Our Geology galleries at National Museum Cardiff are still closed for essential maintenance. We are changing things around a bit – out with the old and in with the new: we are changing old display screens for new ones; old light bulbs for new ones; old fire beams new ones; old dust – well, for no dust at all. Yes, the dinosaurs are having their vertebrae tickled to release some of the dust of the centuries and keep them looking pretty.

Actually, if you have been to see the dinosaurs recently there is a good chance you have left some of yourself on them. Dust in our galleries is composed of tiny particles that come into the building through our ventilation system (although we have very good air filtration). Other dust particles are fibres from the clothes you wear. But the bulk of dust is, actually – well, there is no easy way of saying this: bits of YOU. Especially hair and skin.

Humans are living beings whose bodies renew themselves constantly. Our skin is our largest organ. New cells are formed constantly at the base layer of the epidermis (the outer part of the skin). These new cells move up through the layers of the epidermis and die as they are further away from blood vessels that supply nutrients. Eventually they reach the corneum, the outermost layer, and slough off.

We love having you in the museum (actually, next time you visit why don’t you bring a friend who hasn’t been for a while). But if you shed your skin while you are in the museum you are inevitably leaving a small part of your body in the building. Nice.

These particles are tiny and very light. They will happily settle on surfaces. Our dinosaurs (and, of course, all other displays) provide ideal surfaces for dust to settle. And no, dust bunnies do not evolve into dust rhinos – so there is no need to set up protective zones to save these cute little things.

Dust will form a layer on objects, which, contrary to popular opinion by people who dislike cleaning, is not protective. On the contrary: dust attracts moisture from the air and then becomes very reactive, which can lead to corrosion and other forms of damage to our objects. This is not only unsightly but can result in expensive conservation treatments or even irreparable damage.

We’re in the business of heritage preservation for the long-term. We want to help keep all of the important national collections for generations to come. This includes removing your dead skin cells from the dinosaur skeletons while we have the space to work in the gallery.

And no, we would not get rid of our vacuum cleaner because it is only collecting dust.

Our Geology galleries are going to re-open on Tuesday 5^th July.

Find out more about care of collections at Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales here.

Back in June 1941, rationing of clothes and shoes, as well as furnishing materials was introduced. Designers came together to create designs for clothing following the Board of Trade’s strict rules, that made the most of the material, using the least amount of time and labour as possible.

These clothes were mass produced and sent to tailor’s shops across the country, to be bought with coupons. David Thomas’ shop in Cross Inn, near New Quay, was one of these. The shop has since been re-erected at St Fagans National History Museum.

The incredible thing about this shop is that when David Thomas retired, in 1967, he shut up shop and all the unsold stock was left inside. His daughters cared for some of the more delicate fabrics and the rest stayed on the shelves, so that in 1988, when the shop was donated to the Museum, it was like a time capsule. Clothes rationing didn’t end until 1951, so there was still some stock left when the shop closed.

But it wasn’t just these ‘utility’ clothes that were for sale of course. There were also hats, shoes, coats and ready-made dresses for sale in the front of the shop, and a workshop at the back for the craft of tailoring a perfectly fitting suit.

David Thomas opened his shop in the 1920s, converting a feed store. It was usual for tailors to train for 7 years or more, by being an apprentice first and then a journeyman before becoming a fully-fledged tailor on mastering the craft. But it was also possible to attend a school, and after being an apprentice in Bow Street, David Thomas went to London to the Tailor and Cutter’s Academy and got his diploma after learning the skills of stitching, cutting and measuring. The tools he used in his craft are in the workshop at the back of the shop today, along with a few additions of Dan Davies’ tools, another tailor from Rhydlewis.

Cross Inn is a small village, but before mass produced clothes, tailors were an essential part of the village, like the cobbler or the blacksmith. It was hub of the community, and David Thomas would be working cross-legged on the bench in the window, chatting to the customers at the front of the shop. He also liked radios, mending them in his spare time, and the radio would provide the topic of conversation for the day. He would travel out to local farms, after the customers were fitted in the shop, and one of these customers was Miss Jones from the Melin Bompren, the flour mill also now at the Museum.

