The working life of Museum of London

I am prone to melancholy but last week I was not the only one haunted by the noon-day demon. Maybe it’s not surprising. The parties are over (well almost) and although I am glad I don’t have to schlepp my one decent pair of heels to work any more, I will miss seeing my colleagues in silver sparkly outfits and festive ties.

As always when big projects end, and this is pretty much the biggest I have ever been involved in, there is a huge anti-climax and we should all have been issued with complimentary ‘Now What?’ T-shirts. Of course there is lots to do: some snagging, managing interactives that develop a live of their own (artificial intelligence might be possible after all), sorting out all the things you haven’t got round to in the last few months and … filing.

While most of us have started to re-adjust to our new lives, many of the people involved in the new galleries still seem to move around in some sort of slow-motion fish tank bubble. It doesn’t help that we attended a year’s worth of leaving dos in the last two weeks. Thankfully everyone seems to have found a new job elsewhere or within the museum or decided to do some major travelling. Still, good-byes are very sad.

We had some bad times and our full share of hairy moments, but let’s just remember the good ones (in no particular order):

Hollywood in Deptford
Being part of the preparations for, and the actual filming of, some of the AVs (audiovisual components) for the new galleries was the perfect get-away from lifting mannequins (the gentlemen seem to agree).

Watching a Master at Work
We all learned a lot by watching Janet (Wood) studying a piece of clothing to see how it wants to behave and giving it all the help it needs (some objects can be peculiarly reluctant to being put on display, I might come back to this in the future). Janet is a great teacher and her underpinnings are always beautifully constructed and sewn. Somehow it is strangely satisfying to know that a structure beneath a dress is beautiful in its own right (maybe an exhibition idea?) even if it might be hidden forever.

The Sewing Club
For a few weeks our workspace turned into needlework heaven: cane ribbons were assembled, mannequin feet were padded, sleeve ruffles precision-hemmed and fichus draped. Thank you to all the volunteers and roped-in ex-volunteers that gave their time for free!

Fanshawe Dress Eureka Moment
The big one: putting on the Fanshawe petticoat on its unwieldy mount and carefully constructed underskirt and realising that we might actually be able to sleep again.

Helping Hands
A project like this won’t come together without people with different work habits, opinions, tastes and senses of humour finding a way of getting along. Looking through the images taken during our work with the dress objects recently, I noticed the hands. Collaboration rules!

First members of the public to see new galleries

Meet Londoner’s Denise, Sally, Dawn, Justin and Bryce, our first visitors this morning to our new Galleries of Modern London.

Having waited patiently outside until the Museum doors opened at 10am. All five headed down the main staircase and entered the new galleries at the Sackler Hall and became the first members of the public to visit the gallery spaces (technically the boys were first as they enthusiastically ran ahead).

Everyone (Denise and Sally are daughter and mother whilst mum Dawn was with son Justin and his friend Bryce) was excited to see the new space having heard about the galleries in the media and had arrived specifically to be one of the first to visit.

As Justin, seven, so eloquently said:

“I have been looking forward to this as I know the galleries have been closed for four years and as I’m only seven I have never seen them.”

Sally remembered the lower galleries as they were before they closed and was looking forward to seeing the new layout, having held off visiting again until they opened, a tough task as she loves the Museum.

Dawn was keen to see what we had achieved visually as she found that this helped our younger visitors become interested in areas of history which could further be explored at home through books – a great way to get kids interested in reading.

As they started to explore London’s history from 1666 to the present day, they said they would be in touch with their thoughts on what they saw and experienced.

In just over an hour, they were joined by over 400 visitors experiencing our new galleries for the first time.

The Museum of London is open from 10am to 6pm daily and is free! Find out more at www.museumoflondon.org.uk

For the last weeks (months? years?) we have been hunting for accessories for our Pleasure Garden figures and have assisted them with posing for photographs. Yesterday, and I cannot tell you how happy I am to write this, we have moved the last mannequin to her new home.

This has reminded me of a few rules which they don’t teach you at (dress) curator school:

Rule No. 1: Wear presentable socks as you might have to take off your shoes at short notice to step into a display case. If you happen to know in advance that several of you will have to take off their shoes simultaneously and that there is a chance you might be photographed (see below), you might even consider coordinating your hosiery.

