Excavations at Arbeia

Arbeia South Shields' Roman Fort   Archaeology
Posted by administrator on August 6, 2010     Permalink     Comments (1)

The excavations here at Arbeia are now in their third week.  The team (made up of volunteers from Earthwatch) are actually digging just outside the wall of the fort itself, hoping to pick up some of the civilian settlement that built up outside the military base. This is a new area of excavation, only opened last year, and is a deep pit right next to our offices. I’m hoping we can convert it into a swimming pool when the dig is done, but think I might be over-ruled on this one.

On the finds side, there have been two interesting objects this week, both slightly unusual.  One is a small fragment of a brooch and the other is the rim of a small glass vessel with handles. This is good news for the dig, but not so good news for me, who is supposed to be able to identify these things.

  

OK, so the brooch is not exactly photogenic, and won’t ever be appearing in a museum near you any time soon, but for me it’s intriguing. I get to do some detective work to try to find more complete parallels in order to pry its story out of it.

Painting Conservation: the CSI of the Museum World

Art   Collections & Objects   Collections Management   Laing Art Gallery   Science
Posted by administrator on August 3, 2010     Permalink     Leave a comment

Welcome to the new Conservation blog. I am hoping to be able to give you a little insight into what is happening behind the scenes in the conservation studio.

Usually when I introduce myself to people and tell them I’m a conservator, people often say “that must be nice working with nature”. Then I have to explain that no, I am usually in my basement with rubber gloves, a gas mask and a magnifying light working on the care of the TWAM paintings.

My job can involve many things. I am basically a paintings doctor. I give paintings health checks before they go in display. I carry out face lifts on them to make them look better and reduce the ravages of age. Sometimes, I have to carry out open heart surgery when there is something seriously wrong (yes they do occasionally look like they’ve been in a car crash!) And lastly I try to make sure they live a healthy life in an environment that will help them to remain in good condition.

The best bit of my job is that when I examine paintings I get clues as to the history of the paintings and what has happened to them. I can tell how old they are by the type of materials used. I can piece together what has happened to them during their life by looking at the different damage that has occurred. Sometimes I find some of the artists’ hair caught in the paint, or one time I was working on a painting of a beach and kept finding bits of sand on the surface of the painting from it being painted in situ. Of course I find a lot of dead insects as well- yuk! We use a lot of science to identify what paintings are made of so we can treat them correctly.

Iain Watson, Acting Director

Art   Collections & Objects   Collections Management   Discovery Museum   Great North Museum: Hancock
Posted by administrator on July 30, 2010     Permalink     Comments (2)

When you tell people that you work in museums they always want to share with you their thoughts about museums – almost everyone has experience of museums and has views about what they like and dislike.

Visitors in Discovery Museum

Visitors in Discovery Museum

As well as all the people I meet who tell me what a great time they’ve had in our museums and galleries, three particular friends, all of whom work in areas very different to museums come to mind when I think about what people want from museums. One friend every time I met him would say to me, teasingly, ‘How’s the museum, still got all that old stuff? Can’t you get any new stuff?’

Another friend said to me, when I was talking about the improvements we’d been making to our museums and galleries, ‘Oh, but I loved the old museum in the town where I grew up. We used to play tig around the mahogany cases with the brass rails and then be chased by the museum attendants. It was great fun. That’s how museums should be.’ Another friend often asks me ‘Have you got any more seats in that art gallery yet. It’s a great gallery but there’s not enough seats.’

Different people want different things from museums and galleries. Sometimes the same people want different things on different days – if I’m visiting with my 10 year old son I might want lots of activities, if I’m showing round visitors to the area I want to highlight items with key significance, sometimes I just want be in the presence of great art.

People queuing outside the Great North Museum: Hancock when it re-opened in May 2009

People queuing outside the Great North Museum: Hancock when it re-opened in May 2009

I’m really keen to know what people want from our museums, galleries and archive. I’d love it if people would share their stories of a great visit to a museum. What made a difference? What changed the way you felt or thought?

In the present economic climate it’s easy to focus on cuts, job losses, pension problems. Museums, galleries and archives are even more important in helping people develop their sense of place, learn more about themselves and sometimes just have a moment of escapism. If you’ve got a museum story to share please respond to the blog.

barque Lota 1891

Art   Maritime History
Posted by administrator on July 26, 2010     Permalink     Comments (27)

from Turnbull’s Register 1889
from Turnbull’s Register 1889

The North East of England was such a centre for shipbuilding in the 19th and 20th centuries that the focus of my work is most often on the production end of the shipping business. Thousands of ships were built on the Tyne and the Wear and for many we know little more than which shipyard built them, when they were launched, their dimensions and the name of their first owners.

Last week I was in the Fine Art store choosing some paintings to add to the shipbuilding gallery in Sunderland Museum. A painting of Lota, by local marine artist John Hudson, caught my eye and I would like to put it on display. Lota was a three-masted steel barque of 1,367 gross tons, built in 1891 by Robert Thompson at his Southwick shipyard, Sunderland. But who was she built for and what happened to her after she left the River Wear?

Turner Edwards house flag’

Turner Edwards house flag’

 Lota was part of a late upsurge in the building of sailing ships that took place between 1888 and 1892. She was ordered by Turner Edwards & Co of Bristol and I wondered what business they were in. An e-mail to Andy King, an old friend at Bristol Museums, produced some details of the company’s history. Turner Edwards’s core business was importing brandy and wine from France, Portugal and Spain for local wine merchants such as Harvey, the world famous sherry blender. But Mark Turner was also in the agricultural fertilizer business and he saw an opportunity to enter another profitable trade. Lota was built to carry nitrate from Chile, ‘taking advantage of the productive capacity and cheapness of north British shipyards’.

Painting of the barque LOTA by John Hudson – B9432’

Painting of the barque LOTA by John Hudson – B9432’

The painting shows Lota off the mouth of the river Tyne. There are waving figures on her deck and passengers on a paddle steamer returning their waves. I think the painting may show her setting off on her maiden voyage to the West Coast of South America, perhaps having loaded coal on the Tyne. So my research continues on this one. In a future posting I hope I can add some more information about what is going on in the painting and also about the nitrate trade around Cape Horn.

Welcome to the Great North Museum: Hancock Library blog!

Books   Collections & Objects   Great North Museum: Hancock   Natural Sciences
Posted by administrator on July 20, 2010     Permalink     Comments (2)

Let me start by telling you a little about the Library. We have three collections here: the archives and library of the Natural History Society of Northumbria (NHSN), the library of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne (SANT) and Newcastle University’s Cowen archaeology Library.

We are open to the public and you can find up to date details of opening times at by clicking here.

To contact the Library phone: (0191) 222 3555 or email: gnmlibrary@twmuseums.org.uk 

In this blog I intend to show a book (or archive) of the month, lists of our new books and anything else that is library related. I would also like to include book reviews so if you’d like to write a review of one of the books in the library just let me know.

Archive of the month

Collection of watercolour drawings of British plants

Margaret Dickinson (d.1918)

From the archives of the Natural History Society of Northumbria

Images courtesy of the Society

           

Germander Speedwell

Veronica chamaedrys

          

Purple mountain milk vetch

 Astragalus Hypoglottis (Now known as Astragalus danicus)

Margaret Dickinson was a local botanist and artist. The Natural History Society of Northumbria has over 450 of her watercolours in its collection, which was bequeathed to the Society by the artist. Dickinson did most of her paintings between 1846 and 1874 and many of the plants she painted were of local origin. This archive is fascinating on many levels; historically, scientifically and aesthetically.

New books in the Library June 2010

This is just a selection of books which are new to the Library. Please come in and take a look at them.

Natural History Society of Northumbria

  • Cyanophyceae / Lothar Geitler : Akadem. Verl. Leipzig, 1932
  • An historical and descriptive account of Pretwick Carr / D. Maddison : Orange, 1830
  • The Feejee Mermaid / J. Bondeson : Cornell University Press, 1999
  • Plants, people & places: the plant lover’s companion / Julia Brittain : David and Charles, 2006
  • Yorkshire butterflies and moths 2009 / Howard M. Frost (ed) : BCY/YNU, 2009
  • John Ellis / Julius Groner and Paul F.S. Cornelius : Boxwood, 1996

 

 

Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne

  • Hexham in the seventeenth century / Anna Rossiter : Hexham Local History Society, 2010
  • Ring cairns to reservoirs: archaeological discoveries in the Duddon Valley, Cumbria : Duddon Valley Local History Group, 2009
  • The book of the Thames: from its rise to its fall / Mr and Mrs S.C. Hall : Virtue, 188-?
  • Bowmont : an environmental history of the Bowmont Valley and the Northern Cheviot Hills, 10000 BC-AD 2000 / Richard Tipping : Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2010

 The Cowen Library

  • Archaeology: an introduction / Kevin Greene and Tom Moore : Routledge, 2010
  • Anglo-saxon monetary history / M.A.S. Blackburn : Leicester University Press, 1986