Our audio-visual archive includes tapes of interviews, such as the one in the clip here which is an interview with Nesta Edwards, David Thomas’ daughter. These tapes help us in the Learning department to create school workshops and events during the holidays. This clip is in Welsh, but see transcript below. So the next time you come to the Museum, pop in to the Tailor’s shop and look for the workshop and the radio, imagine the tailor sat cross-legged on the bench chatting away, and know that the shop is almost just as it was the day he walked out for the last time.

What sort of things did they want, mostly would you think?

Well, aprons were very popular at that time, socks, there was a lot of farm work, and lighter socks, dresses. He did sell ready-made suits as well.

Coats?

Yes, yes. Raincoats.

A lot of things were still in the shop of course, ready-made dresses and children’s clothing?

That’s right. Yes, and hats of all kinds and caps, and spats. Spats is what they wore, people who…

What kind of people still wore spats?

They wore spats, people who worked in the bank and solicitors.

So there were people from the farms and people from the bank?

Well, yes there were all kinds of people, you know, it was like, it was a hub for conservations. My father liked to talk. He worked 9 o’clock in the morning until 9 o’clock at night.

Really?

Yes. Often. And if there was a funeral, he’d work all night.

Next week our dinosaurs will go to sleep for two weeks. The Geology exhibition will close for “essential maintenance” – you will have seen similar signs in other places. In our case “essential maintenance” does not mean that the dinosaurs’ toilet is blocked (now we do have coprolites on display but they are well and truly fossilised). But if you thought all the light bulbs were blown and we have to fit new ones you wouldn’t be far off. Except that we never did have any black holes in our galleries – no need to bring miners’ lamps which are absolutely reserved for Big Pit.

What we are going to do does indeed involve changing light bulbs. We need light in order to see, and without light we would not be able to appreciate most objects in museums. Light, however, can damage many types of objects. You may have noticed at home that old photographs fade, as do organic inks and pigments on prints and paintings. Leave a newspaper out on the window sill for a few days and it will have yellowed.

In the museum, where we preserve objects for posterity, the damage done by light can be a major problem. Any such damage is irreversible and cannot be repaired by our best conservators. Ultraviolet (UV) radiation is particularly damaging. How long do you think museum objects should last? As part of our collections care, we plan lighting in galleries carefully to leave colours bright and vivid for as long as possible.

The new lighting systems we are fitting this month at National Museum Cardiff will be more energy efficient. In addition, the new lights will be of better quality which means you will see objects more vibrantly yet safely, without causing unnecessary fading. Because the new lights also produce less heat they will make it easier and cheaper to air condition our galleries.

Changing the lights is not all we are going to do – there are a myriad of additional jobs to be done while we have the opportunity. All this takes a little time – between the 20^th June and 3^rd July. It won’t really be the dinosaurs changing their own lights, of course – there will be technicians, curators and conservators busily climbing ladders and scaffolding.

We do all we can to preserve our national collections and to improve our sustainability. So please bear with us when you see the signs and come back to see the Geology galleries in a new light in early July.

 Find out more about care of collections at Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales here.

On Friday Julian Carter, our Natural History conservator, and I travelled to Swansea to retrieve some Blaschka glass models from one of the cases there and replace them with a new display of marine animals and seaweeds you might find living in rocky areas. The Blaschka models had been on display there for several years and we needed some of them for the new Wriggle! exhibition opening at the end of this week (18^th June).

The first job was to actually work out how to get into the case itself as it was so long since anyone had opened it no-one was sure how to do so! It was soon worked out though and the models were carefully placed into their protective packaging  for the journey back to Cardiff.  This involved carefully pinning blocks of plastazote and bubble wrap around them in specially created boxes so that they were cushioned against any jolting during transport. They are so intricate when you look at them that it can be quite nerve-wracking when you are not used to handling them, particularly the worms whose long, delicate tentacles look like they might snap off at any moment.  I was however assured that with careful handling most are actually very easy to move. They will be a wonderful addition to Wriggle!

