Fabulous Fans – Part One

Collections & Objects   Discovery Museum   Fashion
Posted by administrator on May 6, 2014     Permalink     Leave a comment

For the past five months I have been exploring, documenting and re-packing the fan collection at Discovery Museum, and as part of the project I was asked to produce a ‘top ten’ list. Unwrapping each of the 157 fans was a different experience each time, some very fragile, some ornate and some very unusual. Each fan told its own unique story.

It has been an exciting collection to research due to its variety. The oldest fan in the collection dates from 1730 and the most recent is from 1962. As well as the large date range it also became clear during my project that there were many specific trends in fans, just like any other fashion accessory. This became more recognisable as my project progressed and the trends were not only identifiable by the materials used but also the size of the fan, and the style of decoration.

It was a hard task to choose just ten from this beautiful collection, but after a lot of deliberation I managed to narrow down my findings, all of which are distinctly different and take you on a journey through the collection.

The oldest fan from my top ten dates from around 1760 – 1770 and is a typical example of a French fan from the Rococo period. The bone fan sticks are highly ornate and have been pierced with the most intricate pattern and then embellished with metal pique detailing. The fan leaf is a cream satin jacquard that has been hand painted and depicts a garden scene. Fans like this were often commissioned by the wealthy to show exaggerated scenes of outdoor pursuits. Although the front of the fan is full of beautiful detail, it was the back of the fan with its floral design that I really loved.

Fans similar to this one were often used as celebration fans to mark royal weddings or family christenings. Some were romantic marriage fans, given to the bride from the groom, and have remained in good condition due to only being used once and then being kept as a keepsake.

French Fan 1760 – 1770

It was hard to believe some of the dates of the fans as they were either in very good condition or looked more modern due to their colour or materials.

This example caught my eye immediately with its vibrant yellow feathers and bold painted decoration. However this fan, which was made in China, was a popular style throughout the 19th Century, this particular example dating from 1860.

Feather Fan 1860

In complete contrast to this vibrant example is an all black mourning fan of the same date. There are only a few mourning fans in the museums collection, but one stood out to me due to its design. The fan sticks, made from black grosgrain satin, have been fashioned into shapes to replicate feathers. This was a typical style at the time due to the limited availability of feathers. Feather fans were quite rare until the last quarter of the 19th Century. Before then shaped feather fans made from other materials were produced instead.

The fan’s wooden sticks are fastened with a mother of pearl rivet and a metal loop is attached along with a piece of black satin ribbon. I had came across a few late 19th Century fans with metal loops or satin ribbon attached and it made me wonder if this was a style feature or a practical addition. After some research I found that metal loops were typically attached to fans from the beginning of the 19th Century as the number of accessories women carried was increasing. Along with a fan they would also carry a parasol and a purse so the loop and ribbon would enable a lady to carry the fan at ease by slipping the ribbon over her finger or wrist. I like to think that a lady would change the colour of the ribbon to match her outfit or personal taste.

I had spent a lot of time while looking through the collection imagining who would own certain fans and where they would have been used, so there was great excitement in the store on the day that I unpacked a fan and box with a letter enclosed.

Lace Fan and Letter 1897

The letter, which is dated December 16th 1897, shows that the fan was given as a 21st birthday present, it reads:

To Jessica,

 With pen in hand, we sit us down

To think what we shall say

To greet our charming Jessica

This twenty-first birthday

‘Many happy returns’ is not quite new.

But we trust you’ll not deride

Say Pip, Eth, Amy, Pollie, Maude

And those on the other side

May the fan we send such pleasure afford

Both now and when you use it

As it has given to each and all

(Who are mentioned before) to choose it.

 Dec, 16th 1897

 The fan is in pristine condition considering its age and is very similar to those used at that time by a bride on her wedding day. Bridal fans at the time were typically made of gauze and pieces of lace matching the brides’ wedding gown would be appliquéd to the fan.

Fans were not only used as a decorative accessory, some also had more practical uses. Fans like this one, including a cassolet, which means ‘with rouge for the cheeks’, were seen as early as 1900.

