The ‘punched-out lesions’ were unmistakable, and their form matched what I’d seen only on X-rays:  multiple myeloma, leading to the consumption of bone in the skull, both humeri, and in the distal femora.  Yet this man whose skeleton showed evidence of this disease had lived long before X-ray machines, long before a diagnosis of ‘multiple myeloma’ could have been made to explain the pain and fatigue he likely felt.

The opportunity to see the remains of a human afflicted with multiple myeloma was part of a learning experience in osteology and palaeopathology graciously provided by Jelena Bekvalac and Mike Henderson of the Centre for Human Bioarchaeology at the Museum of London.  I’m a third year medical student at Harvard Medical School in the United States – and I’m also in the process of earning my PhD in Ancient History from the Harvard Department of Classics.  Palaeosteology, which requires knowledge of human anatomy, pathology, archaeology, and history, is important for my PhD dissertation, though I had little prior exposure to the field before meeting Mike and Jelena and studying from the museum collections of nearly 20,000 sets of human remains.  The resources of the Museum of London are unlike those anywhere else in the world, and the abundance of learning opportunities there is matched only by Mike and Jelena’s generosity in sharing and teaching.

I was able to study the remains of humans who had lived with tuberculosis, amputations, osteomyelitis, syphilis, fractured bones, congenital dysplasias, osteoarthritis, dental disease, physical trauma, cancer, and gout, all maladies which are still with us today.

As a future clinician who has obtained medical histories from (living) patients in the process of my medical training, and also as an ancient historian, I recognize the importance of history: of the world, and of the individuals who form that world.  Palaeosteology permits us to tell a history as intimate as it is relevant.  With palaeosteology and its associated disciplines, the man called “Roman, multiple myeloma”
gains a voice: his diagnosis becomes part of the story of a Roman male who likely died after age 45; who was buried with ceramics; who had excellent teeth without cavities (and therefore probably didn’t eat too much white sugar). 

What we learn from his skeleton, combined with the knowledge we are privileged to gain from other skeletons, places him in the context of broader epidemiological phenomena in his world, and in ours.  His story, and those of countless others carefully looked after at the Museum of London, become part of the history of human life, illness, wellness, and death – of our history.

1) When did you join the volunteer programme and why?
I joined the VIP in Summer 2011 to gain more experience in archives and handling of archaeological material

2) What was your most memorable day whilst volunteering?
The day when we had a seminar on leather artefacts

3) What was your favourite object you discovered whilst volunteering?
One of the roman shoes we came across

4) What’s your favourite part of the museum?
London before London

5) Upper galleries of lower?
Upper galleries

6) Favourite year in London’s history?
No favourite year – I’m interested in roman, medieval and tudor periods

7) Favourite Londoner?
Too many to choose from.

8) Mortimer Wheeler or Indiana Jones
Mortimer Wheeler!

9) If you could dig anywhere in the world where would you excavate?
Egypt

10) What’s next for you after this project?
A placement with the Portable Antiquities Scheme

We’ve also had a number of enquiries regarding our collections, ranging from a request for information on fish bone samples from archaeological sites, to questions about plans and standing building drawings of a church in the City of London which we hold in our collection. While these are standard enquiries for a collection like LAARC, they do sometimes involve the investigation of our legacy data to find out exactly what information is available.

So, what exactly is legacy data I hear you ask? Well, in the context of digital preservation it is often used to refer to files or data stored in old or potentially obsolete formats, which as a result can be difficult to access and even harder to interpret. As a result, and in particular when dealing with enquiries relating to archaeological excavations which occurred in the 1980’s and early 1990’s (when digital records were being created, but the idea of digital preservation hadn’t really entered our consciousness), it is sometimes necessary to conduct searches across this legacy data, extrapolate the required information, and manipulate and migrate the data into a more accessible format, while ensuring that the data itself has not been altered in the process.

Part of our legacy toolkit at LAARC!

Our standards and guidance for deposition, and our work with current depositors of archaeological records, aims to ensure that we are not faced with these problems for current and future digital deposits. However, for digital records that were created before such standards were in place, we simply have to deal with the data in whatever form we have it, and work to the best of our abilities to extract the required information. Our long term goal is to process and migrate all of the legacy data we currently hold into accessible formats which we can then provide access to online, but with legacy data from over 670 sites, it will take some time!!

I was lucky enough to get an opportunity to talk about some of these issues when I was invited to give a short presentation at the Digital Preservation: What I Wish I Knew Before I Started event, organised and co-hosted by the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) and the Archives and Records Association (ARA) back in January. The event aimed to give ideas and practical advice concerning digital preservation to current archive and records management students, and hopefully inspire them to get involved in this particular area. For anyone interested, all the presentations from the day are available at the DPC event page and comments from the day can be found on Twitter by searching the hashtag #dpc_wiwik.

Finally, I can’t write a blog about my work at LAARC without mentioning that it’s our 10th anniversary this year – and we are running a number of events and hands on activities both at LAARC and the Museum of London to celebrate. I had my first experience of these when I participated in the Archaeology Up Close day on the 20th January, when we put on a display of finds and records on the theme of ‘Made in London’. Various finds were on show which provided evidence for shoe making in the Roman period, medieval glass and ceramic making, and post medieval clay tobacco pipe manufacturing. It was great to be able to share our collections, and passion for archaeology, with visitors to the museum, and for my part it was certainly nice to get away from my computer for a day! Various LAARC staff will be at the Museum every Monday, Tuesday and Friday for the next 8 weeks, talking about our archive collections and archaeology in general, so come and say hello when you are on your next visit, and follow the LAARC VIP blog for more info.