Matching socks could be a nice conversation topic while you are steadying a mannequin because you have to wait for someone to fetch the tool that tightens the grub screw, which holds the mannequin’s pole. It goes without saying that you also need footwear that won’t take ages to take off and even longer to put on again.

Rule No. 2: Carry make-up with you at all times as your nice colleagues from the Press Department might suddenly feel inspired and demand you to be photographed while you are steadying a mannequin. You might want to stock up on miniature make-up samples, carrying around a full-size make-up bag is just not feasible (and will be frowned upon by the technicians).

Rule No. 3: You must ensure that at least two pockets are incorporated into your installation work wear as you will need to be able to use both hands. The pockets have to be big enough to hold all of the items below:

• emergency socks and make-up
• gloves, so you don’t get chocolate onto 200-year-old clothes
• mobile phone in case a supplier arrives unexpectedly and no one can find you because you are hidden under a mannequin’s skirt trying to find the aforementioned grub screw (although it is unlikely that you will have reception or be able to answer the phone at that point)
• tool used to tighten the screw so you don’t have to wait for ages on full display on a bad sock day
• little box with pins of various sizes (you could pin those to yourself but you might regret it)
• assortment of pretty silk ribbons
• money for coffee/chocolate or to give to the intern who has to go out and buy more pretty ribbons
• scraps of paper that you will mysteriously accumulate during the day
• keys for display cases (or you will put them somewhere safe, forget where that was and get into big trouble with Security and a whole lot of other colleagues)
• little bits of melinex and plastazote (this should be a life rule!).

On dress-up days (you might expect to impress a fashion journalist with your knowledge of ball end hex keys), finding space for all of the above might be difficult. Presentable women’s clothing rarely seems to have an adequate number of pockets.

Rule No. 4: In the run-up to an installation period, regular attendance at a gym is advisable. You will particularly want to strengthen your thigh and stomach muscles and make sure that your knees are in good order. Your upper arm strength will also be tested, but unfortunately lifting mannequins seems to do nothing much to bat wings (not that I really know what those are …). Gym visits once in a while might also help with the effects of extreme chocolate consumption, which you might become prone to.

That’s it. Print it out and keep it in a safe place for the next time you have to install 60 or so mannequins and more than 150 accessories and things will run smoothly (well, they never do, but it helps to be prepared).

I’m very happy to tell you that the Museum of London Docklands is now free to all! You can enjoy getting an insight into over 2,000 years of history surrounding the Port of London and the people who lived and worked there, all without charge.

Museum of London Docklands is situated in one of only two warehouses from 1802 still remaining on West India Quay, and it has long been a popular destination for local families and tourists.

You can visit the Museum at:

Museum of London Docklands
West India Quay
Canary Wharf
London E14 4AL

Open everyday from 10am-6pm (except 24-26 December)
More information at: www.museumoflondon.org.uk/docklands

When I was twelve I met a girl who was wearing two watches on one of her wrists. She explained that she really loved one of the watches but as it didn’t work, she wore the second one to keep the time. Although this happened a very, very long time ago, and I only ever met this girl once (I never found out her name), and what she did wasn’t particularly eccentric, I think about it quite often.

Maybe because of this strangely memorable encounter, I have been fascinated by the custom of wearing two watches in the late 18th century. I have been pouring over our collection of more than 3000 (!!!) fashion plates for the last few months to decide what kind of accessories our Pleasure Garden figures should be wearing (they will be in on show in our new galleries). Have a look at the gentleman in this slightly risqué plate from 1778:

Eighteenth century gentlemen did not display the actual watches, but rather kept them in little pockets, or fobs, on the front of their breeches. (The word fob is apparently derived from the old German fobke or fuppe for pocket.)

What was on show was the ribbon, leather string, or sometimes chain, attached to the watch, often adorned with a watch key and seal or other trinkets that are very difficult to make out in paintings and fashion plates. We have a large number of watch keys and seals in the collection, unfortunately the actual strings have not survived.

