The working life of Museum of London

Last weekend I took some of our lab coats home. We have a washing machine at work but washing powder is of course verboten and I thought they needed some serious enzyme action. I am disappointed. They are not as dazzling as I expected them to be from the TV ads of one of the products I used. But my disappointment probably has another, deeper reason (doesn’t it always?).

I think I was hoping for a complete transformation of these standard issue coats – into what exactly, I don’t know. I am aware that lab coats are mainly meant to be useful, but couldn’t they also be a little bit exciting? That they are not, is probably the reason why we only tend to wear them to protect ourselves from objects (you might think this kind of object does not exist in a dress store, welcome to the freezer room).

Occasionally – very occasionally, I swear – Hilary and I discuss our dream work wear and we have found it to be a tricky business. It is not easy to find something that combines utility with beauty and with the need to preserve (or acquire?) authority. Hilary came upon this beautiful Vogue pattern, which has the added advantage that it is ’straight from Paris’ (via America, mind). It would make a lovely lab coat, but I’m not so sure about the authority situation, and it would need serious customisation to be super-practical.

I always thought my favourite uniform would be a jumpsuit-type-thing. At my last workplace I was known to don my Tyvek suit at the slightest provocation (I kept it in my desk drawer, just in case …). I loved my boiler suit, but even I have to admit that it wasn’t very flattering (white does nothing for me), it didn’t have any pockets and, true to its name, there were microclimate issues.

Having always been an admirer of Constructivist art and design, I thought Rodchenko’s overall might be it (scroll down a bit on this page), but now that I have looked at it again, I’m not so keen on the leather trim. A friend recommended Ernesto Thayaht’s TuTa, which I really, really like, particularly as I have just realised I have a detailed pattern in a book at home. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy also looked very good in his ‘Arbeitsanzug‘.

Maybe a flying suit like the ones popular in the 1980s could work? Here is a beautiful example from our collection:

This one was bought from Austin Reed, oh yes, and worn over a T-shirt with rolled-up sleeves with the suit’s legs tucked into thick, white, woolly ankle socks. The look was completed with Dunlop plimsols, also preserved at the Museum. And this was six years before Top Gun!

I could have suits in different colours, one for each day of the week (or for particular moods) with a lamé number for special occasions. I could even have my name embroidered in a suitable spot, a non-negotiable requirement for the kind of work outfit I’m after.

Or maybe a smock, like the one below, apparently worn by a milkman as a bit of an advertising gimmick around 1900? But who would do the smocking?

Oh, I don’t know. Maybe you do? If you have found the perfect solution, want to share a fabulous customisation job or provide the address of a supplier of practical, yet stylish, work wear, we would love to hear from you! And you don’t have to be a girl.

PS: Gertie Millar’s story will be resumed next week.

Today’s blog entry was compiled by Jill and Marianne, two of our trainee archaeologists:

“Trench 2 has been cleared to a fairly level surface making it easier to identify the different areas of soil and debris. Following on from a talk on planning, we divided the trench into sections and split into groups to have a stab at plotting by grid these different areas.

In Trench 1 we have had a first taste of using a mattock, or pick axe, to break up large lumps of debris (mainly bricks)…

…We found several metal curves which we guessed could have been drawer handles and parts of a chimney pot.

Also today, Roy Stephenson, Head of the Department of Archaeological Collections and Archive at the Museum of London, came to speak to us about pottery and ways of dating finds.

He was able to identify, from our finds, pottery from Roman and Tudor times and Midlands Purpleware, Tudor Greenware and a small piece of black basalt ware made by Wedgewood.

The training excavation in Burgess Park has started.

This is a five day course for adults to learn the basics techniques of field archaeology in an urban environment.

We are continuing on the site following on from our community excavation work with schools and other groups.

