Amongst the new accessions we received in June was a 14” Sony ‘Trinitron’ colour teletext television set with remote control. This was manufactured by Sony at Pencoed, Bridgend, in 1995. If you look back to the December blog you will see another television set we acquired recently.

This slate sample originates from Maenofferen slate quarry, Blaenau Ffestiniog. It is a sample slate sent out to potential customers to show the colour and quality of the slate produced in the quarry. There are a number of slate veins in the Blaenau Ffestiniog area, all of which have their own name, such as New or Deep Vein, the Old Vein, Back or Middle Vein, and North Vein. This particular sample is from the middle vein of Maenofferen Quarry.

We have been donated a lovely collection of 91 photographs, the majority of which show the redevelopment work carried out by the National Coal Board at Glyncorrwg Colliery during the 1950s. I have illustrated three views here. The first photograph shows the colliery as it looked on 11 September 1951 before the reconstruction work started. The view is looking north up the valley.

The following two photographs show the reconstruction work. The first showing a circuit gantry on 1 November 1955 and the second shows the reconstruction work progressing on the headgear, and was taken on 6 Feb 1957.

On the 17^th May 1965 an explosion caused by firedamp occurred at the Cambrian Colliery, Clydach Vale killing 31 miners. The colliery had been winding down to closure, and many of the workforce had been transferred, otherwise the fatalities might have been even greater. This image is of the front cover of the brochure commemorating a memorial service held on 17 May 2014. It shows the headgear preserved within a memorial garden. 

Mark Etheridge

Curator: Industry & Transport

Follow us on Twitter - @IndustryACNMW

By: Sioned Hughes, Head of Public History

 It’s difficult to imagine that over the next couple of years the old Agricultural Gallery, largely unchanged at St Fagans for 20 or more years will be transformed as part of the Making History project. It will become a space that celebrates the fact that history belongs to everyone. It will be a platform where the museum shifts from being the provider of history to supporting and providing opportunities for others to explore meanings around diverse objects and make their own histories through participation and community curated displays.

Currently called by its working title Wales Is… we aim to display 17 moments in Welsh history using objects from the national collections. It will be a space where we encourage visitors to use historical skills to find out what the national collections can tell them about different moments in Welsh history.

The past few months have seen the Making History core content team work intensively with designers from Event Communications to develop this space. It’s an exciting, creative and intense process that involves looking in depth at our object selection and testing them against this exciting new concept.

To aid our current thinking and to generate discussion, we have stopped thinking about this space as a gallery and have started referring to it as a 3D social media account. Over the next few weeks we will be developing the idea of using social media as a conceptual framework for how the space works and how visitors will behave in it.

So far, we have identified that we would like the space to have followers and that it will follow other institutions or spaces that share relevant collections and opinions. We would like to ask visitors to Like, Share and Comment on what they see and provide opportunities to do this digitally and non-digitally, both in the space and remotely. We would like the space to have its own social media account and we would like its digital identity to develop as the content and the space itself develops – not as an add-on once it is open. We are looking at the possibility of tagging displays and objects so that content generated around them can be gathered and used as layers of interpretation. We want each display to have a social media feed on a screen as part of its interpretation.

The Public History Unit

Key to testing and delivering this space is the establishment of a new Public History Unit within the History and Archaeology Department. As a unit we have already facilitated workshops that support groups to develop historical skills to discover what objects can tell them about the past. These sessions have generated diverse, sometimes surprising, often emotional and occasionally controversial content that adds layers of rich and relevant interpretation to our storytelling.

In the space, we see the content generated around the displays, both digitally and non-digitally, as information that will be curated by museum staff. It will also be part of curatorial practise to manage social media campaigns around displays so that targeted audiences are reached. These campaigns will be supported by a programme of events and pop-up activities that can be used to generate interest and debate.

Suffrage Participatory Workshops

As part of the process for testing the content for Wales Is…the Public History Unit took the national suffrage collection to two schools in the Newport area as part of the Bird in a Cage project with Winding Snake. Within a few hours, over a hundred pupils from Lewis Girls School and Ysgol Gymraeg Casnewydd had seen and participated in a debate around the collections and suffrage movement in Wales. This is an example of how objects can generate content that is as interesting as the objects themselves. It demonstrates how groups and individuals can construct their own meanings around what they see. It also showed how social media can be used to generate interest and debate around a subject area.