Watch strings provided an opportunity for displaying one’s flair for little decorative flourishes but was also useful for pulling the watch out of the pocket, something that pickpockets were well aware of. On 8 December 1756 a certain Ann Dove, spinster, was indicted for stealing the silver watch of Robert Hunt ‘privately from his person’. The victim recalled that Miss Dove ‘laid hold of my watch string and pull’d it out of my fob directly’.

The double-watch fashion seems to have started in the late 1770s (the plate above is from a little later: 1781) and is mentioned by no other than Mozart in a letter to his father on 13 November 1777. Mozart had just received yet another watch, rather than the hard cash he would have preferred, as payment for some of his compositions. So he came up with a scheme: ‘I have now five watches and I am inclined to have a second fob made to all my inexpressibles; and when I go to a great personage I shall be careful to wear two watches (which, by the way, is the fashion at present); in which case, it is to be hoped, that he will not take it into his head to make me a present of a watch.’ (While Mozart has no qualms talking about his ‘Hosen’, or ‘breeches’, in the original letter, the 19th century translator obviously felt the need to replace the offending word with ‘inexpressibles’.)

It seems that this fashion only lasted about ten years. The European Magazine and London Review provides an account of the drawing room (or reception) celebrating the Queen’s birth held in December 1787 (the Queen’s 44th birthday was not until May the following year, but that’s another story). Although this was usually an occasion for proper dressing up, very few of the attending gentlemen wore two watches and it was reported that ‘This fashion is given up to the ladies.’

If you want to know how the ladies displayed their watches, and what a fake 18th century watch looks like, please come back soon.

I have developed a new obsession: cane ribbons. We are putting the finishing touches to three 18th century gentlemen who are going to be photographed before being installed in the Pleasure Garden display in our new galleries. Their suits are from the 1770s, so the gentlemen absolutely had to have canes (walking sticks to you and me). Thankfully we have a really good collection of sticks, but they have all lost their ribbons (that seems to be a common fate).

Ribbons, or cane strings, as they seem to have been called, were attached to small holes either in the head of the cane or slightly further down. They were mainly ornamental but you could also wrap them around your wrist to let your cane dangle in a laissez-faire fashion.

Once I discovered cane strings, I saw them everywhere. Have a look at this 1777 fashion plate from our collection.

Another good one is here (you have to zoom in on the gentleman on the left – don’t get distracted by the doll!). And if you are really, really interested, try searching for ‘macaroni’ on this website (I know this sounds weird, but trust me …).

Apparently, the ribbons were bought from milliners. In the 18th century, milliners were a bit like haberdashers, selling flowers and pompons and such like as well as gloves and caps:

‘The Milliner deals in a great variety of articles principally for ladies wear … but this trade is not wholly confined to women, since the beau and fine gentleman has his solitaire or stock, his watch or cane-string from the pretty milliner … (The Monthly Review, 1761)

I guess VV Rouleaux is a modern equivalent and I knew I was going to end up there eventually. However, my first stop was Hand & Lock, one of my favourite places in London. I showed the very nice lady in charge of military adornments my pictures and she found a beautiful sword knot in one of her many drawers. It would have been perfect for one of the sticks, but it cost more than I wanted to spend. So I bought some Russia braid and some tassels instead.

One of the gentleman wears a wool suit with silver embroidery and I thought he would have accessorised it with a silver string and tassel. As you can see, this is still a work in progress but I will have to finish it by the end of today.

For the second cane I will probably go with a striped ribbon and gold tassels.

And I am thinking green and pink for cane no. 3. The tassels are not perfect (they could be bigger) but the really good ones just cost too much and I don’t think I could make one myself.

I wish canes, or even better, swagger sticks would make a comeback. They would be so useful in situations in which one is required to strike a pose. It seems they were also useful in other ways.

In 1800, a certain Gambado (slightly stupid ‘nom de plume’, I think) composed ‘Instructions for the Lounge in Bond Street’:

‘Let it be a fixed rule, never to be seen in the LOUNGE without a stick or cane; this, dangling in a string, may accidentally get between the feet of any female passing: if she falls, in consequence, that can be no fault of yours …’.

If so, we would like to hear from you!

