Students from Cardiff School of Art and Design recently had an exciting opportunity. Not only did they get to spend lots of time at National Museum Cardiff, but a lucky few also got to display their work in our Main Hall!

Moving the Museum was a five-week project which brought together students from across the entire breadth of courses that CSAD offer—including animation, illustration, textiles and ceramics.

After an introduction to the museum and tours of the galleries, the students were tasked with creating original work in response to the wealth of inspiration at National Museum Cardiff. Each student brought their own skills and experience to the project, and it was very interesting to see the variety of ways the students approached the brief.

Including both fine and applied art, the responses encompassed everything from paintings and sculptures to ceramics and textiles. There were even lighting products, metalwork and reinterpretations of Marcel Duchamp’s Box in a Valise, a mini museum full of tiny treasures. We didn't get pictures of everything, but you can see some examples below.

As well as the physical works, there were also several screen-based pieces. These ranged from stop motion animation, explorations of our vertebrate collection and even a trailer for a computer game set in the museum.

The finished projects were presented during a grand finale in our Clore Discovery Centre. To see the finished works and to hear the students discuss their experiences with enthusiasm was a real pleasure. The day felt like a celebration of both the museum’s collections and the students’ creativity and skill.

After the final presentation day, some suitable works were chosen for display in our Main Hall. The students brought their work on a Monday, when we are closed to the public, and worked with our technicians to install their work.

The cases got much of attention over the following few weeks and our visitors very much enjoyed seeing the displays. We’re sure you’ll agree they look great! Diolch yn fawr to the students for all their hard work, and to CSAD's Owen Stickler for organising the project.

Many of the books in the Library collections at the National Museum Wales have attractive decorative techniques applied to the covers or text blocks. Decoration on text blocks, the combined pages of the book inside the covers, is particularly lovely because it tends to be hidden when they are on the shelves.

The most popular examples of decorating text blocks include marbling and gilding. But one of the most interesting techniques is the one known as disappearing fore-edge painting, which was often hidden underneath the other types of decoration.

Fore-edge painting was a technique that reached the height of its popularity from the mid-17th century onwards. It was usually applied to the longest section of the text block, the one opposite the spine, the fore-edge.

Two books in our special collections feature examples of mid-19th century disappearing fore-edge paintings. They are the two volumes of the second edition of the Memoirs of Lord Bolingbroke by George Wingrove Cooke, and were published in 1836.

When the book is closed you cannot see the image, only the gilt edges of the text block, but when the leaves are fanned, the hidden picture is revealed.

To achieve this effect, the artist would need to fan the pages, and then secure them in a vice, this means they are applying the paint not to the edge of the page, but to just shy of the edge. Once completed, it is released from the vice and the gilding would be applied to the edges.

Landscape scenes were the most popular for this technique, and the ones on our books show Conway Castle and Caernarfon Castle.

Very often the motivation for a fore-edge painting was a demonstration of artistic skill, so it didn’t always follow that the images were related to the text contained within the book. These two volumes of Memoirs, do not have an obvious connection to the scenes painted. Lord Bolingbroke (Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke 1678–1751) was an English politician during the reign of Queen Anne, and later George I, and is probably best known as a supporter of the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, but he does not appear to have any direct association with either Conwy or Caernarfon.

The volumes were acquired for the Library in 2008 from a rare book dealer, but we don’t know enough about their history to be able to tell when the fore-edge paintings were added. The first volume contains an inscription that states that the book was a gift to a T. M. Townley from his friend Samuel Thomas Abbot on his leaving Eton in 1843. Unfortunately we don’t know anything about either the recipient or the sender, so we can’t tell if one of them was ultimately responsible for painting the books.

Here at Amgueddfa Cymru we have ben busy sharing some of our favourite fossil specimens as part of the twitter hashtag #TrilobiteTuesday

What are Trilobites?

Trilobites were animals that lived in the very ancient oceans, between about 520 and 250 million years ago.  Their name means ‘three-lobed’, and comes from the fact that their hard outer shells, or ‘exoskeletons’, were divided into three distinct areas running down the full length of the body.  On the underside of the body were numerous pairs of jointed legs, making them look like overgrown woodlice.  However, they are a completely extinct type of arthropod, unrelated to modern day pill bugs.  

Our Welsh Trilobite Specimens

We are very lucky in Wales, because many of the rocks that make up our rugged landscape were laid down in the bottom of those very ancient oceans that trilobites called home.  The Museum’s collections contain a very wide range of these fossils.  Thousands of them are stored in wooden drawers in the Palaeontology Stores, sorted according to the geological period during which they lived, and then arranged in alphabetical order based on the name of the genus in which they have been classified.  The scientific names of living and fossil things have two parts: the genus, which is the group of closely-related species to which the creature belongs (in our case, Homo); and the species itself, which in our case is sapiens.  Therefore humans are known scientifically as Homo Sapiens.

An A-Z of Trilobites

We already tweet some of our favourite fossils from the Museum collections every week from the Natural Sciences Department @CardiffCurator Twitter account for #FossilFriday.  So we decided it was time we joined in with another popular palaeontology hashtag, #TrilobiteTuesday.  But confronted with such an abundance of trilobites, how do you choose which ones to share with the world?  Putting together a trilobite alphabet seemed like a logical way to work through the collections and pick out the best examples.  So it was time to dive into those drawers whose labels begin with the letter ‘A’…

Choosing trilobites for the Twitter alphabet turned out to be a fascinating exploration of the way people of the past viewed these fossils, and of the wonderfully creative variety of scientific names bestowed upon living (and once living) things. 