LAARC staff talking to (hopefully) interested members of the public about archaeology

My name is Sally, the Librarian at the Museum of London, and I have volunteered to read Bleak House with the book club as it is a novel I studied at school (rather a long time ago now) and enjoyed. 

Whereas studying ‘Silas Marner’ put me right off George Eliot, ‘Bleak House’ was so good it  encouraged me to go on and read other books by Dickens, although none of them ever seemed to match up to original impact of ‘Bleak House’.

I am looking forward to revisiting the novel as an older person, and I am also going to be reversing my Luddite tendencies and will be reading the novel on an e-reader, a well-known version of which was given to me as a Christmas present and on which my second download was the complete works of Dickens.

‘Bleak House’ followed the familiar publishing route for a Dickens novel, in that it was published as a partwork, over 19 monthly instalments (the last one being a double issue), from March 1852 to September 1853.

While readers at the time would have had a month to consume a few chapters, we will be reading the novel over just one short month, which means aiming to read at the rate of 2.5 chapters a day (well, that’s the plan).

As I remember, we will be encountering the whole gamut of Victorian society, from the homeless poor to the landed aristocracy, and will encounter issues of the day, such as slum clearance, sanitary reform, philanthropy, the development of a detective branch of the Met., and the iniquities of never-ending court cases. 

Encompassing it all is London – dirty, decaying and foggy – so let’s get started with the most magnificent opening of any Dickens novel, and immerse ourselves in fog…..

If you would like to join Sally in reading Bleak House our friends at Foyles are offering Dickens Book Club followers an additional 10% discount for online purchases of  the novel here. Simply enter ‘MOLBC’ at Checkout to activate this discount.

In the run up to our Pleasure Garden Ball event at the Museum of London on Tuesday 14 February, we’ve put together a quick blog post that should tell you everything you need to know about the pleasure garden!

As London became more built up in the 17th and 18th centuries, Londoners began to need open spaces to relax in. Pleasure gardens were built at the edge of the city and were privately run. The most famous were the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.

Vauxhall, 1785 by Thomas Rowlandson

Pleasure gardens competed for visitors, vying with each other to offer evermore exciting entertainments. Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens offered a wide variety of entertainment, including lion-tamers, trampoline clowns, fortune tellers, ventriloquists, monkeys, dogs, jugglers, horses who danced to a waltz and fire walkers.

Tournaire's Equestrians, Vauxhall Gardens, 1846

Costumes from the Museum of London’s pleasure gardens

The Museum of London’s pleasure gardens

Although the Archive holds a wealth of information from maps, drawings, digital data, context sheets to photographs, it is perhaps archaeology – the ‘stuff’ – filling over 200,000 archive boxes that we are all instantly drawn to. Our ‘general finds’ are the bread and butter of archaeology but for the most part it is our ‘registered finds’ that are intrinsically interesting.

For several years my colleague Adam has been blogging about these noteworthy objects that lie dormant in the Archive waiting to be researched, audited by a volunteer or even make it into a Museum of London gallery display.

Over the next year I’ll be presenting you with ten archaeological objects. Ten objects that emphasise the importance of London’s archaeology in shaping, or even reshaping, our understanding of the City’s history. I have literally over millions of artefacts to choose from, but this won’t be a display of the shiniest or most well-known. My selections may be representative of, or even unique to, an historical period. They may acknowledge the science of how these objects are discovered and how they survive London’s chthonic depths over millennia.

Like all good history we’ll start at ‘the beginning’:

Object 1

Prehistoric (Upper Palaeolithic) Leaf-point Flint Blade 

The first of our objects is a flint blade (not so interesting you may think…). Dredged from the Thames at Longreach (opposite Purfleet) in April 1905, it came to us via the late Geoffrey Gillam of Enfield. This is a classic example of a museum object that has lain dormant; its significance waiting to be unlocked, for this prehistoric flint may actually be the earliest example of an artefact crafted by a ‘Londoner’ in the Museum’s collection.

Our first Londoner in this instance would be a modern human, that is, homo sapiens sapiens. It was during the Upper Palaeolithic, about 40, 000 years ago, that modern humans developed blade technology (our predecessors, Neanderthals, perhaps being commonly associated with flake technology produced hand-axes) resulting in a huge range of stone artefacts being crafted. At the same time scholars have also argued about the inherent aestheticism of these objects – and we may even be looking at London’s earliest ‘work of art’! Lithics expert, Jon Cotton, ‘re-discovered’ this object with colleagues and they will hopefully be publishing it in the near future.

Next month object number 2 – where we’ll skip past a few millennia (and a lot more flints) to the Iron Age…

If so there is still time to join our Dickens Book Club and share your thoughts on the work of this great author via Facebook and Twitter.

We will be focusing on Bleak House in February, sharing favourite passages and our thoughts as we progress through this work.

We will also be completing our reading of Barnaby Rudge from January, so do look out for updates here as the novel approaches the Gordon Riots of 1780.

When the book club was launched in September 2011  we decided to ask our social media followers which work of Dickens to read to close our book club in May 2012.