This particular fan dates from 1890. The sticks and guards are made of bone and have been pierced with a delicate design. The cassolet is a very ornate gold plate and is attached to the outer fan guard. The fan leaf is made up of two layers of paper, in silver and blue. The paper has been pierced with small stars letting the silver shine through and glisten in certain lights.

Rimmels ‘cassolet’ Fan 1890

Although very subtle, I believe this could be an early advertising fan. Advertising fans became popular from the 1890s.  Shops and restaurants in Paris would often advertise using fans and even later in the 1950s the influential fashion designer Christian Dior used fans to promote his fashion house.

In my next post I will talk about the remaining five fans from my top ten, which also includes my favourite from the whole collection.

 

 

 

Hidden Treasures : William Turner’s “A New Herball”

Books   Collections & Objects   Great North Museum: Hancock   Local History   Natural Sciences
Posted by administrator on May 2, 2014     Permalink     Comments (2)

One of the band of Volunteers who are based in the Great North Museum: Hancock Library is Elizabeth Garnett who is undertaking an MA in Museum Studies at Newcastle University. Elizabeth lives in Morpeth and has been investigating one of that town’s famous sons, William Turner and his important and fascinating book ‘A New Herball’. A first edition of this work, published in 1551 has  recently been donated to the Library of the Natural History Society of Northumbria which is located in the Great North Museum: Hancock Library.

 

The book can definitely no longer claim to be ‘new’ anymore, since it is now over 460 years old. Regardless of its potentially misleading title, this book is important in that it shows ideas and beliefs held in the 16th century. It marks a time when the properties of plants were being studied and recorded in English for the first time. It also dates from a period where technology was being developed to publish books faster and more cheaply, helping to increase the spread of information to ordinary people.

William Turner was a local lad, born in Morpeth, Northumberland in or around 1508, under the reign of Henry VIII. It is thought that he was the son of a tanner, but not much else is known about his early years or education. It is assumed that his first school was at the Chantry in Morpeth, on which there is now a plaque to commemorate him.

 

 

He must have shown a considerable amount of promise as he went to Pembroke College at Cambridge University. His place here was funded by Lord Wentworth who acted as his patron. It was here that he completed a B.A. in 1530 and an M.A. in 1533. Turner appears to have had a range of interests alongside that of plants and their properties. He wrote the first printed book dedicated entirely to birds in 1544. His Calvinist beliefs were so strong that they appear to have resulted in his imprisonment at some point. After his release he spent time abroad in Europe, notably Italy where it is thought that he received his doctorate in medicine. On his return to England his medical knowledge must have aided his appointment as the physician to the Duke of Somerset.  All in all, not bad for ‘a bairn from ‘peth’ (translation – a child from Morpeth).

 

The importance of ‘A New Herball’ can best be understood if you are aware of what was going on at the time in which it was written. The use of the moveable-type printing press, which was developed in Germanyaround 1440, had spread throughout Europe. A simple explanation of how this press worked is that it was like a giant stamp. Individual wooden blocks of letters were combined to construct words that were then used to print the required text. This text could then be printed in large numbers. Once enough copies had been printed the wooden letters could be re-used to create a new text. This meant that the process of printing became fast and efficient. For the first time books could be published relatively quickly in larger quantities and this resulted in more information being made available to a wider audience. Its equivalent in our time is the development of the Internet, email and the mobile phone.

 

The changes in religious beliefs and ideas made it an insecure period. Henry VIII had split England from the authority of the Pope and Catholicism when he created the Church of England. Turner himself was a Calvinist, which although an offshoot of Protestantism, didn’t sit comfortably with the crown. When Mary I came to power the country was thrust back into Catholicism and Turner’s beliefs and writings were little appreciated. He actually left the country under her reign. Turner’s books were banned twice, once under Henry VIII and again under Mary I. Though this would have affected his religious writings more than his botanical books there may have been a backlash which could account for their rarity today.

 

His ‘New Herball’ was published in three parts. A copy of part one, published in 1551 has recently been donated to the Natural History Society of Northumbria. It is a beautiful edition and in excellent condition. The ornate title page is decorated with woodcut illustrations and the elaborate gothic-style text on this page acts as an abstract of the book, stating that it aims to name herbs in Greek, Latin, English, Dutch and French and indicate their properties.

