For much of March and April (and some of may) we have been lucky enough (with support from Arts Council of Wales and the Heritage Lottery Fund) to have four artists in residence in St Fagans. The artists we appointed are Melissa Appleton, James Parkinson, Claire Prosser and Bedwyr Williams.

As the residencies are quite short we were interested more in the artists' process rather than the finished product, and therefore weren't expecting the aritsts to come up wiht an exhibition or any finished pieces of work at the end of it. The artists have all been up to lots of different things - researching, working with staff, looking through the sound and film archive, filming and 3d scanning the site.  There's also been lots of meetings and discussions with staff, and generally getting involved with day to day life in the museum.

Claire Prosser has been keeping a blog about her work, which you can read right here and I'll keep you up to date about what everyone else has been up to in my next blog.

Erbyn Ebrill 1915, roedd sgil effeithiau’r Rhyfel Mawr i’w gweld a’u teimlo ar lawr gwlad Meirionnydd. Nepell o gartref Kate a’i theulu, fe agorwyd gwersyll i garcharorion rhyfel ar gyn safle distylldy whisgi yn Frongoch – rhyw ddwy filltir o’r Bala.

Yn y cof cenedlaethol, rydym yn dueddol o gysylltu Frongoch â’r Gwyddelod. Yma y carcharwyd arweinwyr blaenllaw Gwrthryfel y Pasg ym 1916. Ond yn wreiddiol, carchar i Almaenwyr oedd Frongoch. Bu’r awdurdodau wrthi am wythnosau yn gweddnewid yr hen ddistylldy ar eu cyfer.

Y Germans – Prysurdeb di-ail a welir yn hen waith whisgi Fron Goch, yn darparu lle i giwaid y fath sydd i ddyfod yma mewn rhyw fis eto. Wrth syllu oddeutu’r adeilad, a gweled rhwyd-waith o wifrau sydd yn ei amgylchu, gallai dyn feddwl mai haid o greaduriaid gwylltion a mileinig ydynt, ac yn ol a welaf, bydd yn haws i lygoden fynd o gêg cath nag i’r un o honynt ddiengyd. Diolch am hyny; y maent yn ddigon agos atom lle y maent, heb son am gartrefu yn ein hymyl fel hyn. Y Llan 1 Ionawr 1915

Yn naturiol, roedd y wasg leol yn llawn erthyglau am ddyfodiad yr Almaenwyr i Frongoch. Wedi’r cyfan, hwn oedd un o’r gwersylloedd cyntaf o’i fath ym Mhrydain yn y cyfnod dan sylw. Gallwn ond ddychmygu chwilfrydedd a gofid y boblogaeth leol pan gyrhaeddodd yr Amlaenwyr cyntaf ar 25 Mawrth 1915.

Bydd dydd Iau diweddaf yn ddiwrnod i’w hir gofio yn ardaloedd y Bala, a bydd yr argraffiadau a wnaed ar feddyliau y cannoedd plant ac ereill yn rhwym o aros ar eu cof tra byddant byw, oblegid yr oedd amgylchiad yn un mor eithriadol, sef dyfodiad yn agos i bedwar cant o garcharorion rhyfel i wersyllfa Frongoch, yr hwn sydd o fewn dwy filltir a hanner i’r Bala… Deallwn fod llawer o’r carcharorion uchod wedi eu dal ar ol y frwydr fawr yn Neuve Chapelle. Y Cymro (Lerpwl a’r Wyddgrug) 7 Ebrill 1915

Er nad oedd Kate yn un i gofnodi cerrig milltir y rhyfel, mae cyfeiriad byr at yr Almaenwyr yn cyrraedd Frongoch yn ei dyddiadur (hynny a hanes coler ceffyl a'i chwpwrdd newydd!)

19 Ebrill – Dros 500 o garcharorion Germanaidd yn dod i Frongoch. Myfi yn mynd ir Post a mynd a choler ceffyl Berwyn House adref. Fewythr Hugh yn dod yma i weld y cwpwrdd.

Dyma un o'r ychydig gyfeiriadau uniongyrchol at y rhyfel yn y dyddiadur.

Back in February, I blogged about Brinley Rhys Edmunds – a teenager from Barry who died during the First World War. If you recall, he signed-up when he was under the legal recruitment age, re-enlisted soon after his 18th birthday, but lost his life to dysentery at Konigsbruck Prisoner of War Camp on 5 September 1918.

In recent weeks – thanks to a well-known genealogy website – I have been corresponding with two of Brinley’s descendants in the United States – one in Seattle, the other in Pennsylvania. As a curator, it’s always a thrill to reunite families with objects once owned by their ancestors. Better still if they in turn provide additional information for our records.

I was so pleased to receive from Brinley’s American relatives a scanned copy of this beautiful image

of the Edmunds family in about 1905. The photograph shows six year old Brinley (seated) with his elder brother, William, in matching sailor suits, together with their parents, Evan and Christine. I’ve been researching Brinley and his family on-and-off for a number of years. It’s amazing to finally put faces to their names.

Here at St Fagans, we have several objects in the collection associated with Brinley’s wartime experiences, some of which will be on display in our redeveloped galleries in 2017. In addition to the pincushion, next of kin plaque and postcard I mentioned last time, we also have his service medals in the collection. The British War Medal and Victory Medal were awarded to him posthumously and sent in an envelope marked ‘On His Majesty’s Service’ to his father in about 1919-20.

He is wearing the medals in the portrait shown here which is currently being prepared for photography by Ruth James, Social History Conservator. The portrait was commissioned by Brinley’s parents after his death and was bequeathed to the Museum in 1989 by Eunice Edmunds, his younger sister. We will be using this image, along with the newly-discovered family photograph in America, in the new displays. Contemporary military voices and experiences will also be included in the gallery interpretation. I’ll be focussing on our exciting co-curation programme with the Armed Forces Community Covenant Grant Scheme in the next instalment of this blog.

We have now settled into a routine at the Yanayacu Biological Station. Our days are spent out in the forest collecting flies and in the evenings we examine the results of the days efforts, preserving the specimens and collating data about where and how we found them. Josenir and I are especially interested in a group of flies known as Hemerodromiinae and in our fieldwork efforts we mostly target streams, rivers and springs where we expect to find them.

The terrain in this part of the Andes is generally very steep and many of the stream banks have washed-out and slipped allowing a dense understorey of bamboo to grow. Because of this, simply getting into the streams can involve much machete work hacking through the vegetation and a slithering half-controlled descent of muddy slopes until we finally splash into the stream bed and can begin work. Our general procedure is to wade upstream using a net to sweep insects off surrounding vegetation, or selectively picking flies off wet rocks, wet moss etc. It is hard, dirty and wet work and we inevitably return soaked to the skin and mud-splattered but we have been rewarded by many interesting finds.

Yesterday we found perhaps 30-50 species (it’s not really possible to be more precise until we begin detailed examinations back in Cardiff and Manaus) and we think that around 90% of these will be completely new species that have yet to be described. I was particularly delighted to find no less than 5 new species of the genus Chelipoda. I have studied this genus intensively in the past and attempted to construct a ‘phylogenetic tree’ showing the systematic relationships between the living species and inferring the sequence of their evolution.

It is not yet clear if most South American species of Chelipoda evolved from ancestors that migrated south from North America in the distant past or if they have developed from so-called ‘Gondwanan’ species - ones which originated on the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana before it broke apart and its fragments drifted apart to form modern day New Zealand, South Africa and Patagonia for example. Careful examination of the Ecuadorian species should reveal clues hidden in their anatomy as to which theory (if any) is correct.