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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

Above is the tree for the Museum of London which is displayed in our foyer near to the entrance to the first of our galleries, London Before London.

Here is a look at the tree in place in the foyer of the Museum of London Docklands…

With Victorian Grotto’s created especially for Santa (although we hear that after Christmas a certain Scrooge will be in residence) due to open at both museums on Saturday and lots of festive fun for families planned throughout December we hope that a visit to either (or both) of our museums will add some Christmas cheer!

In truth, I find Dickens a difficult read, although I’m a voracious reader of maximalist fiction and devoted to fictional London, which informs my immigrant experience of the city almost as much as my daily life. But I had to force myself through this short novel (I highly recommend Dan Simmons’ ‘Drood’- his fictionalisation vision of events that could have inspired the writing of the book as Dickens and his friend, author Wilkie Collins, confound each other in nightly escapades and attempt to identify the mysterious Drood, who us far more menacing than the innocent victim in Dickens’ story).

Reader, I was only truly interested in two characters, those whose relationship seemed to have tension and spark, namely Edwin and Rosa, betrothed at the behest and bequests of their respective deceased fathers.

I wanted so much to like the entire book, but only Rosa’s character really drew me in, with her passionate energy and desire to be honest in her emotional dealings.

Did Dickens do this on purpose? Discuss…

True to his serialist origins, the central mystery of Edwin’s disappearance (although to me the real mystery is what Jasper is up to and why his opium supplier shows up in Cloisterham) doesn’t occur until over half way through the book, which I think might drag even if it wasn’t unfinished, although the undercurrent of menace that Jasper exudes kept me hanging on.

As we know, Dickens died before completing the book, so perhaps it all would have made more sense had he finished the novel.

You can read Sarah’s blog post as she began her reading of The Mystery of Edwin Drood here.

Dickens and London, a new exhibition from the Museum of London opens 9 December.

I love a good mystery but balked at the normal bulk of a Dickens’ tome, so surely The Mystery of Edwin Drood was for me.

It opens as a classic potboiler in its lurid depiction of an opium den in Victorian London’s East End.

Fascinating to both his readers of the time and countless others afterwards, he invites us to spy through Drood’s uncle John Jasper’s eyes, safe in the knowledge that this exotic depravity can’t touch us. But Jasper next fetches up in placid rural Cloisterham…

The opening chapter of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, classic in the Orientalism of the time, immediately made me uncomfortable.

The racist depiction of anonymous (and in real life almost certainly blameless) Chinese sits uncomfortably with our contemporary sensibilities and our acknowledgement of the rich cultural history of this city.

If this is Dicken’s London, then I prefer the stifled, cosy twin ‘cloister’ of Furvinall’s Inn, which puts us squarely in the precints of Holborn, in environs we can almost recreate during late night walks today.

The Inns of London provide some of the most magical, evocative landscapes, windows into the recent past, although Dickens may not have meant his readers to romanticise them.

I will be continuing my thoughts as we progress through the book via regular book club posts on Twitter and Facebook  (why not join us?) and will round up my final thoughts back here on the blog once we have completed our journey through the mystery of Edwin Drood.

Dickens and London, a major new exhibition at the Museum of London, opens 9 December 2011.

This film will form a key component of the Museum of London’s Dickens and London exhibition  which opens on 9 December 2011.

London and its night-time people form the characters of Charles Dickens’ essay Night Walks.

Here, William shares his thoughts on the creative process:

“Not being a creature of the night myself, I was challenged by the task of retracing the great man’s footsteps, setting off after midnight and returning “in the small hours” to observe and capture London haunts and their insomniac communities.

The first task was to become invisible so that I could film without people becoming affronted by the camera. 

I carried the equipment in a large supermarket bag pulling the tripod behind me strapped to a luggage trolley.  I blended with the other houseless people of the night and soon they became my friends. 

Filmed over five months, such are the fortunes of street cinematography that when luck was on my side, I returned with good shots; at other times, I came back with nothing.  

The Houseless Shadow is now nearly finished – taking its name from the following passage from Dickens’ Night Walks: “Drip, drip, drip, from ledge and coping, splash from pipes and water-spouts, and by-and-by the houseless shadow would fall upon the stones that pave the way to Waterloo Bridge.”

A soundtrack by David Cunningham perfectly complements the film in capturing the mood of night-time London in 2011.

I hope that when immersed in the Victorian exhibits, the film will leave visitors with a strong impression that the London of Charles Dickens comes alive in the present day, especially at night walking the city’s streets. 

There are striking differences from the mid Victorian age though some things remain remarkably similar such as when “the potmen thrust the last brawling drunkards onto the street”.  I wonder, what Dickens’ keen eye for injustice, what he would have made of the growing numbers of houseless on the streets of our glittering and conspicuously affluent city?”

A trailer for The Houseless Shadow, a 19 minute film by William Raban, is available to view on our YouTube channel here.

October’s Dickens Book Club has already kicked off in my household, descending as I have into Dickens’ murky world of the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy five in A Tale of Two Cities.

Despite having studied English Literature at university my Dickens readometer is a little stunted (blame the tutors). Great Expectations (favourite all-time novel) and Oliver Twist (precious few show tunes) are the only two books I have made it to the end of. Even my dad’s fervent enthusiasm couldn’t see me to the end of The Pickwick Papers while the sheer length of Bleak House seemed overwhelming to the point of being unreadable.

But I’m ready to start anew. I’m already excited about peering through the thick mist that envelops so many of Dickens’ novels to unearth the maze of characters beneath; to find new favourite phrases from Dickens’ witticisms (the indignant ‘I’ll eat my head!’ a particular favourite from Great Expectations); and to discover the moments that will stay with me long after the book is done, just like those between Pip and Joe – what larks!

At forty six chapters long I am being pragmatic about the challenge that lays before us. My plan is to read two chapters per day for the first fifteen days of October, then one chapter per day until the end of the month. If my maths is correct this should see us glide neatly towards the final chapters in time for Halloween and November’s book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

So I’ll be captaining our speedy ship through the 400 plus pages of Dickens’ fourteenth novel via updates on Facebook and Twitter – please do share your thoughts, comments, favourite quotes and anything else you’d like to discuss on those pages.

Finally, don’t forget you can buy your copy of A Tale of Two Cities from Foyles Bookshop and receive a discount when using the code ‘MOLBC’.

The Your 2012 exhibition is up and running and we are getting some fantastic feedback. If you have not already seen it then come along to the Museum of London Docklands and visit our free exhibition detailing the changes that have been going on around the Olympic site at Stratford.

So much has been happening recently that I felt obliged to give you this bumper blog update detailing the big changes. To begin, there is now a large bridge that is going over Stratford High Street so that users of the Greenway do not need to cross the road.

Health and Safety during the construction of the bridge has been a priority as can be seen from the below:

Further construction is also continuing on the Orbit. It is now over 76 metres high.

The Greenway beside the stadium has also been busy with its own art installation that you can see below:

If you were wondering what the explanation for this artwork is then read below:

If you would like to find out more about the Olympic site then I recommend that you come along to one of our Olympic walking tours,  ‘Walk the Olympic Way: Stratford Regeneration Tour’ which happen every Saturday and the last Wednesday of each month.

In case you are wondering what the tours are like, here are some photos from last week’s tour with our ever-enthusiastic resident Stratford and Olympic expert, Dave.

Finally, a reminder that we are looking for your photographs and observations of the Olympic Park to share on our YOUR 2012 flickr group. We will also be sharing in this group some of the hundreds of images that we took while developing this display.

What with the opening of the new Westfield shopping site it is now possible to see the key buildings around the Olympic site from new, exciting vantage points. We took a look around the area and have come up with the space age, futuristic images of the site below.

If the building below looks unfamiliar its probably because the public view of it was largely obscured previously by the Aquatic Centre. This building is in fact where the waterpolo will be played and is a temporary venue that will seat 5,000 people during the Olympics.

If you would like to find out more about the Olympic site then I recommend you come along to one of our Olympic walking tours that can be booked at  ‘Walk the Olympic Way: Stratford Regeneration Tour’ which take place every Saturday and last Wednesday of each month.

Also I would like to give a quick reminder that we are looking for your photographs and observations of the Olympic Park to share on our YOUR 2012 flickr group. We will also be sharing in this group some of the hundreds of images that we took while developing this display.

Now naturally many of you are aware that the largest shopping mall in Europe is opening today in Stratford. As these exclusive photos show the whole place is extremely busy and it is only its opening day!

If you would like to find out more about the Olympic site then I recommend you come along to one of our Olympic walking tours at  ‘Walk the Olympic Way: Stratford Regeneration Tour’  that are happening every Saturday and last Wednesday of each month.

Also I would like to give a quick reminder that we are looking for your photographs and observations of the Olympic Park to share on our YOUR 2012 flickr group. We will also be sharing in this group some of the hundreds of images that we took while developing this display.

Here at the Museum of London we have decided to honour Dickens’ work with a major exhibition Dickens and London which opens on 9 December 2011 in advance of the 200th anniversary of his birth, in 2012.

We have plans for a number of social media initiatives that we hope will enhance both the exhibition and your visit, the first of which launches this Monday 12 September – a virtual Dickens Book Club’s on both Twitter and Facebook.

Although an open forum to discuss all aspects of Dickens’s work, we will be suggesting a book a month to read and posting our thoughts (and hopefully chatting to you about your thoughts) across both Twitter and Facebook starting with September’s chosen novel: Great Expectations.

Other confirmed titles so far include: A Christmas Carol (naturally for December!), Barnaby Rudge in January 2012 (we will let you into a secret, this is such a large novel someone in the office is already reading it!) and Oliver Twist in April 2012.

So why not join us as we explore some of Dickens’ greatest works alongside some of his lesser known titles.

We are also looking for you to suggest titles to include so if you have a favourite please do let us know either via Twitter or Facebook and we will try to feature them before the exhibition closes on 10 June 2012.

Our Twitter and Facebook accounts will also be home to sneak previews of what to expect when you visit the exhibition and insights from our exhibition curators via our blog pages again in advance and during the course of the exhibition, so be sure to follow us or check our website regularly.

Look out too for an exciting short story initiative launching in November based on some of Dickens’ ideas for stories and characters which did not find their way into print.

To celebrate the opening of our exhibition we had a grand opening ceremony and took many photos of the occasion for posterity. So here are some of these photos that also double up as a nice opportunity for you to meet some of the team who have been responsible for this exhibition.

The fantastic four above are Donald Mullis, Matt Martin, Brian Grover and Jack Hutchinson

Dave Mathews above.

Above you can see yours truely, the author of this blog, Peter Strafford.

If you would like to find out more about the Olympic site then I recommend you come along to one of our Olympic walking tours that will be starting on a regular basis from September (keep checking our website for details).

 A reminder that we are looking for your photographs and observations of the Olympic Park to share on our YOUR 2012 flickr group. We will also be sharing in this group some of the hundreds of images that we took while developing this display.

Peter

This photo below was taken from inside the Viewtube of the centrepiece Olympic stadium.

Here is another photograph this time of the basketball stadium (which hosted a warm-up match between Australia and China this week)  that has been nicknamed the ‘mattress’ and amazingly can be disassembled and reassembled anywhere in the country in just six months.

We are looking to share via flickr some of the hundreds of images we did not have room to include in the exhibition and to encourage you to share your photographs of the area as it continues to change in the run up to the Olympic Games.

So if you have photographs you would like to share please upload them to http://www.flickr.com/groups/your_2012/ .

To get things started I have uploaded 23 of my photographs today.

I will  monitor the group and share further photographs, insights and themes over the coming weeks and look forward to discussing with you the images that are posted by you alongside those taken by us.

Peter

His photographs offer a window into the real lives of Londoners over four decades.

His work starts with an austere post war London and includes his interest in demonstrations, immigrant communities, the rise of youth culture and children at play.

The Exploring 20th Century London project, which has over 300 of his pictures online, has made this audio slideshow (click here) about Grant and his 30 year documentation of London and it’s people.

Exploring 20th Century London will be posting Henry Grant themed tweets and facebook posts throughout the week from 16-21 August. You can follow these at twitter.com/Exploring20CLdn and facebook.com/Exploring20thc.London.

Prints of Henry Grant’s pictures can also be purchased through the Museum of London Picture Library.