Two of our new recruits, Becky and Katie,  took time out from excavating to share their initial thoughts and discoveries:

” Today is our first ever day as trainee archaeologists. About 14 of us are here from different backgrounds – old and young, supple and not so supple!  we are excavating footprints of Victorian terraced houses, many of which were bombed irreparably during the war and subsequently flattened and cleared before becoming a park.

First off we learnt trowelling to clear debris in order to reveal soil/brick features, discovering small finds as we go.

It is thrilling  to identify an intricate design on a piece of pottery, tile or clay pipe, but less attractive items must also be collected such as random metal pieces and glass.

There is an enormous variety of material…

…brick, plaster from architectural features, coal, slate, flint (all discarded unless unusual) and then clay pipes, pottery , glass etc…oh, and losts of dust!

Will be learning this afternoon how to record the finds on context sheets and seeing what everyone elsehas found and what we can learn.”

Students and other assorted YPs (‘Young People’, as I like to call them these days) are a common sight in the costume store. (Strangely, Hilary and I are ‘fashion’ curators who manage the ‘dress’ collection held in the ‘costume’ store, but that’s another story). They often come alone or in groups, with or without tutors, to look at objects and to ask interesting questions.

The visit recorded in these images (by Richard Stroud, one of the museum’s three photographers) was slightly different. The students had come to take photos for a micro site connected to the web pages of the Fashion History & Theory BA course at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design.

Before their first visit, the second-year students had told me what type of objects they were interested in, e.g. something to do with ballet, a frock coat, a pair of shoes, or some such like. I took out a few things they might like, they made their selection and went off to do some research.

For the website they had to provide ‘two different kinds of information about the object: one empirical and museological the other subjective and perhaps popular or personal’. It was the second bit that most interested me. I often find that visitors look at objects in very different ways and I wonder who learns more during our visits.

A few weeks later, the students were back and tried their best to take good photos without a professional backdrop (one day, there will be one!), limited lighting (that’s where the table lamp comes in) and the mannequins and object stands we have. (No objects or dummies were harmed in the process, there was method in the slight madness.)

I love the resulting web pages and am amazed at some of the related illustrations and information the students have found, starting only with the sometimes sparse descriptions from our database. Please have a look here and judge for yourself (wait for the quote to disappear, click on ‘FHT Projects’ and then on ‘Museum of London Website’ at the top). I hope we can do this again (we had a lot of fun as you can see) and I’d love to know what you think.

Each year the Museum provides the opportunity for groups and individuals to experience a week of hands-on archaeology as we explore a site in London of historical  importance.
The site of this year’s dig is Burgess Park , Southwark, South London which research has shown was once occupied by terraces of Victorian houses, many of which were destroyed during World War II.

In preparation for the first of our school groups arriving on-site Monday (spaces are still available to attend the week-long adult training digs  in July – see our website for details)  Tom, one of our senior archeologists, spent a morning on-site clearing away the top soil back to the “demolition layer” a few inches below the grass turf.

We have been surprised by the amount of brickwork found so near to the surface as this demolition waste is normally moved off-site or more often it is piled together and covered in turf – which could explain that little hill you have in the garden of you flat or house…

One of our key jobs in advance of Monday is to record what is  currently visible on-site which will help our archaeologists plan dig locations for our first visitors Monday.

The results of our upcoming work on-site and the thoughts of those involved will be the subject of updates here on our blog and on our twitter pages.

Kate and Jackie ,who are coordinating the dig, were recently welcomed by the owners of one of the remaining Victorian houses in the terrace which used to stretch to include the site we are now investigating to have a look around allowing them to gain an insight into the scale and design of the homes that used to be on the site of our dig. They were both keen to explore the basement but unfortunately this had been renovated by the local council in the 1980s making the work that will be supported over the forthcoming weeks that more important…

In my quest to find out more about our slightly mysterious ‘fausse montre’ (fake watch) chatelaine/equipage, I pinned all my hopes on its fob seal. In keeping with the rather cheap nature of the watch, the seal is set with coloured glass, rather than a gemstone, which made it all the harder to make out the animal it seemed to depict.

