Ralph Hedley trail for Children at the Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead

The following blog post is by Isla Haddow who is studying a BA in Fine Art at De Montfort University, Leicester, and has completed a work placement with Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums.

I was asked to do a trail activity for the current Ralph Hedley exhibition for the children visiting the Shipley Art Gallery to be able to do whilst going around the exhibition. So, I have been totally absorbed and occupied with that lovely task for the past couple of days.

I spent a good amount of time admiring the show, in order for me to think about which aspects of his paintings I found interesting, and which of those I could take forward to feature in a fun trail which children would enjoy and be able to engage with the art works on a different level. From here, I began simply picking out ideas such as finding, counting, and drawings things which featured within Hedley’s paintings, and planned potential layouts and tasks for the children to do.

Ralph Hedley Children's trail- a work in progress!

I felt myself thoroughly enjoying the freedom of making something for someone younger than me – enabling me to be fun and exciting through my design! In the format of a leaflet, I started assembling my ideas. Activities for the children within this trail feature the likes of “Find the painting called…”, with an activity linked to that particular painting, such as counting the number of horses, or drawing themselves as a portrait, referencing Hedley’s painting Portrait of Spence Watson, which features in the exhibition.

The trails will be available throughout the year on the front desk at the Shipley, for a donation of 50p.

The Cultural History of Technology

Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums has recently teamed up with researchers at Northumbria University to encourage new thinking and comment around important subjects, such as Britishness, migration, and culture in an industrial region.

Each week, for four weeks, we’ll be blogging about a museum object and posing a question for you to respond to.  Please help us get the discussion going by adding your comments below, whatever comes to mind.  Later in the summer, your comments may be fed into a live debate where we hope you’ll have the opportunity to join academics and curators discussing the most popular topic.

The theme for this week is ‘the cultural history of technology’, and this Wearside-designed and built ship’s engine in our collection always starts people talking.

Our Doxford ship's engine, designed and built at Pallion, Sunderland, with my colleague Graham for scale

The first thing people usually comment on is its enormous size – it is 7 metres high and weighs in at 125 tonnes – but the conversation usually gets round, sooner or later, to what it meant to a town (as it then was) like Sunderland to have people around who designed and developed, marketed and made engines for ships that supplied the world with food, fuel, raw materials and manufactured products.

So how can industry and technology shape a community’s culture?

One way is by providing opportunities to young people for learning, education and personal development.  Apprentices at Doxford’s often progressed to careers in the merchant navy, with the chance to travel the world and to work with people from a wide range of cultures and nationalities.

Doxford Engine Works apprentices take a break from assembling a ship's engine in the 1950s

The apprenticeship system of training, usually referred to as ‘serving your time’, was a key rite of passage in the life and culture of many industrial communities.  What other characteristics might an industrial community share?  Typically, an industrial community might be one where most workers could hear the factory hooter from their home; where people lived, worked and found entertainment together; and where young people tended to follow their parents’ generation into the same workplace and to marry someone with a similar family background.

Was this a sound prescription for social cohesion, to use a modern term; or did it nurture inward-looking communites, lacking in aspiration and inherently resistant to change?

What have we lost, and what have we gained, by consigning that era to the past?

The Doxford Engine Works Football team, 1950s

Menswear from 1900-1980

After the first installment of menswear from 1800-1900, this blog will continue exploring the styles and shapes that dominated menswear from 1900-1980. Fashion is continually updating and reinventing itself, so read on for some future fashion trends!

The lounge coat continued to replace the frock coat for most informal and semi-formal occasions in the early 1900s.Three-piece suits consisting of a lounge coat with matching waistcoat and trousers were worn, as were matching coat and waistcoat with contrasting trousers or vice versa.  Trousers were shorter than in previous years and often had turn-ups or cuffs. They were creased front and back following the introduction of the new trouser press. The blazer was a navy blue, brightly colored or striped flannel coat cut like a lounge coat with patch pockets and brass buttons, which was often worn for sports, sailing, and other casual activities.

In the 1920s men wore short suit jackets, while the old long jackets were used mainly for formal occasions. In the early 1920s, men’s fashion was characterized by extremely high-waisted jackets, often worn with belts. This style of jacket seems to have been greatly influenced by the uniforms worn by the military during the First World War. Trousers were relatively narrow and straight and they were worn rather short so that the socks often showed. By 1925, wider trousers commonly known as Oxford bags came into fashion, while suit jackets returned to a normal waist length and lapels became wider and were often worn peaked. Loose-fitting sleeves without a taper also appeared during this period. In the late 1920s, double-breasted vests, often worn with a single-breasted jacket became quite fashionable, similar to contemporary suit design of today.