Once they were packed away, it was the turn of the new specimens to be arranged in their place. The specimens were a range of animals that represent rocky habitats both onshore and offshore including crabs, shells, seaweeds, a piece of honeycomb worm reef and even a cup coral, hopefully some species that people will recognize and some they won’t. Some had been specially prepared for use in this display. It’s always interesting putting something like this together, looking through the collections to see what is available and might be suitable and then preparing it for display.

The display did not take long to finish and then we were done and on our way back to Cardiff after a successful day.

For more information about the Blaschka glass models at National Museum Cardiff click here

Why not pop along to the National Waterfront Museum to see the new display.

Dropping a rusty nail into a glass of Coca Cola will clean it in a matter of hours. We have all heard that one. Other drinks manufacturers are available, and alternative liquids will do the same job: lemon juice, vinegar, even salad dressings.

What causes the nail to go rusty in the first place is corrosion. Rust is the product of the corrosion of iron, and I bet my favourite chemistry book that you will have seen rust somewhere. Many other metals can corrode, too: aluminium, zinc, lead, copper etc. Corrosion is electrochemical oxidation; it usually needs water and oxygen to corrode a metal. If you drop a clean nail into a salt solution (electrolyte) it will start rusting within hours – the iron loses electrons and gains oxygen. The acidic liquids in the first paragraph appear to have the opposite effect but, in fact, dissolve the rust rather than convert it back to the base metal.

This blog is turning into a mixture of a cooking recipe and a heavy science article. What on Earth does all this have to do with museum collections? After all, we don’t allow food consumption in our galleries and stores so where does the vinegar come from?

Well, believe it or not we do have vinegar in the air in the museum. You do, too, at home. Along with formic acid, acetic acid (the thing that gives vinegar its zingy taste) can be air borne in indoor environments. Both acids are considered indoor pollutants. Hardly detectable outside, in certain conditions they can accumulate inside buildings – and then cause corrosion. Indoor air pollution has recently been in the press, but we are talking here of risks to museum objects, not health risks to people.

Where do these substances come from? Wood readily off gasses acetic and formic acids. Book cases, furniture, floor boards, the wooden boards your walls are made of – they all emit these substances. Normally, this is not a problem; we all ventilate our houses, and normally we don’t keep objects at home long enough for corrosion to be a problem. Or is it? My mother still polishes her silver regularly and keeps it safe – in a wooden cupboard. Make of that what you want. Perhaps she enjoys polishing.

Your favourite museum has a lot of metal objects in its stores. And we are, of course, in the business of keeping objects safe not just for short periods of time, but for centuries. Over long periods of time we do notice corrosion on metal objects even if they merely sit on a shelf. We could go round cleaning these, like my Mum does, and give them a polish from time to time. Time consuming, I hear you cry. You lose a teeny tiny part of the surface each time you polish it, I hear you scream. And wouldn’t it be better to prevent corrosion in the first place, I hear you shout.

Right you are, I respond. After all, this is Preventive Conservation. We can measure the concentrations of air borne acids with good accuracy. We also know the sources of these acids. So when we detect signs of corrosion all we need to do is some simple investigating and – hey presto – come up with a mitigation plan. In some cases this might mean replacing old, wooden storage furniture. In others, we might have to introduce ventilation to a store to prevent pollutants from accumulating to harmful levels. Either way, the collections will benefit.

At National Museum Cardiff we have done both, and with good success. We have recently refurbished two stores with the sole aim of reducing indoor pollution. This was not cheap, but it is more cost effective than constantly polishing the silver ware - over and over and over again. It is because of these constant collection care improvements that we can say, hand on heart, your heritage is safe in the museum. And why we only eat fish and chips without vinegar in the museum. Only joking – food is still banned. Don’t let me catch you with any chips in the galleries!

Find out more about care of collections at Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales here.