Having reviewed the suggestions and comments received. The title that we have chosen to feature in May is David Copperfield. With its “memorable characters written in the first person” this was agreed to be a worthy title to close our book club celebrations of Charles Dickens work.

Alongside this online book club we have also been running a series of book club events at Foyles Bookshop flagship store at Charing Cross, London. The next meeting is being held at 6.30pm on Monday 6 February 2012 focusing on Bleak House with our Dickens and London exhibition curator Alex Werner.

 There is no need to book just turn up on the night and meet in person other fans and aficionados of Dickens.

Our books clubs are ran in support of our Dickens and London exhibition at the Museum of London which is open until 10 June 2012.

1) When did you join the volunteer programme and why?
2006 due to an interest in history and archaeology

2) What was your most memorable day whilst volunteering?
They are all great

3) What was your favourite object you discovered whilst volunteering?
So many, I can’t possibly choose just one!

4) What’s your favourite part of the museum?
LAARC

5) Upper galleries of lower?
Both but I really like both the prehistory and roman ones

6) Favourite year in London’s history?
44AD

7) Favourite Londoner?
Robert Hooke

8) Mortimer Wheeler or Indiana Jones
Mortimer Wheeler!

9) If you could dig anywhere in the world where would you excavate?
Catal Huyuk, a Neolithic site in Turkey

10) What’s next for you after this project?
Back to the archive!

The Museum’s Roman collection boasts some very fine examples of bronze, silver and gold coinage, and traces the history of Rome from the Republic, through the rise and eventual decline of the Empire, and culminates in the ascendancy of Byzantium.

The collection spans a period of no-less than seven centuries and represents over 100 different emperors, empresses, princes, rebels and usurpers.

The biggest challenge in working with this collection stems from the sheer volume of coin designs that the emperors could produce.

Recently I have been working with the coins of Emperor Domitian (81-96AD). Domitian alone was responsible for producing over 400 different coin designs during his 15 year reign. This is obviously a huge amount, but such numbers are not uncommon, and indeed such an output is dwarfed by that of others, such as Hadrian, who introduced nearly 1100 different coin designs during his rule, 117-138AD.

It may initially seem surprising that the emperors put so much thought into their coinage.

However, in a period before mass media, coins offered the perfect opportunity for the emperors to ‘meet’ their public. The minting of coins was the greatest source of propaganda available to the emperors.

They range of designs is astonishing. Coins were issued to commemorate great military victories, grand building projects, the quelling of rebellions and to celebrate the might and history of Rome.

They also gave ample opportunity for the emperors to associate themselves and their rule with a particular god, goddess or virtue by depicting them on the reverse.

In this respect the coins offer a real window into the ideology, principles and concerns of the emperors themselves. They could choose to depict themselves as philosophers, facilitators of peace and prosperity, or conversely, they could adopt a very different stance and associate themselves with Mars, the god of war, showing that they were prepared to hold onto their power with an iron fist if circumstances required it.

With such a vast array of coins being minted, correct identification offers a significant challenge.

Fortunately much of the collection is very well preserved. Some of the coins appear as if struck yesterday, and are identified and read as easily as they would have been millennia ago. However, time has taken its toll on many others.

The portraits are worn and reverses corroded, inscriptions are obliterated and details reduced to little more than a few lumps and bumps. In a few cases, identification is simply impossible. However, more often than not, identification can be made from the slightest of details. Until the fourth century the portraits of the emperors are very distinctive; subsequently, little more than the curve of the nose or the curl of a beard can give away their identity. Similarly the flick of a wing or the angle of an arm can all help identify the figure on the reverse.

I feel incredibly lucky to be able to handle these objects on a daily basis, and think of the many hands they may have passed between in their long history and the day to day transaction they may have been involved in. Yet, they are not simply discs of metal used to buy bread, wine, clothing or even be exchanged for possible brothel tokens! They can give us a real insight into the minds of the emperors themselves and the state and character of the empire.

I hope that when these coins are made available online to the public  in the summer of 2012 you will find them as interesting as I do.

It is hoped that by opening up of this collection online it will not only help the Museum engage with a wider public audience, but also offer a considerable contribution to the understanding of Roman numismatics in London, and provide increased opportunity for further enquiry, study and fresh analysis.

All images copyright Museum of London.

If you happened to visit the Museum of London today, did you spot us? The staff and volunteers at the London Archaeological Archive & Research Centre (LAARC) have begun our 10 week residency at the Museum to share our work with you! And if you weren’t at the museum today, here’s what you missed:

Outside our “London Before London” gallery, our archive manager had a selection of goodies:

• Visitors handled objects made in London almost 2000 years ago
• Visitors looked at the original records sheets that archaeologists wrote whilst they were digging up sites.
• School groups had fun trying to figure out a mystery object whose identity was revealed by an  x-ray
• Teachers admired a range of artefacts dug up by school children during our 2005 community project
• Londoners searched our online catalogue to find out what’s been dug up in their area
• One budding young archaeologist tried on a hard hat and held a trowel for the first time!