Suit, 1926

During the 1920s, men had a variety of sport clothes available to them, including sweaters and short trousers, commonly known as knickers. For formal occasions in the daytime, a morning suit was usually worn. For evening wear men preferred the short tuxedo as opposed to the tail coat, which was now seen as rather old-fashioned and snobby! Men’s fashion also became less regimented and formal with trends favoring short jackets and pinstriped suits rather than jackets with long tailcoats. It wasn’t called the roaring 20s for nothing!

Men’s hats were worn depending on their class, with upper class citizens usually wearing top hats or a homburg hat. Middle class men preferred either a fedora, bowler hat or a trilby. During the summer months a straw boater was popular for upper class and middle class men, however working-class men wore a standard newsboy cap or a flat cap.

Bowler Hat

Throughout the 1930s-1950s the most noticeable effect of the general sobering associated with the Great Depression was that the range of colors became more subdued and the bright colors popular in the 1920s fell out of men’s fashion. By the early 1930s, the drape cut or “London Drape” suit championed by Frederick Scholte, tailor to the Prince of Wales, was taking the world of men’s fashion by storm. The new suit was softer and more flexible in construction than the suits of the previous generation; extra fabric in the shoulder and arms, a slightly nipped waist, and fuller sleeves tapered at the wrist, resulted in a cut with flattering folds or drapes front and back that enhanced a man’s figure. The straight wide-leg trousers that men had worn in the 1920s also became tapered at the bottom for the first time around 1935.

By the early 1940s, Hollywood tailors had exaggerated the drape to the point of caricature, outfitting film noir mobsters and private eyes in suits with heavily padded chests, enormous shoulders, and wide flowing trousers. Musicians and other fashion experimenters adopted the most extreme form of the drape, the zoot suit, with very high waists, pegged trousers, and long coats.

Homburg Hat, 1940-1950

The most common hat of this period was the fedora, often worn tipped down over one eye at a rakish angle, again another trend favored by fashionable men today!

Teddy boy was a British subculture typified by young men wearing clothes that were partly inspired by the styles worn by dandies in the Edwardian period. The clothing included drape jackets reminiscent of 1940s American zoot suits. The subculture started in London in the 1950s, and rapidly spread across the UK, soon becoming strongly associated with American rock and roll.

Teddy Boy Drape Coat

From the late 1960s into the early 1970s clothing was often androgynous and could be worn by both sexes.

1960s Jacket

Platform shoes with heels 2-4 inches thick appeared in 1971 and were worn by men and women. These shoes were often paired with wide-leg flared jeans and trousers which were popularized in the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever starring John Travolta. The “disco look”, complete with three-piece suits became very popular!

Suit, 1970s

By the 1980s, the 1970s style of looser wide leg trousers and tighter fitting shirts had been completely reversed. The 1980s saw tight or close fitting trousers and large loose t-shirts and tops stealing the show! Fashion trends were becoming heavily influenced by TV series and popular culture. The 1980s brought an explosion of colorful styles in men’s clothing. The look of several popular TV stars helped to set fashion trends among young and middle-aged men.

Paul Smith Jacket, 1980

Miami Vice was one such series, whose leading men donned casual t-shirts underneath expensive suit jackets—often in bright or pastel colors. The t-shirt-with-designer-jacket look was often accompanied by jackets with broad, padded shoulders, and a few days growth of facial hair, dubbed “designer stubble”. Similarly, another popular look for men in the early 1980s was the Hawaiian shirt, worn by Tom Selleck, star of television’s enormously popular detective series Magnum, P.I. Thanks to Magnum, P.I., Hawaiian shirts sales soared, as did the number of men sporting mustaches!

Jean Paul Gaultier Suit, 1980s

Menswear develops and reinvents itself just as frequently as women’s wear and like all fashion trends, similar shapes and styles can be seen again and again.

So hold on to your best outfits boys!

Tyne & Wear Archives Shipyards Collection receives international recognition

Staff and researchers at Tyne & Wear Archives have long known about the outstanding historical significance of our shipbuilding collection. We’re delighted to announce, though, that this has been given official recognition through its addition to the UK Memory of the World Register.

The register is part of a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) programme to support and raise awareness of archives. The Tyne & Wear Archives Shipyards Collection is one of 11 items or collections from the UK to be awarded this status this year, along with the Domesday Book, the Churchill Archives and the Silent Movies of Alfred Hitchcock.