Fiddling with our camera’s macro setting and blowing up the resulting image didn’t really help. So I set out to find a partner in crime, who emerged in the person of Hannah Power, one of our Applied Arts conservators. She had already cleaned the watch and thought it would be relatively easy to take an impression without any harm to the object. That’s where the dentist putty came in.

I’m quite sure you could use other brands, but don’t take my word for it, I’m not a conservator. I believe Hannah chose this particular one because it sets pretty fast. Below are the different stages: spreading the two components onto a smooth surface, vigorous mixing, careful application and … the reveal. (In case you are wondering, Hannah doesn’t always walk around with a high-viz vest over her lab coat, but we were right in the middle of installing our new galleries and if you found a clean-ish vest you held onto it.)

As I had began to suspect, the impression showed a pelican. ‘Doesn’t look like a pelican to me’, you might say, and yes, there is no pouch. The following is not for the faint-hearted. In medieval Europe it was believed that pelicans had a special way of coping with a food shortage: they pricked their breast until they drew blood, which they used to feed their young. This mistaken belief apparently had something to do with the fact that pelicans press their bill into their chest to empty the aforementioned pouch. Pelicans became one of the prime emblems of self-sacrifice (and also of the Passion of Christ), which Queen Elizabeth I found too hard to resist.

Pelicans were, and are still, used in coat-of-arms where they are usually shown in two versions: alone, in which case connoisseurs of heraldry speak of ‘a pelican vulning herself’, or with their young (usually in a nest), which is called ‘a pelican in her piety’. It is the last version that seems to be depicted on our seal.

The use of emblems in embroidery or for jewellery became particularly popular after the publication the Emblemata of Andrea Alciato, in 1531, followed by many similar compilations of emblems, usually in large parts copied from Signor Alciato. Emblems consist of three parts: a heading or motto, an illustration and a commentary or moralising text. When Geffrey Whitney published the first English emblem book in 1586 he followed the established formula. On the bottom of page 87 he showed a pelican in her piety under the motto: ‘Quod in te est prome’ (literally: bring forth what is in you – not a bad motto). The verse below starts: ‘The Pellican, for to revive her younge, Doth peirce her brest, and geve them of her blood’.

The popularity of the pelican emblem can be observed in many examples of the amazing early 17th century gloves in the Spence Collection, owned by the Glovers’ Company and now housed at the Fashion Museum at Bath. Scroll down to No. 23370 on this page, or have a look here.

Pelicans obviously were still popular in the late 18th century, when our watch was probably made. So how does all this help us with our fausse montre? Not very much, I fear. So far I have been unable to connect the pelican emblem to any ancestors of Lord Harcourt, who bequested the watch to the Museum, but then he might have acquired it during his lifetime.

It is not clear whether the pelican gloves in the Spence collection were made for a gentleman or a lady, but my hunch is that the pelican was more of a female emblem. And the watch is an equipage, usually worn by women, rather than a pocket watch with a string. I like to think that it was given as a present to a devoted mother but I now doubt that I will ever find out. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. And if you want to further your pelican studies, have a look here.

PS: Apologies for the long gap between this and my last post. By now you might have seen our advertising campaign for our new galleries and/or have seen some reviews. We have all been working very hard to get it all ready. Only one week to go!

The main reason for my obsession with the eighteenth century fashion of wearing two watches is a ‘fausse montre’ (French for fake watch but so much better-sounding) that I discovered in our Strong Room (that’s where we keep our valuable objects under many locks and keys).

The description on our database is not particularly revealing: ‘Pinchbeck chatelaine with false watch. 4 suspension chains, one attached to watch key, 1 to glass fob of swan [more about that later] & 2 attached to false pocket watch with blue & white painted enamel dial’.

The watch formed part of a bequest by William Edward, second Viscount Harcourt (b. 1908), who played a very important role in the foundation of the Museum of London. He was chairman of its Board of Trustees from 1965 to 1975, and then of its Governors until his death in early 1979 (and he now watches over me every day from a very nice photograph propped up in my office).