Meanwhile, a bit further on in “Archaeology In Action” all this was going on:

• Conservation students from University College London were showing people how a piece of wood deteriorates if not looked after.
• There was more guessing of mystery objects using x-rays for answers
• Visitors were handling, comparing (and sniffing) pieces of leather, all conserved in different ways.
• You could take a look at how conservators remove very fragile objects from an excavation

Alongside the conservators were LAARC volunteers:

• Packing archaeological finds, they were chatting to visitors about what they were doing.
• Visitors were able to pick up and handle real objects
• You could discover how we store artefacts at the museum and why we do so

To cap things off several visitors joined us for our afternoon workshop – Hands-On Archaeology – where they learnt a bit about London’s Archaeological history, got their “hands on” some real roman pottery, worked alongside volunteers and sorted pots into different types and helped us improve the way these pot sherds are stored.

So all in all it was a pretty awesome day. It was great to meet so many visitors and share a bit of our work with them. And if you weren’t there today, don’t worry, we’re doing it all again tomorrow and on Friday and indeed, we’ll be around for the next 10 weeks, so come along and say hi.

For more information about our various events visit our website’s events pages: events pages link

To start of the New Year, I give just a quick update of the events and activities over Christmas, and what you can expect in the following months.

I am very happy to report that our very first Santa and Scrooge’s Victorian Grottoes were a runaway success, and greatly exceeded our wildest expectations. The Hosts have put a lot of hard work and effort into making a success of the project, and can give themselves a well-deserved pat on the back for job well done.

Both Santa and Scrooge were very popular with children and parents alike, and if 2011 was anything to go by, we anticipate another sell-out event for 2012 and anyone interest in visiting will be well-advised to book in advance!

It was not just Santa and Scrooge which made headlines. Our much advertised Dickens exhibition opened with much pomp and ceremony in December, and kept us Hosts on our toes trying to keep up for demand for tickets.

A lot of time, energy and resources have gone into making this one of our most exciting exhibitions in the Museum’s history, and the positive feedback from both visitors and the press alike is a great reward for everyone involved in the exhibition.

It is the first major Charles Dickens exhibition in the UK in more than 40 years and includes original manuscripts, his desk and chair, as well as a specially commissioned film to explore the similarity between London at night time today and the city which Dickens had described 150 years ago. Book in advance to qualify for discounted tickets!

I also want to welcome our new Hosts who joined us recently. Some of them are in the photo above.

After successfully completing two weeks of training, they’ve been thrown into the deep end and shown remarkable resilience, and also brought a lot of enthusiasm to the team for the New Year.

I speak for the whole team when I say that we look forward to welcoming you to the Museum during your next visit!

Giusy

In a unassuming building along Hackney/Islington’s Regents Canal borders a team of museum archaeologists are getting quite excited. The reason being, us staff at the London Archaeological Archive & Research Centre are soon to celebrate our 10th anniversary and we’re only days away from the starting the celebrations.

Since opening in 2002 we’ve really focused on 4 main things: To make sure London’s archaeology is stored in an space efficient way that is accessible to all; to encourage and facilitate research into London’s history using the objects and information people left behind; to promote learning and enjoyment by discovering London’s heritage and finally; to be ambassadors of archaeology and leaders in our field of expertise.

That may all sound a little grandiose so put in another way, for the past 10 years we’ve been looking after things that have been dug up, sharing them with as many people as possible and generally have a lot of fun with archaeology along the way.

AND NOW WE’RE COMING TO YOU!

For the next 10 weeks from January 16th to March 23rd, every Monday, Tuesday & Friday, from 10.00 – 16.00, we’re heading to the Museum of London itself to share London’s archaeology with museum visitors. Part of the celebrations will see our Award Winning “Visitor Inclusion Project” return, only this time on a much larger scale.

Joining LAARC staff will be a team of volunteers spanning the past decade, from those who have only just completed a volunteer project, to those that were here from day 1. You can meet them at the “Archaeology Exposed” tables and find out what they’re currently working on every Mon, Tues & Friday in the Archaeology in Action Exhibition.

In addition, on Mondays you can find out about archaeological conservation and meet student conservators from University College London who’ll be sharing the techniques they use to preserve artefacts.

On Tuesdays come and meet our volunteers from the Centre of Human Bioarchaeology and find out how they use skeletal remains to understand past Londoner’s lives.

On Fridays join our archivists who will reveal the importance of recording archaeological data and the wealth of information that site archives can reveal.

And if this wasn’t enough, you can directly GET INVOLVED by coming to a “Hands-On Archaeology” workshop where you’ll have the opportunity to handle real pieces of pottery that were excavated during the 1970s, learn how the museum stores its archaeological collections and help us improve the way these important artefacts are stored.

Each session lasts just an hour (3.15 – 4.15) and are completely free of charge (though you have to get a ticket from the front desk when you arrive).

As the weeks progress, we’ll be keeping you updated with our happenings, sharing stories from the past 10 years and introducing you to some of our excellent volunteers, right here on the blog pages.

We really hope you can drop by and join us as we’re sure it’s going to be a blast. For more info about how you can get involved in the Hands-On Archaeology sessions, visit the events page by clicking here: Hands-On Archaeology event

I have a very soft spot for aerialists, though, and not just on account of Burt Lancaster (honest!). And I generally adore circus outfits, and not just because of Merna Kennedy.

So when I realised we had what was listed in the register as ‘a child’s acrobat costume, circa 1860′, I instantly had to check out this marvelous sounding object.

You will agree that anything with a rosette is good. But a sky-blue object with a rosette in a very complimentary shade of muted red? With decorative elements that have the potential to sparkle?

