Colliery sign in English and Polish

German mine workers at a south Wales coal pit

After the Second World War the demand for coal was high and there was a need to recruit new miners. One source for these was amongst the thousands of Europeans who had to flee their home countries during the Second World War.

In January 1947, a national agreement was made between the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the National Coal Board (NCB) to recruit from the large number of Polish soldiers who had fought with the Allies during the war.

However, there was much resistance amongst local unions. By the end of May 1947 there were Poles whose training was complete but no collieries willing to take them.

The NCB appealed for help from the NUM who put a strong resolution to a delegate conference in favour of the acceptance of the Poles and most found places eventually.

A scheme to recruit other eastern European displaced persons began in September 1947. There was again fierce opposition from local unions and by the winter only a minority found collieries willing to take them.

By 1951 only 10,000 of the 18,000 foreign workers still remained in the mines and a new scheme to recruit Italians was launched. Again there was local opposition, only 400 found placements and the recruitment stopped in April 1952.

It was no better when the National Coal Board tried to recruit amongst refugees who had fled from Hungary during the 1956 revolution. There were over 4,000 volunteers but under a third of them found places, the rest went to other industries.

The 'foreign workers' came to Wales after years of hardship and danger. The ones that found employment in the coal industry eventually gained a reputation for hard work and respectability. Wales should be proud of them and the part they played in its industrial history.

The BBC model B (top) and the Acorn Electron.

The Dragon 32 (left) and the Spectrum Plus.

In the early 1980s Wales produced many of the world's home computers. Over the years, Amgueddfa Cymru has been trying to add an example of every computer manufactured in Wales to its collection.

In 1943, Thomas Watson snr, Chairman of IBM, imagined that the future world computer market would be made up of only five different computers. However, in the 1980s, there were at least six different models being manufactured in Wales alone.

Zebras and Dragons

The 'Zebra' and 'Dragon' were both types of early computers.

The 'Zebra' was produced in the 1960s. Only forty were ever made and most of them were exported overseas. The Zebra machine in the Museum's collection was manufactured in Newport, south Wales and was donated by Cardiff University.

The 'Dragon' was available in two versions, the thirty-two and the sixty-four. These numbers refer to the amount of memory each machine had. Although this is much less memory than computers today, this was considered very powerful in the 1980s.

Tracking down information about where early computers were made has proved difficult. However, a number of scrapbooks providing useful information were discovered in the Glamorgan Record Office, and were donated to the museum by 'AB Electronics' of Abercynon. The scrapbooks revealed that AB Electronics had produced most of the computer models made in Wales, and also provided information about other Welsh manufacturers.

The Electron & The BBC

The Electron was made by the Acorn Company, best known for producing the BBC computer. It was much cheaper and less powerful than the BBC, which was the most powerful and expensive home computer available in the 1980s. Although primarily used as an educational machine some of the games written for the BBC are some of the best produced for any computer of any era.

The scrapbooks showed that a number of Electron machines were manufactured by AB Electronics and a Welsh made machine was kindly given to the museum by the Chairman of the Electron User Group.

The books also showed that three firms had manufactured the BBC in Wales: AB Electronics of Abercynon, Race Electronics of Llantrisant and ICL of Kidsgrove. A dealer in vintage Acorn hardware gave the museum a BBC computer, for its collection, that had been manufactured by Race Electronics.

ZX Spectrum

Despite the Spectrum's popularity and availability, locating a Welsh-built model was difficult. Once again AB Electronics at Abercynon had made the Spectrum, but the majority had been produced by the Timex factory in Dundee. Eventually the Museum did manage to obtain an example of a Spectrum Plus built by AB Electronics and added it to its collection.

Torch Computers

The AB scrapbooks referred to 'Torch Computers of Cambridge' who had a factory in Caernarfon and built machines aimed at the business market. After contacting the company, they generously offered us an example of a machine built in North Wales.

The Museum now only needs three machines to complete its collection of computers made in Wales. One of these is the Apple iMac manufactured by the LG Corporation of Newport.

There are many websites on the internet which can give you more information about early computers. Some sites also offer software for the early machines and there are even programs to run on your modern PC which mimic the behaviour of the old machines, allowing you to see how much computers have moved on.

Auctions are usually fairly discreet affairs attended by a few dozen people. This was not the case in the sale of the late Sir Leslie Joseph's collection of Welsh pottery and porcelain held by Sotheby's in 1992. Over 2,000 objects were sold in some 900 lots and made in excess of £1.1 million. The success of the sale was no surprise, for this was the largest and richest collection of Swansea and Nantgarw porcelain in the world.

Sir Leslie Joseph

A Swansea porcelain plate from the Garden Scenery service, a large Nantgarw porcelain dish from the Vernon service, a Nantgarw porcelain inkwell, painted for Caroline Goodrich of Caerphilly, and a Swansea porcelain set pattern plate, all of c. 1816-25, and presented by the Friends of Amgueddfa Cymru.

Sir Leslie Joseph was born in Swansea and had a long business career, which saw him eventually becoming vice-chairman of the Trusthouse Forte group. He had bought his first piece of Welsh porcelain before the Second World War. In the 1950s he began to assemble a collection that would eventually fill the display cabinets that lined five attic rooms in his house near Porthcawl.

Nantgarw and Swansea ceramics

His aim was to secure examples of every shape and pattern made at the Swansea and Nantgarw potteries. Unlike many collectors he was prepared to buy damaged pieces if they helped him learn more about the variety of porcelain produced at the two factories. Over the years he built up a vast knowledge of Welsh ceramics and, in particular, of the script marks used on Swansea porcelain. In 1988 he published the book Swansea Porcelain: Shapes and Decoration with A.E. Jones, which is an invaluable record of that factory's achievements.

Sir Leslie, who served on Amgueddfa Cymru's Art Committee for several years, was very generous and allowed many collectors and scholars access to the collection and his vast knowledge.

The sale of the Joseph collection represented both a challenge and an opportunity for Amgueddfa Cymru. The Museum has the largest public collection of Welsh pottery and porcelain in the world, with over 3,000 pieces. In recent years the Museum has tried to make the ceramics collection as comprehensive as possible. There were many objects in the Joseph collection of interest to the Museum, but the budget meant that choices had to be made about which were more important to the collection.

Prices at the sale were very high. Amgueddfa Cymru acquired 33 lots, at a total cost of £98,000. Nearly a third of the costs were paid for by external grants, and the three most expensive individual pieces were paid by other buyers on behalf of the Museum.

A small number of other rare and beautiful objects were bought at a high cost. One was an ice-cream pail from the Gosford Castle service. This was a well-known Swansea dessert service decorated in London with botanical specimens. The Museum also purchased a Nantgarw plate, exquisitely painted with doves perched on the edge of a basin of water, also decorated in London.

The Welsh Ceramics Gallery, at National Museum Cardiff, is named the Joseph Gallery in memory of Sir Leslie, one of Amgueddfa Cymru's great benefactors.

Rudolf Blaschka c 1913. Image courtesy of the Botanical Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

A colourful model of the Portuguese Man-of-War sea creature - Physalia arethusa.

Actinophrys sol

Argonauta argo

Aurelia aurita

Doliolum mulleri

Amgueddfa Cymru holds a remarkable collection of beautifully detailed glass models of sea creatures made, in the latter half of the 19th century, by the uniquely skilled glass-worker and naturalist Leopold Blaschka.

Plants and animals for new museums

The second half of the 19th century was a time of great scientific discovery. New museums were opening to the public with their galleries displaying plants and animals from across the globe. For many groups of animals this was easily done. Birds, mammals, reptiles and even fish could be skinned and mounted to produce lifelike representations.

But what about soft-bodied animals, such as jellyfish and sea anemones, which were preserved in spirit? Their colours quickly faded and their shapes became distorted. The German glass-worker and naturalist Leopold Blaschka devised a solution to this problem. Together with his son, Rudolf, he established a successful business supplying glass models, mostly of marine animals, to museums worldwide during the latter half of the 19th century.

Leopold Blaschka

Leopold Blaschka was born in 1822 in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic. The Blaschka family, originally from Venice, were skilled workers in decorative glass, and Leopold showed artistic skill from an early age. Soon after leaving school, he joined his fathers' business crafting ornaments from metal and glass.

Leopold experimented with making glass models of flowers. Later, in 1863, he made models of sea-anemones which were exhibited in the Dresden Museum, Germany. These attracted the attention of curators of natural history museums who ordered sets of anemone models. Soon Leopold added models of jellyfish and snails to his repertoire. His son Rudolf was by this time working with him.

The Blaschkas were keen to keep up with the demand from museums. An early catalogue dating from 1871 listed nearly three hundred models. By 1888 the catalogue published by Henry Ward, their American agent, listed seven hundred!

The Blaschkas relied on illustrations in books as sources of reference for the glass animals. Many of the models are three dimensional representations of animals that they never saw in reality. However, in later years they increasingly based models on observations of real animals, either during field trips or from live specimens in specially built aquariums in their house.

Their early work was described in their catalogues as 'decoration for elegant rooms'. Comparison between early and later models made in the 1880s shows a distinct tendency towards scientific accuracy and away from the more showy earlier style.

Complex structures

The models varied greatly in complexity and their construction. Component parts were made from both clear and coloured glass, using a combination of glass blowing and lamp working techniques. Other materials were also used where appropriate. Fine copper wires reinforced or attached delicate tentacles and gills, and painted paper cleverly represented internal structures. They also made use of the actual shells of snails to which the modelled glass bodies of the animals were attached.

Production of the glass animals ended in 1890 when they were offered an exclusive contract to supply plant models for the Botanical Museum of Harvard University in the United States.

Leopold died in 1895, at the age of seventy-three. Rudolf continued working single-handedly until he retired in 1936. He died three years later at the age of eighty-two. By that time their collection consisted of 847 life-sized model plants and over 3,000 enlarged flowers and anatomical sections.

Their plant models remain on display at Harvard University to this day, attracting over 100,000 visitors annually.

The Glass model collection held at Amgueddfa Cymru were acquired in two batches. One hundred and thirty eight models were purchased from the Blaschkas by the old Cardiff City Museum in 1890. A further sixty two models came to the museum in 1927 from the Science Museum in South Kensington, London. Examples range from the early 'showy' forms, to more scientifically accurate examples of jellyfish and sea anemonies.