As you would expect, Lord Harcourt had very distinguished ancestors, including the Most. Rev. and Rt. Hon. Edward Venables-Vernon-Harcourt, Archbishop of York (1757-1847) who married in 1784 Lady  Anne Leveson-Gower (1761-1832), daughter of Sir Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Marquess of Stafford, who held several high government offices. I mention these particular ancestors because they were around when this kind of watch was worn.

Why would a member of such a wealthy family wear a fake watch? Well, fausses montres were not necessarily cheap. On my beloved Old Bailey website it is recorded that in February 1796 a certain William Lee stole a ‘diamond fausse montre’, worth £40, amongst a very, very large number of other valuable items from a jeweller in St James’s Street. Quite a lot of money for a fake watch if you consider that a farm labourer would have probably earned no more than £15 per year.

Members of the royal family thought nothing of giving fake watches as presents. King George III’s son Prince Frederick wrote to his brother, the Prince of Wales, from Hanover in 1781: ‘I must give you the commission to distribute a few trifles which I have sent directed to you to be given among my four sisters, one fausse montre is for the Princess Royal, and the other with the sypher [sic] upon is for Puss.’

The popularity of dummy watches coincides with the rise of the two-watch fashion in the 1770s. Edward J. Wood wrote in his book Curiosities of clocks and watches from the earliest times (1866): ‘The foppery of wearing two watches was soon approved and adopted by the ladies; but it was found to be too expensive to wear two real watches, and accordingly a true watch was worn on the left side and a sham one on the right side of the person’. He then somewhat contradicts himself, and proves my above point, that ‘false watches were in some instances of gold and silver, and sometimes enriched with jewels and enamelled miniatures at the back.’ These miniature portraits were disguised as watches so that you could contemplate the face of a beloved while pretending to check the time. Bring it back!

So what does all this reveal about our very own fake watch? As it is a chatelaine/equipage it seems to have been made for a lady. I am aware the following statement is not very scientific, but I think the watch nevertheless has a manly air about it and I have to admit that is now proudly worn by William Oxtoby, one of the gentlemen in our Pleasure Garden display.

Our watch is definitely of the cheap variety. Made to look like gold, it is made of pinchbeck, an alloy (not entirely sure what that is, chemistry was never my strong point) of copper and zinc invented by a certain Christopher Pinchbeck, a London clockmaker, in the early 18th century.

I thought the animal depicted on the seal might provide a clue and connect it somehow to Lord Harcourt’s ancestors (it might of course not have been an heirloom but rather a curiosity Lord Harcourt picked up during his lifetime). I didn’t think the animal was a swan but because the seal is made of glass, I found it very hard to photograph it in a way that showed the bird (or dragon?) clearly (looking at it with the naked or be-spectacled eye is even less revealing). So I asked Hannah, one of our applied arts conservators, to make (take?) an impression. If you always wanted to find something interesting to do with dentist putty, have a look at the next instalment.

By the late 1780s fashionable gentlemen had been wearing two watches for about ten years, when finally the ladies caught on (what took you so long?). According to The European Magazine and London Review, at Queen Charlotte’s birthday do in December 1787 for the ladies: ‘Two watches were universal, unless a picture was substituted for one of them, or a fancy setting.

Gentlemen usually only displayed the strings and trinkets attached to their watches, while the watches themselves were more or less securely held in little ‘fob’ pockets just below the waist. (I wonder whether some men just pretended to have watches and something else kept their watch string in place?) Women tended to wear watches in a different way: as part of what was then called an equipage, but is now usually called a chatelaine. (I know this is confusing, but this type of ornament continued to be very fashionable in the 19th century. From the 1830s it was called chatelaine and somehow this new name also stuck to 18th century versions.)

