracted from the systematically ordered entomology collections, and remounted with miniscule pins in display drawers.

In the display, woodland mosses form an intricate garden. This gives us the opportunity to help visitors distinguish between different moss plants of the woodland floor. It also reflects how we carry out our scientific research, we do DNA/molecular work on dried plants from the herbarium, and conversely we sometimes need fresh material.

Acrylic panels hang at each end of the marquee, showing Welsh woodland tree silhouettes with their leaves, dried. These are not only artistic representations of the trees, they also show the technique we use for attaching delicate pressed plants onto card for storage in the herbarium. Thin strips of adhesive material are placed strategically along the plant to hold it safely on the card. This allows our botanists to easily remove the straps if they want to study the plant under a microscope, away from the card. The plants used in these panels have been collected specifically for the Show and have been pressed in the same way we would for long-term storage in the herbarium. They would also last for hundreds of years if kept out of the light.

Prints of a few of the hundreds of botanical illustrations in our collection adorn the marquee walls. These prints have been framed and mounted using standard museum techniques. They are not only intricate artworks, but are scientifically accurate representations of the plants they show.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to show you our unique collection of specimens with a Welsh woodland theme. The RHS Cardiff Flower Show, with funding from the players of the People’s Postcode Lottery, has enabled the Natural Science Department to work with our colleagues from other departments. Our other museums have also helped us this year, bringing you clog-making, wood carving and garden conservators from St Fagans National Museum of History.

Why not keep up to date with what's happening in the Amgueddfa Cymru marquee over the weekend by following the @CardiffCurator Twittter account. Hope to see you there.

 

Applications Now Open for the Spring Bulbs for Schools Project 2017-18

Penny Dacey, 4 April 2017

Hi Bulb Buddies,

Thank you for all of your hard work on the Spring Bulbs for Schools project.

Please check your data entries and flower records this week to ensure that they are all correct and up to date. I will analyse the results over the holidays and will announce the winners and prizes on 28th April. The certificates and prizes will be sent out by 15th May. The report will be sent out the week of 15th May.
 

Don't worry if some plants haven’t flowered, those pupils will still receive certificates. Please take your plants home and note when your flowers open. This is important as we require a flowering date for both the Daffodil and Crocus from each pupil to calculate the average flowering dates for your school.

 
All schools with complete weather and flower records will have a chance of winning a nature activity trip for their class! In previous years we have drawn winners for England, Scotland and Wales from a hat.

Runners-up and high achieving schools will receive sunflower seeds.

All schools that have entered regular weather data and flower records will receive Supper Scientist certificates and pencils.

Applications for next year are now open!

Applications are on a first come first serve basis. Please read the form carefully.

Schools in Wales                                         Schools in England and Scotland

The Edina Trust are opening their applications to schools in Rhondda Cynon Taf, Merthyr Tydfil and Conwy. If your school is located in one of these areas and you would like to take part in the Edina Extension project please read the details here.

Thank you for all of your hard work Bulb Buddies!

 

Your Comments:

Professor Plant: I'm sorry if some of you were disappointed because your plant didn't grow or didn't produce a flower. This happens sometimes and is down to pot luck, so please don't think that you have done anything wrong. There are guidelines on the website about how to prepare your bulbs for re-planting next year. And if your school has entered complete weather records you will be receiving Sunflower seeds in May. Thank you for taking part in the project Bulb Buddies! 

Weather comments:

Rougemont Junior School: Last week, signing off Professor Plant.

Our Lady of Peace Primary School: We are very sad that this week is the last week of the competition. We really enjoyed it.

Garstang St. Thomas' CE Primary School: Have a lovely Easter Professor! Hope we have helped with your investigation.

Barmston Village Primary School: It's the last week 👍 I hope we win ⚡️⭐️🌟🌙 if we do your the best🔥

Garstang St. Thomas' CE Primary School: wet and warm like the teacher's tea.

Arkholme CE Primary School: This week was very warm. The mystery bulbs have now flowered and there are about two daffodils that have not quite come out yet. We did not get a lot of rainfall due to the nice sun.

Broad Haven Primary School: The last week for our data and we have only missed 2 INSET days and half term when we were not in school . Our mystery bulb flowered on March 27th it is a lovely red tulip Thank you agian for letting us join the project we have enjoyed it. Hope we can join again next year!!

Carnbroe Primary School: It has been mixed weather this week sometimes cold but mostly we can feel it becoming warmer. All our daffodils finally flowered. Some children were disappointed because their crocus did not flower. We are taking our plants home with us. Have a good Easter and thank you for including us in your project.

Carnbroe Primary School: We had mixed weather last week and many of our daffodils have not flowered, yet! It snowed on Tuesday and we sent Professor Bulb photographs of our daffodils and crocus in the snow. By lunchtime the sun was out and had evaporated all the snow. We decided these flowers must be really hardy to survive in the cold.