The next challenge

The challenge will now be to work with Event to develop a design that can deliver this concept so that the outcomes of a participatory workshop can translate into a gallery context using the framework provided by Social Media. The questions we are asking ourselves at the moment are: is this workable? How can we use the information generated? What would a social media campaign linked to one of the displays look like?  How can we create a framework and strategy to help develop the digital identity of the space?  And most important of all, is this approach future proof? The Agricultural Gallery was popular at St Fagans for over 20 years. This new space will also have to stand the test of time and the changing behaviour patterns of our visitors in the future. 

Here we are again with more news about the lithograph prints conservation process. Now is time for mounting each print in its own conservation mount to be ready for the exhibition opening 2^nd August in gallery 18 at the National Museum Cardiff.

Preparing the mounts where the prints will be housed for the next 100 years hopefully! The mounts are cut to the museum standard size, using 100% cotton alkaline buffered museum board (the most expensive available – but the highest quality). The back board is hinged to the mount using water based adhesive tape.

In the following photos you will be able to see how I attach the print to the backing of the mount. First of all, we attached the hinge to the back of the print on the top edge. The hinge is made with Japanese tissue. (Second Photo)

Then, in third photo  I am applying an adhesive over the surface of the hinge. This then folds back over and stick to the back board of the mount.

To reinforce the hinge we will glue another hinge over the top, creating a T hinge. This then allows the print to hang within the mount.

After one week making mounts for the prints we have already done 30 mounts.

Another 36 more to do and just 7 weeks to go… But we still need to make the frames and put them in…

Amongst this month’s new accessions was an aluminium prop withdrawer, known as a 'buller', manufactured by Parsons. It consists of handle and rack, and was used in coal mines for pulling out roof supports (as well as other tasks). This one is unusual in that it is made of aluminium for lightness. However the use of aluminium was later banned (because of its tendency to induce sparking) after the Horden Colliery explosion in 1953.

We have been donated the following four badges manufactured in 2014 that relate to the 1984/85 miners’ strike. These include two limited edition badges to commemorate the 30^th anniversary of the 1984/85 miners’ strike. The inscription on reverse reads “Forget not the / lessons of / our past”.

This badge with the slogan ‘Coal Not Dole’ issued by The Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign which included ex-miners, Trades Unionists, activists and others determined to get justice for miners.

The final badge in this collection is in the shape of a miners flame safety lamp. WAPC-NUM stands for Women Against Pit Closures - National Union of Mineworkers, and was manufactured for their 30th Anniversary.

We are currently working on documenting an important collection of approximately 150 film negatives taken by E. Emrys Jones in the 1950s and 1960s. The negatives show the slate industry in north Wales, concentrating on the Dinorwig slate quarry. Many images are of the Dinorwig quarry workshops (Gilfach Ddu) which is now the Welsh Slate Museum, and part of Amgueddfa Cymru. Below are three images taken from this collection.

A general view of Dinorwig Quarry, 1950. It shows the ‘Wellington’ section of Dinorwig Quarry, with the Muriau Shed in the foreground, and the Ceiliog Mawr in the background.

This view shows loaded slate wagons outside Gilfach Ddu (now the National Slate Museum) in the 1950s or early 1960s.

This group of quarrymen are probably at Dinorwig Quarry.

This model of an opencast coal truck was manufactured from South Wales anthracite coal. It is inscribed OPEN CAST / EXECUTIVE.

With 2014 being the centenary of the start of the First World War it is poignant that we have acquired a collection of photographs and documents relating to Captain Anthony Starkey of Bristol. Capt. Starkey was master of the S.S. Torrington which was torpedoed and sunk off the Scilly Isles in April 1917. 34 members of the crew were killed, and Capt. Starkey was the sole survivor. He was taken from the ship and held as prisoner aboard the U-boat for 15 days. He was then held in four different prisoner of war camps in Germany (including Brandenburg, Holminden and Strohenmoor).

This view shows the S.S. Torrington with an inset portrait of Capt. Starkey.

This photograph shows Capt. Starkey during his internment in Germany. It will have been taken in one of the four prisoner of wars camps in Germany that he was held in.

Mark Etheridge

Curatorial Assistant (Industry)

Follow us on Twitter - @IndustryACNMW

Congratulation to the winners of the Flower Drawing Competition 2014! Here are their excellent botanical illustrations.

• 1st: Abbey – Coppull Parish Church School
• 2nd: Louise – SS Philip and James CE Primary School (Pink 3)
• 3rd: Amelie – Stanford in the Vale CE Primary School

In this competition I was looking for botanical illustrations – these are pictures of plants drawn in a scientific way. This means I was looking for beautiful pictures but they also needed clear labels to show the different parts of the flower.

All of the drawing sent in were really fantastic, so I have put them all on our website for you to see! Well done to all of you.

Click here to view all the drawings.

Many thanks,

Prof P