An equipage consisted of a hook, which would have been invisible when worn (I’m not quite sure what it hooked into, maybe the top of the petticoat? And yes, I am fond of brackets). Attached to this hook were one or several, often highly ornamental, plaques, from which dangled not only watches, but also various trinkets or ‘toys’, such as containers for thimbles, scissors, bodkins and such like (tassels were also popular). Have a look at this equipage/chatelaine from our own collection and you will see what I mean.

A fashion plate published in January 1787 in the Journal des Luxus und der Moden shows a lady in a ‘Robe à Feston’, or gown with festoons, proudly displaying two ornaments hanging from her waist. We rarely have the detailed descriptions that would have originally accompanied the fashion plates, so I am not quite sure what these ornaments are. They don’t seem to be watches and might be the ‘fancy settings’ mentioned above. Or, maybe, the lady was in fact wearing her watches like a gent, with only the strings and toys on show. In December 1788 it was reported that Parisian ladies accessorised their ball dresses thus: ‘At the girdle hang two golden chains, belonging to two watches in two little fobs.’

Have a look at another fashion plate, this time from the Magasin des Modes Nouvelles, Françaises et Anglaises from March 1787.

Even without the description it is evident that the lady on the right is dressed in distinctly masculine garb, maybe a riding habit. Show-off that she is, she seems to display not two, but three watches. I suspect she is wearing two so-called ‘macaronis’, another confusing term that I am not convinced was used for this type of ornament during the 18th century.

The distinguished scholar and jewellery collector Dame Joan Evans (who donated part of her collection to the Museum) wrote in 1921: ‘Soon after 1770 the Macaronis [highly fashionable young men] introduced a chatelaine of a new kind. Instead of terminating in a hook, it ended in an ornamental medallion, from which hung tassels and charms, while the supporting chains were slightly longer. This must have been held in place by the waistbelt so that the watch and the tassels both hung down.’

It is quite likely that not all three watches of our lady were ‘real’. Joan Evans continued: ‘Fobs were also worn, one end hung with a watch and the other with a heavy seal, a dummy watch, or fausse montre’ [fake watch to you and me]. We have an 18th century fake watch equipage in our collection. It is quite peculiar and deserves an entry on its own.

I started volunteering at LAARC back in 2003, was employed here in 2004 and have been here ever since. On a day to day basis I get to handle some of the world’s best objects. But forget all them at this time of year, as there’s one annual object that get’s me more excited than any other – the LAARC Gingerbread house!

The history of Gingerbread seems to go back over 500 years with Germanic/Swedish origins, arriving in Britain in the 1500’s and being widespread by the 1700’s. But I’m not here to write about the history of Gingerbread, but instead the Archaeological Archive’s tradition of making a Gingerbread House each Christmas.

Back in 2003, LAARC had a full time conservator, Jannicke who came from Norway. It was she who first introduced the Gingerbread house to the archive. Keeping with Scandinavian tradition, the house was decorated for Christmas and sat proudly as the centre piece at our Christmas party. Decorated with an abundance of sugary sweets, bonded together with icing sugar, it’s a dentist’s worst nightmare, but looks a dream. Its true moment of glory however, is when it gets smashed, revealing even more sweets and chocolates inside.

Ever since then, despite Jannicke leaving in 2005, we’ve kept up the tradition of decorating a house each year and along the way have watched it evolve into one of the highlights of each Christmas party.

The smashing of the house is now preceded by two events; the decorating and the competition to determine who gets to smash it. The decorating gets done by LAARC staff in a creative morning session, where we let our artistic skills flow. The competition’s vary and have previously included a Christmas caption competition, a Christmas catapult competition and a Christmas song quiz. This year, we were very lucky to have Jannicke join us at our party and as our guest of honour, she along with her 1 year old daughter and volunteer Chris (he volunteered the most this year)  got to be the smashers.

We may not be as grand as the recent Obama Gingerbread WhiteHouse, but it’s a nice little tradition we have and long may it continue!