We ran an ‘I Spy…Nature’ drawing competition across the summer to celebrate our natural sciences pop-up museum and launch of a new exhibition at National Museum Cardiff. Our young visitors used some of the specimens from the museum collections as inspiration for their drawings. We had some fantastic entries and it was extremely difficult to choose the best nine drawings. However, after much deliberation we have chosen first, second and third places in 3 age categories (under 6, 6-9 and 10-13). The winners will be receiving natural history goodies from the museum shop. Many thanks to everyone who took part, we have really enjoyed seeing all of your wonderful drawings.

Museum scientists have been popping up in the Capitol Shopping Centre throughout the summer with their I Spy…Nature pop-up museum. Natural Sciences staff spent 9 days there with a variety of specimens from the Museum’s collections. Every day had a different theme from shells, to fossils, plants and minerals to name just a few. The public were able to ask our curators questions and find out about our new exhibition at National Museum Cardiff (I Spy…Nature), which is open until April 2015. We ran a drawing competition alongside the pop-up with some fantastic entries. We have chosen winners in three different age categories and they will be visiting us at the museum to have special tours behind the scenes and to claim their prizes. The winning entries will be posted on-line in the next few weeks. 2437 people visited us on the stand, which is a fantastic figure. Next we will be popping up at Fairwater Library on the 30^th October and visiting 10 schools throughout the autumn.

Amongst the new collections we have received in August was a collection of two ship models and six watercolours. The models and paintings are all by Mr Tony Jackson who was apprenticed to Sir William Reardon Smith & Sons in 1951. The two models are of the BP tanker British Sovereign, and a Liberty Ship. The six watercolours show the Orient City, Homer City, Devon City, Fresno City, Graig and Graigfelen. The photograph below shows Tony Jackson in his uniform aged 15. The next two show the ship model of the British Sovereign ship model and a painting of the Graig.

This photograph is one of three we received showing the basilica and copper mines at El Cobre, Cuba, taken in February this year. These mines were important as a source of ore to Welsh smelting works. We recently acquired a share certificate relating to the Royal Copper Mines of Cobre which you can see in my March blog.  

We have been donated a history of the Ely Brewery called ‘Beer and the Brewery’. This has been compiled by an ex-employee of the brewery who was an apprentice fitter and then fitter there from 1949 - 1962. This month we have also received 35 copies of the Ely Brewery house magazine ‘Mild and Bitter’. The image shows a front page from a 1956 edition.

We have purchased two interesting handbills for the collection. One is for the St. George’s SS Co. Ltd., and dates to 1910. The other is for a cruise along the Cardigan coast in 1968.

This Sharp 'Font Writer' Personal Word Processor (Model FW-710 UM) was purchased by the donor to be used during her university course. The word processor was manufactured by Sharp Electronics (UK) Ltd. at Wrexham in about 1995.

Mark Etheridge

Curator: Industry & Transport

Follow us on Twitter - @IndustryACNMW 

Hello again!

Over the weekend, amidst the armed police and large NATO wall, the second pop-up museum workshop was held.  The aim of these workshops is to find content for the pop-up museum being created at the Museums Association Conference in October and as part of the Welsh Museums Festival. The pop-up is being created with staff from the Cardiff Story Museum, Amgueddfa Cymru- National Museum Wales and the Heritage Lottery Fund with content coming from anyone who has a story to tell about Cardiff.

This time around we tried a different approach and held drop in sessions rather than a 2 hour workshop… Sadly it was a bit of a quiet day. Despite that, we did get some great stories. We heard from a busker who hadn’t been to Cardiff on a Saturday for 20 years but was back for a wedding, and from a man who remembered coming to Cardiff for work and ended up being a regular at the Vulcan pub.

The problem we found with the drop in session is that people did not have objects and if they did, they were not prepared to leave them. This meant that at the end of the 2 hours, we didn’t have a pop-up museum, just a collection of stories. You live and learn!

The next session is going to be on a Thursday evening, 11^th September between 6 and 8pm at Cardiff Story Museum so you can come along and do some late night shopping or have a nice dinner afterwards. We’ll be holding it as a 2 hour workshop again so we have a great looking museum at the end of it.

We hope you can make it to one of our future sessions.

Contact Arran Rees on Cardiffstory@cardiff.gov.uk or 02920 788334 to find out more.