Many of Henry Grant’s pictures feature in the Museum of London hugely successful free exhibition London Street Photography which you can catch until 4 September.

Here at the Museum of London we love to get inspired by our collections. I hear that very exciting projects are on their way but let me show you what some of us have been working on so far.
We all have a passion for London but for some of the Hosts this enthusiasm becomes a real obsession and so we have been running a different series of workshops for families and children at the museum.

My personal inspiration comes straight from my favourite exhibition in the Museum: the Roman Gallery. With a focus on perhaps one the most famous art activities during Roman times, I decided to work on a mosaic, but a real one, to be made with real stone tesserae and based on authentic Roman design!
The model that I chose for my common project is a twisted rope design technically called Guilloche. I thought it was exceptionally representative of the Roman culture as it was often used in borders to enclose popular patterns and also because we have a wonderful one in our Roman gallery.

What a better example with which to get inspiration from for the kids!
I created the Guilloche freehand but it took me a bit of organisation and time.
I sketched six big circles in an A3 sheet and I drew six smaller circles inside. To make the large circles on the sheets I used a pen held in a loop in a thread and I pinned the string at the centre of the circle to obtain radius of not more than 3cm. At this point I simply drew lines for the rows of the stone tesserae.
Roman craftsmen would opt for different combination of colours according to the uses they were designated for. I wanted to create something that looked quite similar to our Bucklersbury mosaic.

The mosaic I am working on with the kids has six lines and presents an alternation of 3 colours. Normally guilloche frames would have had three lines of tesserae only. These might have been one line of one colour and the remaining two of a different colour but they could also have a combination of three colours for each row.
Here you can see what we have achieved so far…

It is a very time consuming work and your patience will pay dividend.

Our Roman Gallery is planned to be completely refurbished after the 2012 Olympics Games.
I can’t wait to give a tour in the new exhibition and perhaps develop another workshop!

From Friday, 20 of these images will form a free display at the museum.

In planning the display the hosts soon realised that they would not be able to feature all of their images and indeed ongoing work at the site after the selection process for display had been completed could not be included.

With this in mind, it was decided that the museum’s online resources such as its blog pages and social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter would be a great platform to share additional images and ensure that the ongoing story of the site could be featured in a virtual extension of the YOUR 2012 project.

Here, one of the display curators and visitor hosts, Dave Matthews, shares three images and insight from a visit to the area over the weekend:

Anish Kapoor’s Orbit Tower is getting larger by the minute. Every day it seems to take on a new twist!

Even at this early stage, it appears to be towering over the main stadium. When the project is completed, the tower will offer a viewing platform 115 metres (337ft) high.

As Newham’s regeneration projects gather pace, you can’t help noticing all the new planters and baskets full of striking flowers – quite a contrast to all the building work still going on in and around Stratford. No matter which corner you turn, there is evidence of change, and with the addition of the flowers, Stratford feels vibrant and colourful.

The Time Spiral, as it is officially known, can be found outside Maryland Station. This winding structure contemplates themes of time and space and will eventually be lit up. This twisted steel clock, created by artist Malcolm Robertson, originally stood outside Stratford Station. It was relocated to Maryland Station to make way for the new pedestrian bridge that links to the Olympic Park.

Be sure to check back regularly for more updates from the project.

I was up on the museums roof recently, sun in the sky, the smell of tar boiling in a pot, with the aim of inspecting builder’s work boots.

It’s not your average day, but when you’re working on exhibitions there never really is a typical day.

I was on the roof with the photographer Chris Steele-Perkins who the museum has commissioned to take 11 photographs (a mixture of portraits and representations) for the exhibition.

The exhibition is about human trafficking and enslavement in 21st century London and shares the stories of individuals who have survived being trafficked to London and individuals from a range of professions that support trafficked people or strive to combat trafficking.

For one of the images Chris wanted to photograph a pair of builder’s boots, they had to be well worn and say “I belong to a construction worker” in an instant.

After a quick inspection he found the right pair.

How old do you think these boots are?

Answer: 2 months old! Making steel toe-capped boots must be a lucrative business.

Thank you to the guys who let us interrupt their day and gave up their boots to model.

To see the final image be sure to visit the exhibition which is on at the Museum of London until 20 November 2011.