Stanford in the Vale Primary School: It's been a cold windy week! We cannot believe spring is coming .The clocks go forward this week, looking forward to lighter evenings.

Broad Haven Primary School: The weather is getting better we have been to our beach to do a marine litter pick this week. We have tidied our garden ready to plant vegetables.

Flower comments:

Ysgol Glanyfferi: Sadly all of the crocuses have died but some are fighting for their lives

Ysgol Borth y Gest: On Monday two tulips plants appeared. We were all surprised!!!!!!
We have daffodils, crocus and tulips. They look beautiful.

Ysgol Deganwy: Everyone is taking their plant home today

Darran Park Primary: Another 9 have flowered the remainder have no flowers at all.

Darran Park Primary: 12 more crocuses have flowered.

Darran Park Primary: The remainder of the daffodil bulbs have flowered, we have a total 40 flowers together.

Darran Park Primary: All of our daffodil bulbs have flowered, but we are still waiting for our mystery bulbs to flower.

Tonyrefail Primary School: Unfortunately a bug eat some of my plant

Tonyrefail Primary School: Thank you for the bulbs they are good.

Usworth Colliery Primary School: All have grown but no flowers at all as of 30th March.

Rougemont Junior School: Pretty colour

Rougemont Junior School: A small daffodil, did it have too much shade?

Rougemont Junior School: A very tall daffodil, I looked after it well.

Rougemont Junior School: Daffodils are tricky to measure.

Rougemont Junior School: Beautiful!

Wormit Primary School: Very good daffodil :^) !

Arkholme CE Primary School: Our bulbs have flowered including the daffodils and the crocus; and brought them home for mother’s day as a gift. But some of the crocuses are starting to die.

Bellyeoman Primary School: Has lots of leaves but no flower yet.

Broad Haven Primary School: Our daffodils look lovely in their pots and we can see other signs of Spring around our school

Tonyrefail Primary School: My daffodil grew taller than I thought.

Ysgol Deganwy: All of the plants are fully grown.

We need your advice

Christian Baars, 26 March 2017

When someone has a great idea but cannot get it off the ground by themselves, they find a powerful partner with similar interests and join forces. We have done just that: we want to research how we can improve storage for the national Geology collection. We spoke to Oxford University who are that enthusiastic about working with us.

Now that we have a fundraising target and a really tight deadline. What do we do next? Phone a friend?

This is exactly what we are doing now. You are our friend. We are asking: who do you think we should talk to about raising the funds to enable this project to happen?

We know you are as passionate about our cultural and scientific heritage as we are. We need your advice on the best way to reach our fundraising target.

Allow me to introduce the project. Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales looks after 900,000 geological specimens. We use this collection daily to inspire, educate, and research. We have great stores but many minerals react with chemicals in the air and start changing. Sometimes they change so badly that they crumble to dust. Clearly, simply putting our geological specimens into lovely stores is not good enough to preserve them for future generations.

Now, if we want to become better at looking after your collections (they do not actually belong to us, but to you and everybody else in Wales), we need to know where we can make improvements. The challenge is, nobody really knows at present what exactly we need to improve on. We already work to the highest available standards, but the current standards do not tell us much about how minerals react with airborne chemicals.

We want to join forces with Oxford University and the heritage science network SEAHA http://www.seaha-cdt.ac.uk/ for a research project. We have 60% of the funding. All we need now is the remaining 40% and we are all go.

And this is where you come in.

This is the future of museums. We are happy to offer an opportunity to become involved in a high-profile project to improve the long-term storage of geological collections. If you know anyone we should speak to about fundraising please get in touch. If you would like some more information please download our 'Benefits to Partners' leaflet (in the right hand margin).

Thank you.

Find out more about Care of Collections at Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales here.

 

The results so far

Penny Dacey, 24 March 2017

Hi Bulb Buddies,

We’ve had lots of flower records in! Spring is truly here.

The results so far give us an average flowering date for the Crocus of 3rd March, and an average flowering date for the Daffodil of 8th March.

Last year the average flowering date for the Crocus was 10th March and the average flowering date for the Daffodil was 15th March. So the flower data entries shared so far indicate that our plants have flowered earlier this year than last year!

The graphs on the right show the results so far for temperature, rainfall and sunlight hours compared with last year. From these we can see that although the average temperatures were much lower October-January, there was a sharp increase in February with temperatures exceeding those of the previous year. We can also see that although rainfall was much lower, sunlight hours were higher for the October-January period than they were the previous year. It’s likely that a warm February and high sunlight hours resulted in our bulbs flowering slightly earlier this spring!

Thank you for all your lovely comments Bulb Buddies. I’m glad to hear that you are enjoying the project. Keep up the good work!