The costume was donated in 1928 together with more than 30 other items of clothing from the 19th century, mainly accessories including three bonnets, a bustle, two pairs of mittens, a fur collar, a cape and such like. All very nice but nothing super-extraordinary. I had a look at the file for this group in the hope it would explain the inclusion of an acrobat’s outfit. Alas, as is so often the case with our early acquisitions, I could not find anything particularly illuminating. There was a handwritten note listing every object with an approximate date, mainly between 1860 and 1875ish. But had this been provided by the donor or had it been written by the curator/keeper at the time?

Shape-wise the object fits in very well with visual examples of male acrobat outfits of the mid 19th century. First up: the beautifully moustached trapeze artist Jules Léotard (1838-1870) – yes it is he – wearing a dark body suit with low V-neck over a white one-piece in this photo from around 1860-65 (another good one is here). At the time, if acrobatics were your thing, the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square was your place and Léotard duly appeared there in 1861.

In the same year, it seems, Léotard’s compatriot Charles Blondin (1824-1897) made his debut at London’s Crystal Palace. The Great Blondin was a tightrope walker probably best known for crossing Niagara falls several times, including on time carrying his manager. I presume the first photo below records a reenactment of this momentous occasion. The second image shows Blondin’s low V-neck outfit even better.

Last up, and in an outfit quite similar to ours: the famous El Niño Farini (1855-1939). The orphan Samuel Wasgate, his real name, was adopted by a tightrope walker and first appeared at the Alhambra in 1865. In the photo below, which was probably taken around that time or a little later, El Niño looks as if he has already seen it all. Farini later gained many admirers under the guise of Lulu, ‘The Beautiful Girl Aerialist and Circassian Catapultist’. Many a year went by before it was realised that the Child Farini and the lovely Lulu were one and the same. More on this most intriguing story here.

Now we know that the 1860s represent some sort of peak period for aerialists. But was our costume worn by another acrobatic child prodigy?

Some of you will already have their suspicions. Will they be confirmed?

Celebrating the capital’s enthusiasm and affection, ‘At Home with the Queen‘, will feature Londoners photographed in their own homes with their cherished souvenirs of Queen Elizabeth II.

Here, exhibition curator, Julia Hoffbrand, updates us on the search for people and souvenirs to feature:

“Right. Just back from a very extended Christmas and New Year break. Mince pies and lie-ins behind me, I sit down, coffee in hand, to look at my inbox. Lots of enquiries, some general briefings for the Museum’s collections online resource, and some stray spam asking if I want strange things I’ve never heard of. And then on to the ‘At Home with the Queen’ inbox and post pigeon-hole.

Hurrah! Several new submissions have arrived whilst I’ve been away. They’re great! I print them out and put them with all the others received so far to review after the closing date for submissions on 31 January.

The exhibition’s beginning to look good.

I’m really pleased and excited by the range of Londoners who’ve sent in photos of themselves so far – a real mix of ages and backgrounds, some quite unexpected. Older people who remember the Coronation, people in their 20s and 30s who’ve inherited their grandparents’ commemoratives, and kids with books about the Queen which their parents read aloud to them before bed.

It’s fun working on an exhibition where Londoners themselves provide the content – you have no idea what’s going to arrive next and, barring the obscene and offensive, anything goes in this exhibition. It’s what Londoners make it – my role is to bring everything together and with the exhibition team create a display people want to visit and enjoy.

I’ve been really encouraged by the positive reactions I’ve had from people whenever I mention ‘At Home with the Queen’.  A brief chat at my local fish and chip shop where I put up a poster reveals that the owner once met the Queen when he was a kid and will hunt out his photo for the exhibition. A conversation at the library (and another poster later) uncovers a woman who has two Golden Jubilee shot glasses bought she says, at a petrol station on the way to Devon in 2002 (she says it’s a long story ….).

The next step for me is to start writing the design brief for ‘At Home with the Queen’. This outlines the exhibition’s content, structure and ‘feel’ for the designer to work from. After this, I’ll revisit our stores to choose a small selection of the Museum’s commemorative objects to display alongside Londoners’ photographs (I have had a quick look already and had these by my desk):

We’re hoping to also display some of the objects that appear in people’s photographs so I’ll need to speak to our design department to find out what display cases we can use …

As this years’ intern within the applied arts section of the conservation department at the Museum of London I am very grateful to have been given the exciting opportunity of experiencing the build-up and installation of the Museum’s major new exhibition – Dickens and London.

In the months before installation began, conservators were busy ensuring all the objects and artefacts were suited to being placed on display. Within the new exhibition objects of a range of materials are installed including shop signs from Dickensian London, documents written in Dickens’ own hand and furniture from Dickens’ house.

This required the knowledge and expertise of our whole conservation team, particularly specialists in paper, textiles and the applied arts.

Within the Applied Arts section we work to conserve many artefacts of Victorian social history; however, as an admirer of Dickens it has been incredibly rewarding being able to work on objects with a particularly close connection to the man himself – such as this chair he was often photographed in.

Dickens’ chair is on open display within the new exhibition, so work was required to stabilise and secure the aged leather upholstery, predominantly around the back rest, where the degraded material had begun to laminate and fall away.

In addition to this, surface cleaning was conducted to remove dust.

Modern ethics within the field of conservation maintain that minimal intervention should be practiced when conserving artefacts – this means altering the original material and structure as little as possible, whilst ensuring the object is sturdy enough to be displayed or stored. We also aim to make every process and alteration reversible, so our changes could be ‘undone’ if needed in the future. For Dickens’ chair this meant adhering loose leather with a removable adhesive to consolidate the fragile material.

Historic leather can suffer acidic degradation due to reactions with sulphurous pollutants in the air. Testing the pH of the leather of Dickens’ chair revealed the leather had become particularly acidic – it was therefore thought appropriate to treat the leather with an aluminium compound – a process that effectively re-tans the leather – neutralising acidity and reversing some degradation processes.

Preventive conservation is also a key role of the museum’s conservators and collection care staff. With regards to this we have been carefully monitoring light levels (particularly important where objects such as Dickens’ handwritten manuscripts are displayed!), ensuring the environment within the gallery is suitable for the collections and that the cases are dust free – the latter involving several days spent cleaning the inside and outside of display cases!

It has been brilliant to see the culmination of many people’s knowledge, ideas and skills work together to create such an exciting and enchanting exhibition.

You can hear more about the conservation work at the Museum’s next free ‘meet the expert’ event at 2pm on Wednesday 25 January.

It is early days in terms of my reading (and the sharing of my thoughts which can be found on our twitter and Facebook pages) but I have already been struck by how this work may have influenced a later addition to the Dickens canon, Great Expectations.

I have also had a look for Barnaby Rudge related content from our exhibition, and have found this from 1840 that details the execution of one Francois Benjamin Courvoisier:

(c) Museum of London

From its supporting caption I noted mention that Dickens witnessed three public executions in his lifetime including that of the Swiss valet Francois Benjamin Courvoisier convicted of murdering his master Lord Russell.

Dickens was horrified by the effect of the public spectacle on the crowd. Amongst the crowd gathered outside Newgate for the execution he noted there was ‘nothing but ribaldry, debauchery,levity, drunkenness and flaunting vice in fifty other shapes’. Such scenes were recreated in the novel Barnaby Rudge that he began the following year.

I plan to blog again once I have completed sharing my thoughts on the novel but until then it would be great to hear if you plan to read along with me!

Dickens and London is open until 10 June 2012.

It’s a privilege to be able to give you the following world exclusive, a meeting with the one and only Ebenezer Scrooge. Lets find out what he has to say about Christmas and what if any Yuletide greetings he has to offer us.

 So Mr Scrooge it’s a pleasure to see you again this year. I’m sure you are looking forward to meeting all the happy children, handing out some presents and enjoying the festive atmosphere. What do you have to say to everyone?

 Bah, humbug! I do not like Christmas one bit!

 But what about the chance to hand out something special to those you care about like Bob Cratchit

Who? Oh him, who cares about what he wants. Im not interested in making anyone happy. Presents cost money.

 But, but what about the poor who need something to cheer about in these cold days

I’m busy, don’t bother me with those pesky fellows. I suppose if I have to give presents then I will but don’t expect me to cheer everyone on. Its like my pocket is being picked when I’m asked to give away money.

 Well, that’s a start I hope we can see more of this spirit after Christmas

 If you want to see more and meet our Scrooge then book a meeting with him on 0207 0019844 or on the day at the Museum of London Docklands.

Scrooge’s Grotto is open daily  until I January 2012

You can also enjoy some festive family fun if you time your visit to Scrooge to coincide with our December events schedule. More details on our website.

“There’s something about revisiting works you know well – or assume you do. I was surprised at whole episodes I’d forgotten. Also when I agreed to do this we were nowhere near Christmas, even if the shops were trying to persuade us otherwise. Suddenly I find myself eager to drum up appropriately festive feelings and CC has certainly helped with that.

What an amazing book it is. You can really let your imagination run riot with the ghosts and I loved the dark passages just as much as I expected to.  I laughed out loud at some of the dialogue, however familiar. Of course, there is a reason that certain stories are ubiquitous, and that reason is because people love them.

And yes, cringe, it does make you examine your own behaviour and make some stiff resloutions. Maybe I’ll keep one or two, who knows?

So banish cynicism, deck the halls, you’d better watch out, Santa Baby. God bless us, every one.”

You can read Sue’s first two blogs on her experience of reading A Christmas Carol for our Dickens Book Club here and here.

Dickens and London, a major exhibition from the Museum of London, is open until 10 June  2012.

“I had to write this as I couldn’t possibly fit my thoughts about this Dickens character into the tiny allowance of Twitter.  Although Dickens is such a master that you can create intense drama out of a short tweet (see my ‘it’s the finger again’ tweet recently) and everyone knows what you’re talking about.

 This character is reinterpreted as a device in so many movies, plays and novels that many more people are familiar with him/her/it than have read Dickens. Previewing the offerings of television over this festive period I spotted at least half a dozen offerings making use of the same idea. How many can you name where people are given a glimpse of their future and a chance to change it?

With my other hat on, I write for the theatre and have done more than my fair share of Dickens adaptations. (Like actors can always fall back on panto at Christmas, writers can always rely on Dickens.) The casting and interpretation of Ghost CYTC has caused more arguments between directors, writer and actors than any other in my experience.

The pointing finger is crucial to the reader and even more important when you consider the need to view it from afar. To use a prosthetic or rely on the finger skills? Traditional costume of cloak and hood or something more contemporary or experimental? My favourite casting is when the director agrees to use a child. There is something even more chilling when all these horrors are being delivered by a very small, young person. I was thrilled to discover the novelist John Irving exploring this concept and if, like me, you are intrigued by the darkly comic aspects of Dickens it’s worth a look at his rendition of a performance of ‘A Christmas Carol’ in ‘A Prayer for Owen Meaney’. For my money, nothing comes closer to the true spirit of Dickens ar Christmas Time (except the original, of course).

How would you cast the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?”

Dickens and London, a major exhibition from the Museum of London, is open until 10 June  2012.

Either search “Theatrical tinsel portraits” to browse the collection or you can access them directly using this link.

Here our Project Assistant, Ellie, provides her perspective on some of the prints she has recently been working with:

During the nineteenth century, London’s theatres were a popular medium. Whole genres of popular plays would develop and protests were carried out when theatre prices rose. Theatre-goers could buy prints of actors playing various roles and soon tinsel prints also became available. Many of the plays included spectacular combat and dramatic sequences, and by adorning prints with paint, fabric and metal foil, theatregoers could convey some of the spectacle of the stage.

One of the collections the museum is putting online is its collection of theatrical tinsel prints. These have been carefully photographed and their museum database records updated. The prints could be intricately detailed, which suggests that they were made by adults. The majority of subjects of tinsel prints are male actors, and a high proportion of these are depicted in combat. Figures in chain mail and armour offered ample potential for the keen tinseller, as the metallic elements of their costumes invited tinsel adornment.

They could use metal foil and fabric, such as these velvet ‘monstrous beasts’. Often tinsel prints depict spectacular moments of drama within a performance. The earlier ones give information about roles, performances and actors. Later on the activity of tinselling became an established pastime and the information about specific performances is printed infrequently.

Most of the items in the museum’s collection come from Jonathan King, who ran a stationary shop in Essex road, Islington. His collection of tinsel prints was especially illustrative, as it gave an account not only of the material cultures of enthusiasm, popular craft and souvenir collecting, but because the prints themselves also include a printed record of London’s theatre during the middle of the nineteenth century. The collection is also significant because it includes items relating to the production of tinsel materials.

This illustration shows how sample sheets were used to decide which colour adornments would be used. The way the imaged is repeated reminds me of Andy Warhol’s Marilyn series (external link).  The repetition of shapes and colours pre-empts the ways that Warhol’s colourful, printed images would later depict the actress as iconic.

The museum’s collection includes a number of actresses, such as this print, which have been adorned. Women feature less often in tinsel prints, perhaps because their costumes didn’t offer as much scope for the tinsel-mad enthusiast. Writers have also speculated that the scarcity of actresses suggests that tinselling was an activity for young boys, who were more interested in dramatic and heroic scenes.

The collection also includes some of the printing plates used to make the penny prints and this one also shows Mrs Daly as Poll Maggot.

Initially tinsel pieces were sold to match the prints, and this stock sheet shows how they were fastened and bundled in packages.

 Dies like these would be used to cut out individual pieces. This bow stamp is from the collection, and looking along the side of the stamp you can see evidence of how hard it must have been struck to shape the metal foil pieces.

The museum’s collection of the tools for tinsel production is very rare. Collections online makes it possible to see the stamps, the tinsel pieces made from them and then to find the pieces on the finished tinsel print.

You can read Ellie’s first blog post on her work here.

I know you have all been waiting for him so I won’t make you wait any longer. After a great deal of effort we have managed to secure an interview with perhaps the most busy man around Xmas (plus his helpers, our Victorian photographer and the mystic Gypsy lady) , of course its our Santa.

Welcome Santa, are you ready for this year?

Of course, I am looking forward to making all the children around the whole world have a special day and seeing the joy on their faces when they open their presents.

That’s great news to hear Santa. It must be tough going what with all of that exercise you are getting. Are you feeling fit enough to lift all those presents?

Don’t worry about me as my elves take good care of me. They have done their elf and safety.

Good to hear, so what can we expect to happen this year?

I am planning to do all my travelling at night so I will have some time to spend in my Grotto here at the Museum of London Docklands. That means I can meet lots of families and offer them some presents when they come to see me and hopefully have a photo with everyone involved so we can all remember this special occasion.

Anything you would like to say to everyone before you leave on your errands?

Yes, I wish everyone a merry, merry Christmas and look forward to seeing you soon.

If you want to meet our Santa then book a meeting with him on 0207 0019844 or on the day when you visit the Museum of London Docklands.

Santa’s Grotto is open daily until 23 December 2011.

If you are unable to visit Santa why not come along and meet Scrooge from 27 December 2011 to 1 January 2012!

You can also enjoy some festive family fun if you time your visit to Santa or Scrooge to coincide with our December events schedule. More details on our website here.

Trade tokens were issued between 1648 and 1673 at a time when there was little low denomination coinage being issued by the crown.

As a result traders and business proprietors began issuing tokens as an alternate coinage with equivalent denominations of usually of a farthing, half penny or penny.

On rare occasions higher denominations were issued, in the collection we have two-penny tokens and a sixpence.

On the token could be represented a variety of things including, the issuers name, business (written or depicted as a sign- buildings didn’t have numbers, so signs were used to recognise them), and the date of issue.