 

Part two was published in 1562, and part three, of which the Library also has a copy although it is not in as good a condition, was published in 1568. This third part contains the revised editions of part one and two and is dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I, whose long reign finally gave the country some religious stability.

 

As Turner explains on the title page of his 1551 herbal, it is a book that contains the names and descriptions of plants, often including their properties and medical virtues. At this time a ‘herb’ was considered to be any plant useful to man, so not just things that we now associate with cooking. There are a number of herbals in Europe that predate Turner’s. In fact many of the illustrations used in Turner’s ‘New Herball’, which would have been carved out of wood and used like stamps, were reused from an earlier book on the history of plants written in Latin by a Leonhart Fuchs in 1542. The reason that Turner’s herbal is considered to be so important is because it is the first to be written in English. This meant that anyone who could read English was able to learn information about herbs that had previously been passed on by word of mouth, or written in Latin. The 1568 book containing all three parts of ‘A New Herball’ recognises 238 different plant species, as well as giving their properties, uses and virtues. The fact that Turner not only systematically recorded, but opened up herb lore to a wider audience has led to him being referred to as the ‘Father of English Botany’.

 

A facsimile edition of Turner’s original book has been published and is available for use in the Library. This edition is in two volumes and provides the reader with a modern transcript of the original text, together with notes, and a glossary of unfamiliar or obsolete terms. By making use of this Turner’s original work becomes more accessible and easier to use for the contemporary reader.

 

 

There are still echo’s of Turner remaining in Morpeth in the form of the ‘Turner Garden’ in Carlisle Park. Though currently slightly bare, the plant plaques have snippets from Turner’s Herball, indicating the uses of the plant.

 

 

Fancy having a look at Turner’s Work? Or even find out which herbs might cure your ailments? Visit the Great North Museum: Hancock Library. Further details are on the website www.greatnorthmuseum.org/library

Development of St James Park

Discovery Museum   Social History
Posted by administrator on May 1, 2014     Permalink     Leave a comment

A guest post by Matthew Chan

St James' Park, 1913

Newcastle United versus Sunderland at St James’ Park, 1913

St James Park is something that runs very deeply among the people of Newcastle, and has arguably been adopted like a landmark such as the Tyne Bridg eand Greys monument. Today, we know it as the huge all-seater stadium with 52,000 Toon Army fans cheering on the likes of Shearer, Keegan and Jackie Milburn. However, St James Park has come a very long way from what we know it as today.

The city of Newcastle Upon Tyne was actually built on a series of small hills, and St James Park was actually built on one of these hills as part of the city’s Town Moor which was owned by the City Council and Freemen this made it hard for St James to be developed. In fact, prior to the first football match being played at St James, the site was actually used for public hangings, which is where the name of the Gallowgate originated from. In its early inception, St James became the home of four clubs which were Newcastle Rangers (1880 – 1882), Newcastle West End (1886 – 1892), Newcastle East End (1892) and Newcastle Wednesday (1890 – 1895). During the summer of 1886,West End’s supporters decided to build a 8 foot height fence creating a somewhat border from the rest of Castle Leazes and was the blueprint of St James Park in what we know it as today.

The first Newcastle United game played at St James was in 1892 following the merger of West End and East End, in order to create a stronger Newcastle football team to compete with the best teams in the country. The early success during the 1900’s now attracted huge crowds and a supposed 70,000 tried to gain entry to the game. However, although Newcastle United was now attracting huge crowds, and their development as a football team was recognised when the FA decided to stage an England versus Wales fixture at St James Park. However, although huge crowds were pouring in to watch Newcastle, there were still difficulties in further expanding the stadium. Archibald Leitch in 1926, drew up plans to completely cover the ground with seating at a higher level and terracing in front, however, the proposal saw the club conflicting with the corporation and the local residents of Leazes Terrace who opposed any potential expansion, therefore, putting the development of St James Park very much on hold.