Professor Plant

 

Your comments:

Weather comments:

Ysgol Pentrefoelas: Mae hi wedi bob yn andros o sych. Ryden ni wedi bob allan yn chwarae bob dydd.

Carnbroe Primary School: It rained most days but it was not too cold. On Monday and Thursday the sun was out and the sky was blue, it felt like Spring. Still no signs of our bulbs flowering. Maybe next week.

Ysgol Glanyfferi: It is starting to feel like spring.

Arkholme CE Primary School: Our first crocus bulb has flowered and is looking good and healthy. We have also moved the plant pots into the sunlight so hopefully they will flower too. The daffodils from last year have grown also the weather has been improving and there has been more sunlight.

Broad Haven Primary School: The garden is looking lovely with the pots of crocus and daffodils flowering. On Thursday the temperature got up to 15.5 at lunchtime. Today (Friday) the sun has come out this afternoon. The children are very excited because their bulbs from last year which we planted in the bank are now starting to flower.

Stanford in the Vale Primary School: Hello, this week it has been cold and hot and it has been a really good week because we have had a delivery of two new trolleys and we even invested in a wormery which is a big hit with our foundation friends.

 

Flower comments:

Ysgol Pentrefoelas: Fy mlodyn yw y cyntaf I agor y flwyddyn hon,ond y llynedd nath o ddim agor o gwbwl.

Ysgol Pentrefoelas: blwyddyn dwytha mi ddaru y cenin pedr flodeuo ar y 21ain o Fawrth, 2016.

New Monkland Primary School: We noticed that our crocus plants started to grow slightly later than our daffodils. We were so excited to see them growing in our plant pots.

Ysgol Deganwy: All of them of grown and most people have taken them home.

New Monkland Primary School: We were so excited to see our plants starting to grow and the class enjoyed getting to see the Daffodil in their plant pots.

St Robert's R.C Primary School: I like that it’s blue not purple.

Beulah School: :):D All of our flowers have flowered except one :( :P
We have enjoyed our project :D ;)

Carbrain Primary School: We have flowers. :)

Carnbroe Primary School: My daffodil opened on the Friday and it has a small flower.

Severn Primary: I like it cos it is little and cute.

Severn Primary: Sadly a football hit my daffodil and it fell off.

Severn Primary: When I saw my flower it was so beautiful and I was happy.

Severn Primary: I like it cos the colour yellow is bright and the colour of the sun.

Severn Primary: It was a long time you af to wait a long time to open the daffodil.

Severn Primary: For some reason my flower never grew.

Severn Primary: Thank you for the spring bulb project.

Ellel St John's CE Primary School: We think that the crocuses have been water logged because when we went to measure them they were all floppy and droopy.

St. Michael's Primary School: The daffodil has not produced a flower.

Carnbroe Primary School: It rained lots this week but we checked on our flowering bulbs every day. Many of our bulbs in the pots flowered. The daffodils and crocus in the ground also flowered, hooray!

Auchenlodment Primary School: Nearly all of our crocuses have opened, we're now excitedly waiting for our daffodils to bloom.

Our Lady of Peace Primary School: When we go out it is fun and when it is raining we get soaked.

Our Lady of Peace Primary School:  It was fun planting the flowers. I like Daffodil.

St Robert's R.C Primary School: I enjoyed looking after it and watching it grow.

St Robert's R.C Primary School: I enjoyed the whole experience

St Robert's R.C Primary School: I enjoyed planting it and taking it home.

St Robert's R.C Primary School: I liked watching the stages of growth.

St Robert's R.C Primary School: I had fun taking part.

Barmston Village Primary School: My doffodil is quite small but the flower is beautiful.

Barmston Village Primary School: My daffodil is very tall compared to some of the others.

Barmston Village Primary School: My daffodil is smaller than some others but I think my sign might have been in the way of the sun getting to the plant.

Barmston Village Primary School: We've noticed the crocuses have a different flower to the ones we planted in our village last year. Your crocuses have smaller pointier leaves than ours.

Barmston Village Primary School: My daffodil is only small and my crocus didn't grow. I wonder if I didn't plant my correctly.

Ellel St John's CE Primary School: We had 15 crocus' were open on Wednesday but when we checked on Friday there were 27 crocus'.

Ellel St John's CE Primary School: 8 of our daffodils are open and the tallest of them (When we measured them on Monday) was 250mm.

Broad Haven Primary School: We are delighted we have our crocus and daffodils flowering. But it was very rainy on Thursday.

Broad Haven Primary School: We have the double- first crocus and first daffodil!! The bulbs from last year’s project are now flowering in the bank by our garden.

Broad Haven Primary School: Yes ours flowered first. A purple crocus.

Ysgol Deganwy: all of the flowers have budded.