Over at the Museum of London Docklands, Lynda (Community Access Officer) and I have been working in partnership with students and staff from Newham Community Links to prepare a programme of video interviews. This project forms part of a series of community involvement projects that are currently underway.

The young people involved in this project have been commissioned to research, organise and film interviews on the theme of ‘the Children of the Windrush Generation’. This will explore the experiences of London-born adults with Caribbean parents, documenting their memories of childhood, attending school and growing up in London during the 1960s,1970s and 1980s.

The final interviews will be installed into a permanent touch-screen display in our ‘London, Sugar and Slavery’ Gallery. We currently have some great people lined up to interview, but are still looking for more interviewees. If you would like to take part, please contact us here: crossingtheseas@museumoflondon.org.uk.

So who is our project production team and what have they been up to so far?

Meet Shona, Grant, Tola, Freddie, Charley and Jason.

We have been working together since January, when Lynda and I went over the the Newham Community Links Centre to introduce ourselves and explain the project brief. We discussed the ways we would be working, what we needed to research and film, and a rough timetable of the project. It was a chance for the group to decide whether they wanted to get involved, to ask questions and to let us know if there was a particular aspect of the project they were most interested in (for example music/soundtrack production). It was also a great opportunity to catch up with Sophie, who is one of the Centre Managers, and who has been extremely patient with us whilst we got the project brief together (Hello Sophie! and thank you!) 

For the first week, the group came over to the Museum of London Docklands to get acquainted with the Museum space, and to take a look at the touch screen interactive in the LSS Gallery that their final work will go into. We had some great discussions in reaction to the Gallery, and followed this up with a look at the film ‘500 years later’ by Owen ‘Alik Shahadah – we have shown this film to previous project groups at the Museum, and find it always serves as serious food for thought.

The second week was all about getting our head round the periods of the 60s-80s, and in particular, focusing on what was happening in London. Using the timeline produced by the Roots to Reckoning team (Neil Kenlock, Armet Francis, and Charlie Phillips), each group member selected a particular event or issue from each respective decade, and used the wonder of Internet connections to research related articles and photos. The information collated made up the beginnings of idea/mood boards for each decade, which we will continue to build on over the project. From these boards we also drew up four working categories: Education, Entertainment, Career and Ambition, and Lifestyle. These will be developed into the final themes the interviews will go into on the touch-screen installation.

Last week we were joined by Rib Davis from the Oral History Society, who led an introductory workshop on recording Oral History and practical interview techniques. Rib has worked on a series of fantastic Oral History projects over at The Lightbox, and has a wealth of experience having carried out hundreds of interviews. It was great to pick his brains regarding interview etiquette, finding the right questions to get people talking, and of course, the art of laughing without making a sound (essential for audio-only interviews).

I particularly enjoyed listening to the practice interviews, when our young people took up the interviewer roles. It was a sly opportunity to earwig into the teenage lives of Lynda, Shona, Jason and Rib – I heard snippets of disgruntled trumpet practice, football matches vs. live music, and the inevitability of growing old and relying on Lucozade, it was pretty fascinating!

And so, the project continues on this week, which I hope to update you with in the not-too-distant future. Major kudos must be given to our group (both staff and students), who have kindly volunteered to come in during their half-term break (which Lynda and I are really very happy about, otherwise I will eat all the biscuits). I am also hoping that we will actually get some of our young people on here to update the project blog, and I do believe we have a mix-tape in the works……..  

Skeleton suit boy is still being mended so I thought I’d tell you what I’ve been doing last weekend.

For some time now I’m obsessed with vertically striped socks because we had to find some for one of our Pleasure Garden gents. Meet William Oxtoby, 23 years of age, dandy on the make, trying to find love, preferably with a rich heiress. He is wearing his best suit: blue-green shot silk suit with silk embroidery from the 1770s, which no doubt he would have accessorised with vertically striped hosiery.

This type of fancy stocking seem to have been particularly fashionable in the 1770s and 1780s, check out the fashion plates below and also Charles James Fox in this print of 1788 (one of my favourite Museum of London objects).