The Tyne & Wear Archives Shipyards Collection is a testimony to the remarkable achievements in shipbuilding and engineering produced on Tyneside and Wearside over the past two hundred years. Shipbuilding firms on the Tyne, such as Swan Hunter have produced awe inspiring passenger ships such as ‘Mauretania’, completed in 1907.

'Mauretania' at full speed on the Measured Mile, 1907 (TWAM ref. DS.SWH/4/PH/7/6)

She held the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic in both directions.

The River Tyne has also witnessed the construction of amazing warships, such as the ‘Ark Royal’, launched by Swan Hunter in 1981.

HMS Ark Royal, launched by Swan Hunter, 1981 (DS.SWH/4/PH/5/109/31)

The River Wear produced world beating passenger ships in the nineteenth century such as the ‘Torrens’ launched by the shipyard of Sir James Laing & Sons in 1875. However, it’s perhaps better known for its achievements in the construction of cargo ships.

Sea trials of the tanker ‘Borgsten’ built by J.L. Thompson & Sons Ltd, North Sands, Sunderland, c1964 (TWAM ref. DS.JLT/4/PH/1/709/6)

The Tyne & Wear Archives Shipyards Collection reflects Sunderland’s history of innovation in shipbuilding and marine engineering. From the development of turret ships in the 1890s and the production of Doxford opposed piston engines after the First World War through to the designs for Liberty ships in the 1940s and SD14s in the 1960s. Sunderland has much to shout about.

The Collection has something to appeal to everyone. There are boardroom minutes, financial accounts, administrative files and production records to satisfy maritime researchers. There are personnel records to interest family historians and ships plans to assist model makers.

SD14 Profile and decks plan, designed by Austin & Pickersgill Ltd, Southwick, c1966 (TWAM ref.DS.AP/4/PL/3/4)

Perhaps most strikingly, there are fabulous images of the ships and the people that built and launched them. The images show the human side of this great story – the sweat and toil of the workers

Welder at work at the shipyard of J.L. Thompson & Sons Ltd, North Sands, October 1946 (TWAM ref. DS.JLT/5/3/13)

as well as the glamour of ship launches and royal visits.

View of Princess Elizabeth on a royal walkabout after the launch of the ‘British Princess’ at the shipyard of Sir James Laing & Sons Ltd, Sunderland, 30 April 1946 (TWAM ref. DS.LG/4/PH/4/1)

It’s fitting that the Tyne & Wear Archives Shipyards Collection has been recognised by the UK National Commission for UNESCO. The shipbuilding industry is absolutely fundamental to the history and heritage of Tyne & Wear and has employed hundreds of thousands of men. It has also been a uniting factor in the region.

There have been many examples of co-operation between the Wear and the Tyne in the construction of ships. This co-operation is nicely symbolised by the ‘Rondefjell’, launched in two halves on the Wear, which were then towed to the Middle Docks, South Shields, where they were joined together in late October 1951.

Launch of the aftpart of the tanker ‘Rondefjell’ by John Crown and Sons Ltd, Sunderland, 1951 (TWAM ref. DS.CR/4/PH/1/233/2/4).

The populations of both Rivers have also long been united by a passion for shipbuilding. For many shipyard workers it was more than just a job – it was a way of life. Understandably, there’s a lot of sadness that the industry has passed away. However, I’m proud to be able to say that its legacy will endure and should be an inspiration to future generations.

 

A day in the store rooms of the Laing Gallery!

The following blog post is by Isla Haddow who is studying a BA in Fine Art at De Montfort University, Leicester, and has completed a work placement with Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums.

I am currently partaking in a two week placement at Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, gaining experience over many areas of work. This Wednesday I was lucky enough to spend my day in the Fine Art Painting and Print Store and the Decorative Arts store.

My morning was spent, in awe of the amount of paintings and objects which the store rooms are home to. Simultaneously, I was helping Marie-Thérèse Mayne (Assistant Keeper of Fine & Decorative Art) and Dawn Bradshaw (Conservation officer), with the re-hanging and updating records of the locations of art works.

We were un-wrapping a collection of works which had been returned to the Laing stores from an exhibition at the Hatton Gallery. The works in which we un-wrapped and re-hung onto their racks included Layla Curtis’ Newcastle Gateshead, 2005:

 

 

My afternoon was spent in the Decorative Arts store, with Dawn Bradshaw. This gave me the opportunity to take part in a small amount of conservation work. I was privileged with the task of cleaning up some beautiful, and intricate Japanese amour pieces, which were from 1600-1799.

What an exciting day!