Compared to the football stadia around Britain, which had seen many clubs up and down the country, redevelop their stadiums to fit in with the modern times; St James Park had remained largely unaltered. However, the fifties saw the introduction of floodlights around most top ground and St James Park was actually the third First Division ground to play under floodlights. However, there were many problems with the floodlights at St James, as the telegraph poles were too low which created many gaps and shadows, and it was argued that many supposed fouls occurred because of the bad lighting.

St James' Park, 1970

St James’ Park, 1970

Throughout 1924 to 1985, football clubs did very little in ensuring safety for fans and overcrowding was always a common theme. In the 1980’s two stadium tragedies changed the outlook on health and safety in stadiums. The Valley Parade fire meant the West Stand at St James was to be demolished and reconstructed because wooden stands were now seen as being too dangerous to host a football match, while the Hillsborough disaster ensured that teams in the top two divisions, with a capacity of over 20,00 had to meet with the all-seater regulation.

Perhaps the most significant figure to the development of St James Park came when Sir John Hall completed a takeover of the club in 1992 in what was the starting point of St James Park in what we know it as today. The first proposals saw the extension of the Milburn Stand, while the stands behind the goals would reach 11,000, the development also saw a new pitch and drainage system installed with an underground heating system costing 400,000. The development in the stadium made St James an ideal stadium to host matches during Euro 1996. However, although these developments were impressive, the capacity of 37,000 was far too low, as there was a waiting list of nearly 20,000 for season tickets.

The demand for Newcastle United season tickets had proved problematic and there were proposals of Newcastle moving stadiums into Castle Leazes into a more rural area, which proved controversial among the fans, but seemed more practical as the extension of St James Park was restricted. However, with Hall now in retirement, new Chairman Freddy Shepherd decided against the proposed move and set out to redevelop the Milburn and Leazes stand with two immense double tiers, expanding the stadiums capacity to 52,000, in what we know St James Park of today. It has been estimated that more than £70 million had been invested over a ten-year period during the 1990s, while they were around 46,500 season ticket holders and still a waiting list.

A modern St James’ Park

The development of St James Park has been an astonishing process, creating this phenomenal 52,000 capacity top of the art stadium, making it the then third biggest club stadium after Old Trafford and Parkhead.

Museums Australia (Victoria) Conference

Collections & Objects   Collections Management
Posted by administrator on April 29, 2014     Permalink     Leave a comment

I recently spoke at the Museums Australia (Victoria) Conference and thought I would share a short note about it.

As some of you will know I convened a theme at last year’s UK Museums Association Conference in Liverpool on the theme of museum futures. In the session we covered a lot of ground, from developments in digital interactives to the development and training of museum staff and volunteers for the future to some ideas derived from the academic discipline of futurism – the study of how we forecast the future.

What the theme was not about was inventing a future where everyone wears suits of aluminium foil and eats pills instead of food!  My aim with it was to encourage people to lift their understandable focus on the very important immediate issues which we face – in particular economic issues – and begin to plan, at least in outline, for a longer term future.  It is important that we recognise that the children visiting museums and archives today will, in 20 years’ time, be bringing their own children and these children who are visiting now are growing up in a world which is significantly different to that of their parents – in particular they live in a very globalised world, a world with increasing disparity between rich and poor, a world in which economic power has shifted from the west where it has lain for the last 200 years, arguably longer, a world facing significant ecological challenge and of course a world with instant digital access.

Melbourne is a long way to go from north east England for a half hour paper. It is interesting that given that I went to talk about museum futures to the Museums Australia (Victoria) Conference I still had to travel in the conventional way and we aren’t as a minimum using some sort of video conferencing. I guess that says two things. Firstly we still really like to be in the physical presence of people and whilst Skype is great it is just not the same. Secondly I think it’s the fact that learning and development doesn’t just take place in lecture sessions but that with events such as conferences the discussions held in coffee breaks or that are stimulated by the coming together of different people and themes are just as important as the set piece presentations. This serendipitous development is just not possible by dialing in with Skype.

Colleagues at Museums Australia (Victoria) – in Australia the state museums associations appear to be stronger than the federal association –  had read the reports of the session we had worked up for Liverpool and asked me to present a session at their conference reflecting on current developments in Europe which they might be able to process in an Australian context.

There are a number of themes in the paper I presented. I started with the difference between old style museums presented on behalf of our visitors as opposed to new style museums delivered in association with our users. This doesn’t mean that every exhibition has to be co-curated and doesn’t mean an end to curatorial knowledge. What it does mean is thinking about how the visitor fits in the development of the exhibition, how they engage with it (there are great examples where visitors actually become part of the exhibition) and what learning or impact or action the visitor will take away. I also reflected on the economic crisis which has impacted on the west over the last 6 years. In museum terms this means that most museum development is now happening in places such as the Middle East, China, and potentially the BRIC and MINT countries. It is interesting to reflect on whether they will simply adopt the western museum tradition or will they do something different with it reflecting different cultural traditions.

I spoke about museum buildings. In many museums across the world there has been an emphasis on ‘epic’ buildings designed by signature architects. It is worth asking how these buildings relate to collections and visitors and to consider museum concepts where the building, at least initially, does not exist – with examples such as The Museum of Innocence and The Museum of Broken Relationships.

I asked the audience to consider the museum as ‘agora’ – the ancient Greek market place where people met not only socially but to conduct all the business of the town, the role of museums in presenting issues and championing social justice, museums and the leisure industry, museums and well-being (who pays – the cultural pound or the healthcare pound) and of course digital. With digital it is so important that we don’t get hung up on the technology but look at what it can do in answer to needs and problems. The first digital systems in museums were largely just faster ways of doing analogue things – being able to search a digital catalogue rather than work through a card index certainly improved the searching power of curators. So I have argued that whilst the first museum webpage wasn’t revolutionary (it was pretty much just a new way of promoting a printed brochure) once museums started engaging with Facebook and Twitter and other social platforms that was revolution (what futurists call a disruptive event) in that museums suddenly were in a new type of direct and immediate contact and dialogue with audiences. Just as in a library full of books you often stumbled across things of interest apparently by chance (or at least not through a studied search) so in the digital world there is an opportunity for playful interaction, exploring data  and creating your own meaning from the information in front of you. Related is the development of gamification – creating games based interfaces to activity for individuals and groups. This could be as simple as making a treasure hunt in a museum and doesn’t have to use digital technology – an ‘old school’ approach like a hopscotch grid could be used to encourage visitors to choose their path around a museum.

A final example of the sort of idea I discussed is an aspect of big data. Big data is defined as datasets so large that they can’t be processed by conventional database systems. In TWAM if you can imagine that we captured data about all our 1.3 million visits and not only, for example an email address for the visitor but also which exhibitions or galleries they visited, which text panels they read, which objects they looked at, which documents they viewed in the Search Room, which interactive they used and even what the output of the interaction with that interactive was we’d certainly be into the ‘big data’ zone. You might ask ‘why would we do this?’ A few reasons are:

  • To allow us to target marketing more effectively
  • To understand more about visitor behaviour so that we can improve design of our buildings and systems
  • To test, research and improve interactives
  • To more effectively target retail by knowing which collection items visitors are interested in
  • To create a badge or reward system where users can sign up and be rewarded for completing certain challenges building their engagement with the museum or archive.

I hope this is interesting and I will follow up with another note on my experiences of museums in Australia.

 

The A.I.A. and Art For Everyman

Art   Collections & Objects   Laing Art Gallery   Military History   Social History
Posted by administrator on April 25, 2014     Permalink     Leave a comment

And your starter for ten this week is ….  What do the following British 20th Century artists all have in common? – Clifford Rowe, James Boswell, Carel Weight, James Holland, Edward Ardizzone, Pearl Binder, Eric Gill, Victor Pasmore and Ben Nicholson?

No?  Okay- time’s up!  Well, if you didn’t know, they were all involved in some way, be it as founding members or contributing artists, to an organisation called The Artists’ International Association, which was set up in 1933 in London by a group of like-minded radically left-wing artists, in a decade which was to see the Great Depression, Stalinism, the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent emergence of Franco, and finally the outbreak of the Second World War. The principal founders of the A.I.A., as it was more commonly known, included Misha Black, James Boswell, Clifford Rowe and Pearl Binder, and the guiding ethos was to promote a radical response to these events in the art world. James Boswell, in an interview for Donald Drew Egbert’s book Social Radicalism in the Arts: Western Europe (1970) amusingly describes the movement as:  “…a mixture of agit-prop body, Marxist discussion group, exhibitions organiser and anti-war, anti-fascist outfit.”

In the Movement’s First Statement of Aims, published in International Literature in 1934 it set itself out as: “The International Unity of Artists Against Imperialist War on the Soviet Union, Fascism and Colonial Oppression”  and aimed to: “execute posters, illustrations, cartoon, book jackets, banners….”   as well as: “the spreading of propaganda by means of exhibitions, the Press, lectures and meetings” and “the maintaining of contact with similar groups already existing in 16 other countries.”

Grand aims indeed, but the Association did manage to become highly successful in attracting other leading painters and sculptors to participate in and contribute to their activities throughout its 38 year history, organising many events and exhibitions, conferences, lectures, campaigns and regular meetings of national and regional groups, plus a Lending Library;  in 1947, it acquired permanent premises in Lisle Street, London which it maintained up to the dissolving of the Association in 1971, although it had ceased officially to be a political organisation some 20 years prior to this.

A few months ago at the Laing Art Gallery here in Newcastle, I was handed a set of 21 prints to catalogue which bore the imprint of ‘A.I.A. Everyman Prints’ and had been purchased by the Laing sometime in 1940. The prints were part of a set of 52 produced by the A.I.A. in 1940 as an attempt to bypass the traditionally costly practice of producing limited editions of art works, and in the same way that Allen Lane pioneered the mass-market production of quality literature with Penguin Books some four years earlier, the Everyman Prints were conceived of as bringing the work of established artists to a wider, hopefully working-class, clientele: in the same breathless tones that might have been used a decade later to introduce a new-fangled vacuum cleaner or a set of Encyclopaedia Britannica to the postwar public, a magazine advert produced by the A.I.A. to advertise the prints claimed:

“A.I.A. Everyman Prints are intended for every home. To-day, thanks to cheap production of books and gramophone records, everyone can cultivate a personal taste in what they read and what music they hear. Everyman prints now widen the range from which the visual taste can be gratified, by offering the direct work of living artists at a price so reasonable that the outlay need not involve anxious consideration….”

Admittedly, the quality of the paper was obviously a lot lower than would be expected of a conventional art print, as the copies we have at the Laing will testify, but they were produced cheaply and in large quantities by offset lithography direct from the artists’ plates. The majority of the prints were in monochrome, and these were priced at 1/-, the coloured ones selling for 1/6d, and, as with the original Penguin Books, which had been sold for sixpence in high street stores such as Woolworths, the A.I.A avoided selling the Everyman Prints in art galleries, instead making arrangements, for example, to sell them at a number of branches of Marks and Spencer, straight over the counter. They were also exhibited in simultaneous exhibitions in London, Bristol and Durham, as well as featuring in a touring exhibition.

While the above magazine advert markets the prints in a bright, consumerist fashion, what the public were actually getting in 1939 was a much more bleak and realist affair. The print featured in the picture, one of the 21 bought by the Laing Art Gallery, and entitled  ‘A Garden—God wot’!  is by Maurice de Sausmarez, and, in showing a surburban garden which has been rudely disturbed by the construction of a somewhat grander version of an Anderson Shelter, it typifies the overriding motifs of all the prints in this series: the depiction of the disruption caused to British daily life and the pre-war urban and rural landscape of Britain as a result of the build up to and arrival of War in 1938-39.  The artists involved in this series portray some strange juxtapositions in the harsh realism of the measures taken to prepare for war and the civil defence of the country at the time, while, unsurprisingly, echoing what would be the critical morale-boosting aims of subsequent wartime propaganda, namely to show a Britain where, in spite of everything that has changed, it is still “business as usual”.  Hence other Everyman prints depict barrage balloons ascending over the roofs and back gardens of Hampstead, the blackout in a family home, evacuees and Home Guards at a railway station, as well as an early wartime football match. I hope to feature one or two of these in future posts.

Sources:                                                                                                           http://en.wikipedia.org/

The Story of the A.I.A. 1933-1953 by Lynda Morris and Robert Radford, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1983.