They have also been mentioned on fashion blogs for a while now and even appeared in Alexander McQueen’s 2009 autumn RTW collection (that’s probablywhy they’re so hot at the moment). Nevertheless the only stockings we found that would have worked well with the colouring of the suit were from a re-enactment site in the US and … they were out of stock (haha).

So I turned to the dress curator’s best friend: ebay. Thankfully Emos and Goths also seem to be fond of vertical strips and I found two pairs for only £3.50 each with high cotton content. The last bit was important because I thought we might have to do some customisation.

The black stripes turned out to be too harsh for the suit and the fuchsia was just ludicrous and too 21^st century. Hilary heard that theatrical costumiers sometimes use bleach to get different colours so I thought I’d have a go.

Apparently thin bleach without additives is best, which is actually not that easy to find but I eventually got lucky in Waitrose. So on Saturday I assembled my bleaching kit. I am actually quite scared of bleach (well, one should be) so I wasn’t looking forward to this. HEALTH WARNING: bleach can be dangerous so do not try this at home without following the guidelines on the bottle.

I took all the necessary precautions: I had gloves (never do washing up without my Marygolds), a poking stick (well, a cooking utensil, really) and I kept my bathroom well ventilated, not much fun in this kind of weather.

According to one website, the recommended mix is 4 parts water and 1 part bleach, which seemed a bit excessive, so I started with a much lower dose. Apparently things were supposed to happen within 15 minutes but I poked and poked and watched and watched but the black stripes stubbornly stayed black (I started with the b/w pair, didn’t want to ruin them both). After 30 minutes or so and after increasing the bleach content several times, I just left the stockings to their own devices, occasionally checking up on them and doing a pit more poking.

After more than an hour the black seemed to slowly turn into brown and once the process started the socks lightened up quite quickly. After a good wash we now have stockings with medium brown and white stripes, still not ideal, but an improvement. After another trip to Waitrose the next day (the glamour!), I had a go with the fuchsia ones, but the dark pink dye was even more difficult. Have a look at the result.

I think the stockings are still too bright but I have not yet held them against the suit yet. If it doesn’t work we might have to dye the brown/white ones, maybe purple, or blue-green-ish to match the suit but I think I will spare you the description of that process.

So, when you come to the Pleasure Garden display in our new gallery (open from the end of May), look out for fancy hosiery and, if you like, tell me what you think.

That was the general reaction when we tried out one of the dress objects for the pleasure garden display last week. The object is a so-called ‘skeleton suit’ from the late 1780s.

In 1839 Charles Dickens remembered the skeleton suit as ‘an ingenious contrivance for displaying the full symmetry of a boy’s figure, by fastening him into a very tight jacket, with an ornamental row of buttons over each shoulder, and then buttoning his trousers over it, so as to give his legs the appearance of being hooked on, just under the armpits.’

Well, our suit is not quite like that, but you can see his points about the buttons. If you look closely, you can see a boy wearing such a suit on the right of this painting. Our suit is made from printed cotton, which has now much faded, but originally might have looked a little bit like denim.

Before I go on, I should introduce myself. My name is Beatrice and I am one of two curators responsible for the Museum’s large fashion collection. For the last two years we have been working on preparing the 70 outfits and more than 150 accessories that will go on display in our new galleries. Most will be displayed on ‘cut-outs’ (more about that some other time) but for the pleasure garden we have decided to use full-figure mannequins.

Pleasure Gardens were a bit like amusement grounds today, and were particularly popular in the second half of the 18th and early 19th centuries. The most famous gardens in London were Vauxhall and Ranelagh.

We will show 16 outfits from the 1740s to the 1840s in two cases in the new display. Of course you would never have seen them together originally, but we wanted to highlight particular gems from our collection. The main outfits, suits and dresses, will be original and so will be many of the accessories. To help us put together the right objects we invented a character for each figure. Our little boy is the three-year old Charles Winter, who has come to the gardens with his sister and father, Captain Winter.  Charles is very excited, has even suffered his hair to be curled because the gardens are so fun but is keen to get rid of his starched collar.