Tokens would be accepted by other businesses in the area which would be collected and then exchanged for the equivalent silver coinage from the issuer.

Part of the process of getting the collections online included having all the trade tokens scanned. We were lucky enough to have an excellent team of volunteers that scanned the trade tokens, as well as weighing and measuring them. This has allowed us to gather and display a lot more information about them than we otherwise would.

It left me free to update the records, which involved using existing catalogues, as well as re-examining the tokens to check inscriptions and signs to provide the correct information about a token; it also gave me the time to do some additional research into issuers and the places of issue which provided some fascinating contextual information.

The location of issue for the tokens has involved some interesting research using a variety of sources; mainly the changing names of streets and areas around London over the past few hundred years. Whilst many street names have remained for centuries, some have changed to reflect the changing trades and ownership apparent in some areas. These need to be researched to allow us to place the location of issue of a token as accurately as possible.

We’ve already got a small amount of trade tokens online, in The Great Fire of London 1666 collection. The first batch of trade tokens I have been working on should be online soon and I will be getting the rest of the 4,000 ready to go online next year.

In the meantime I’ll be working on Roman samian ware, so look out for my next blog post about the variety of artwork on Roman samian.

And so we come to the end of our ninth Volunteer Inclusion Project. The task this week was to make a start with the reboxing of all the animal bone from VIP9’s major site, Seal House.

The teams cracked on with organising the animal bone boxes into one long sequence based on their context numbers (the numbers relating to the layer in the ground they were found in). They also recorded the shell from the site, quantifying the material before disposing of it.

However, as with all our projects the real focus of the final week is our afternoon visits to the Museum of London itself where we wrap things up with behind the scenes visits.

This project we started with our fabulous friends in the Centre For Human Bioarchaeology.

We then were treated to a tour around our Conservation Labs.

And to top things off, Caroline McDonald, the new Senior Curator of Prehistoric & Roman collections took us on a trip around the Roman Gallery, highlighting key artefacts she would like to explore in more depth for the forthcoming 2015 gallery redesign (Mon & Tues)

whilst Inclusion officers, Lucy Fitton & Lowell Black gave us an insight into the forthcoming Our Londinium 2012 exhibition.

And if that wasn’t enough, we had even more fun on Wednesday for the last sessions with our friends from the University of the 3rd Age, who presented their final creative pieces inspired by an aspect of their 10 week experience.

And to cap this blog off, I’m going to finish with images from possibly the most fun we’ve had with any group on any VIP project – the Family Groups made authentic Roman cuisine, prepared using replica roman mortarium, then we made super wintry scented pomanders and ended with a look at everyone’s comics that they produced last week.

Our final photo of the week is our brilliant security guard Sami, checking the quality of the kid’s garlic dip:

The VIP9 project has been brilliant. From the feedback, all our volunteers, young and old, have not only enjoyed themselves, but learnt lots about archaeology too. And on top of all this the museum now has much better stored archives which are much more accessible for all. Very. Very. Satisfying.

All that leaves me to say is if you haven’t voted for your favourite object from the project, there’s still time to do so (and then you will have been a part of VIP9 as well). Click anywhere in this sentence to link to the voting page. Cheerio!

As a foreigner I became very curious when I first heard of Santa’ Grotto, which is not a very popular event in Italy so I undertook some research to find out a little bit more and unearthed few interesting facts.

Some scholars think that the name originated from the Latin word ‘crypt’ or the medieval ‘crota’, both coming from the Greek ‘krypta’, which means cave.
In north Italy the crotto began as a meeting place for people since there were no taverns in the neighbourhood, and so it was perfect to be used as a cool place for storing and maturing wine, cheese and sausages. In English language grotto literally means ‘artificial cave’.

Here we go, that’s what it is all about: Santa’ Claus in a simulated cave. But why would that be the ideal location for him?

Only one day is left now until the event kicks off on 10 December and every one in Visitors Services are abuzz trying to get everything in order and ready for the big day.

Click here if you want to purchase a ticket for your toddler.

A few hosts had the opportunity to select the presents for this year’s Santa and Scrooge’s Grotto, across both the Museum of London and the Museum of London Docklands.

It was an enjoyable experience, taking them back to childhood, thinking about what children under 5 and over 5 would appreciate, whilst trying to keep with our Victorian theme. We were all able to be ‘Santa’s helpers’ by wrapping the presents as well, all pitching in with our own techniques on how to attempt this huge task of nearly 1300 individual gifts!

Someone has been having nightmares about wrapping his own presents for a while now! Staff from retail has been particularly helpful during the ordering process, and allowing us to store all of our items in their store was a great help.

Santa and Scrooge’s Grotto in our Victorian Walk promise to bring Dickens’ London alive and recapture the festive spirit. Be sure not to miss out on this highly anticipated event!

Giusy

Here is another picture too of what it looks like right in the heart of our Grotto

If you want to see more and meet our Santa then book a meeting with him on 0207 0019844 or on the day here at the Museum of London Docklands.

Santa’s Grotto is open daily from 10 December until 23 December 2011.

If you are unable to visit Santa why not come along and meet Scrooge from 27 December 2011 to 1 January 2012!

You can also enjoy some festive family fun if you time your visit to Santa or Scrooge to coincide with our December events schedule. More details on our website.