For some letters of the alphabet, we were spoilt for choice – should we choose Agnostus, Agraulos, Acaste, Angelina or Asaphus?  Decisions were made based on a combination of how complete and attractive the fossils are, and whether their names have an interesting meaning or origin.

Other letters proved to be more of a challenge. There are trilobite genera starting with every letter of the alphabet, but some are rare and not represented in the Museum’s collections.  Others are present, but as incomplete specimens that are ill-suited to Twitter stardom.  In a couple of cases, we decided instead to highlight important localities where trilobites are found; ‘Utah, USA’ and ‘Volkhov Valley’ offered the alliterative bonus of repeating that tricky initial letter. 

The alphabet was also a chance to celebrate the work of Museum scientists in discovering and naming new species - Baliothyreus beck and Rorringtonia kennedyi were two new species named by Dr Bob Owens, who was Head of Palaeontology at the Museum for many years and now an Honorary Research Fellow.

It’s difficult to choose favourites from these 26 remarkable trilobites, but the one with the most delightful name has to be Merlinia, named after Welsh wizard Merlin.  People finding its fossilised tails in the past thought that they were butterflies that had been turned to stone.  An old legend in the Carmarthen area tells how Merlin fell in love with a fairy sprite.  Sadly, she did not return his feelings, and one day she lured him into a cave and cast a spell to turn him to stone.  Some butterflies flitting around in the cave were caught up in the magic and can be seen to this day, preserved in the local rocks.

Which tweetable trilobite is your favourite?  Click on the link below, and have a scroll through our alphabet to decide.

https://twitter.com/i/moments/1108636415070531585

Glossary:

Arthropod – an invertebrate animal (doesn’t have a backbone) with a hard outer skin and jointed legs.  Arthropods include insects, spiders and crustaceans such as crabs and lobsters.

After a pilot phase in 2018, Children and the Arts have given us funding for another 3 years to run the Start Hospice program working in partnership with our local hospice Tŷ Hafan.

Children and the Arts is a national charity that provides access for children and young people with complex medical needs and their families to engage with arts and culture. The Start Hospice program creates opportunities for children and young people with life-limiting illnesses and their families to access the museum, participate in creative activities outside of the hospice environment and make memories as a family.

Over the course of this year we will deliver 2 family days, one at National Museum Cardiff, and the other at St Fagans National Museum of History as well as outreach sessions at the hospice before and after each family day. Throughout the 6 week summer holiday, we will also run a program of events to support the siblings of the children with life-limiting illnesses. This will be our Super Sibling Summer Camp, culminating in a sleepover with a difference, where siblings get the chance to experience a night at the Royal Court of the Welsh Prince Llywelyn the Great which has been recreated at St Fagans National Museum of History.

Meet the team!

Our project team brings together staff from Amgueddfa Cymru, Tŷ Hafan and KeyCreate who work closely with Tŷ Hafan and were a part of our Pilot Family Day in 2018. Look at the picture below to meet the team!

1. Ian Daniel Learning, Participation & Interpretation Officer, St Fagans National Museum of History
2. Grace Todd Senior Learning, Participation & Interpretation Officer, National Museum Cardiff
3. Hywel Couch Senior Learning, Participation & Interpretation Officer, St Fagans National Museum of History
4. Carla Price Learning, Participation & Interpretation Officer, National Museum Cardiff
5. Dave Morris KeyCreate
6. Louise Stout Family Support Worker, Tŷ Hafan
7. Abi Tong Complementary Therapist, Tŷ Hafan
8. Johanne Langley Learning, Participation & Interpretation Officer, National Museum Cardiff
9. Stephanie Burge Learning, Participation and Interpretation Manager, National Museum Cardiff
10. Lynne Phelps Play and Therapies Lead, Tŷ Hafan
11. Sarah Lee Play Specialist, Tŷ Hafan
12. Kelly-Jo Milford Sibling Support Worker, Tŷ Hafan

Eitem arall yn y gyfres Lleisiau o’r Archifau o Archif Sain, Sain Ffagan Amgueddfa Werin Cymru. Mae’r gyfres hon yn cyd-redeg â gweithgareddau a digwyddiadau amaethyddol yr Amgueddfa. Ffermwyr oedd y siaradwyr, a oedd, fel arfer, wedi byw yn yr un ardal trwy gydol eu hoes. Mae’r disgrifiadau, y profiadau, yr atgofion, y lleisiau a’r acenion yn wreiddiol ac unigryw, o wahanol ardaloedd, ac o wahanol gyfnodau.

I gyd-fynd gyda’r wyna yn Llwyn-yr-eos, fferm yr Amgueddfa, dyma ddarn o recordiad o Dan Theophilus, Allt yr erw, Rhandir-mwyn, a recordiwyd ym mis Gorffennaf 1975, pan yn 65 oed. Mae’n sôn am wahanol agweddau ar wyna: gofalu am y defaid; delio gyda thrafferthion ac afiechydon; mabwysiadu oen; marcio clustiau; a throi’r defaid a’r wyn i’r mynydd.