Speaking of which, we did not have an appropriate shirt for Charles in the collection, so we asked Amy, who is studying Costume Interpretation at Wimbledon School of Art to make us one. That’s what you see in the photo. It works perfectly and Charles will look even cuter once he is wearing his read shoes. In case you are wondering why he has a plastic bag over his head, we are worried the paint will scratch so are protecting it until installation.

Unfortunately we found that Charles’ arms were a little short (maybe not, what do you think?) so they have now gone back our mannequin makers for a quick fix. I will show you pictures of the finished Charles in a few weeks and I will write about some of the other figures we are working on.

Many of you will be aware that the Museum of London is undergoing a huge redevelopment and some spectacular new galleries will open in May 2010. However, although many of the Museum of London employees have seen how the redevelopment is going, the web team didn’t get a chance to see the latest developments.

So we decided to have a bit of an adventurer last Friday afternoon after the builders had ‘shut up shop’. Yes, we finally went to see the new galleries and I managed to sneak my handy camera in with me and took a few photos to share with you.

I must warn you that I am no professional photographer and my very slim digital camera does not deal well with poor lighting, but the photos below will still give you an insight into some of the fascinating things that await your visits in May.

The head of communications, Antony Robbins, gave us an excellent tour. We explored the new Galleries of Modern London, starting with checking out some really cool chill-out areas where visitors can surf the net and perhaps even sneak in a coffee or two!

What looked like a ghostly figure shrouded beneath plastic appeared to watch us as we made our way through the galleries. I found that we are being very eco-friendly and have recycled many of our display cases from the previous galleries.

I was much taken with one of the exhibits of an 18th century printing press that spews reams and reams of papers, notices, and posters on to over 20 plasma screens to show the 18th century version of the white heat of technology. Wow, I thought, I can’t wait to see this in action!

I finally discovered what the back of the glass display cases look like (they actually look like the back of normal cases to me!), and I was able to look up closely into what the inside of the Wellclose prison was like in its original form. I didn’t have time to read all the names and see all the pictures etched on the walls, but it was fascinating none the less.

For the first time ever, Museum of London will have display cases under the floor and I was told that the glass will be bullet proof (no, please don’t bring your gun in to check!).

I ‘accidentally’ stumbled into the power room behind the gallery and decided to take a photo as I was already there.

The pleasure garden was next and how pretty and peaceful it was! One of my colleagues was playing around with the different sounds that would be played in the background and I could have just stayed there for a very long time. There were real trees in the middle, and the garden has the ability to change from day to night, with the music reflecting the different mood.

We were lucky to see the Selfridges lift all lit up and my colleagues and I marvelled at the detail.

We toured the galleries that had maps and interactives, and what I thought were sails but weren’t sails at all (it was just sheets to protect the new galleries from dust and keep it private from visitors visiting the galleries on the upper floors). It turned out that we were keeping the development sites very clean because I even saw a very happy, smiling ‘Mr Henry’, vacuum cleaner.

I was interested to learn that an unexploded insidious bomb recovered in the early 1940s in the East End will loom large on top of a glass case. You and I will have to find out by visiting the gallery when it opens exactly what this looks like.

I found out that the largest glass case in the gallery will host the Tom Hunter ghetto (recreation of groups of streets in Hackney, home to squatters, including Tom himself) and that there will be an interactive river Thames (it was not installed fully yet so I couldn’t really get my hands on it and test the interactivity, all in the line of duty of course).

We were unable to see some parts of the gallery but as I did not want to disappoint you, my colleague and I raised the zip up a little and I took the photo of the Lord Mayor’s Coach (which you can see below).

The timeline for ‘a London year’ had not been installed yet but Antony did suggest that the web team may want to buy a year and I said that as soon as he gives us a pay rise, we would be more than happy to contribute. I’m sure we can expect a pay rise very soon. (If you haven’t yet bought a year, and wish to do so, why not visit our website at www.museumoflondon.org.uk/English/SupportUs/Year-of-London-History/availableyears.htm for more information)

The Clore Centre was the last thing we saw. It opened recently and has hosted many events already. In the Centre, I’ve learned that learning continues, even if you go to the toilets!

Photographs of developments

Below are thumbnail images showing parts of the things I saw on my tour. Click on each image to see the full, larger image: