Collections Snapshot: Armadillo Work-Bag

We have some fantastically unusual objects in our Collections. Here is one of them:

Armadillo Work-Bag

Armadillo Work-Bag
(1920-1940)

In the York Castle Museum Costume & Textiles Collection - In Store

The Armadillo is a timid mammal found only in the Americas. They are not an endangered species, and souvenirs are still made from their shells.
This Armadillo work-bag would have been seen as a novelty when it was brought back to this country in the early twentieth century, however today we would be unlikely to welcome it as a gift!

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially after the expansion of the British Empire and improvements in transport, many unusual items from other countries found their way to Britain. Animals were very much to the fore, either as hunting trophies or as novelties like this bag.
The work-bag is a good example of the types of objects that sometimes used to find their way into museum collections, often because no-one knew what else to do with them!

Emma Bernard, who was Acting Assistant Curator of Biology, found this amazing sawfish snout in one of our stores. It is part of the Yorkshire Museum Natural History Collection.

Emma Bernard holding the sawfish snout

Sawfish snout – Yorkshire Museum
Discovered lurking in a dark corner of Marygate, a strange looking object was found…
This object which resembles a chainsaw actually belongs to a sawfish, which are tropical rays related to sharks. A critically endangered group, they can be found in tropical and sub tropical waters in the Atlantic and around Australia. Sawfish can grow to large sizes, specimens up to 20 feet in length are quite common with ‘saws’ up to 6 feet in length.
Sawfish have a long flat body with a prominent flat blade at the front of the animal which is armed with strong tooth-like structures. These enlarged teeth are firmly implanted in sockets in the cartilage of the snout (rostrum).

Electroreceptors are contained within the snout which detects heartbeats of prey buried within the sediment such as prawns and other invertebrates. Sawfish use their snout for digging out buried prey and as it is motion sensitive, they can detect and slash at prey swimming past. A truly fascinating and impressive creature.

Collections Snapshot

Thanks to Jenny Alexander, Assistant Curator of Fine Art for this Collections Snapshot from the York Art Gallery collection.

Portrait of Catherine Davenant, wife of Thomas Lamplugh, 1664 by an unknown artist. Oil on canvas. Presented by Mr R.M.MacColla in 1959.

Thomas Lamplugh was a Yorkshire-born clergyman who became Archbishop of York in 1688.  This charming portrait of his wife was probably painted to mark his appointment as Archdeacon of London in 1664.

Until the 18th century, women’s hats were modelled on men’s designs. Her costume is orthodox restoration period and puritan in style, reflecting the austerity of Cromwell’s commonwealth. She wears a high-crowned black hat made of beaver fur worn over a limp hood. The style is very similar to that worn by the Dutch at the time, when most people in England were starting to sport more flamboyant fashions. The painting is currently featured in the Hats exhibition at York Art Gallery (until 23rd January 2011).

Collections Snapshot: Isaac Button Pottery

Isaac Button was Yorkshire’s last traditional country potter, making functional domestic pots from the red clay he dug himself. The site of his Soil Hill Pottery near Halifax produced pots since the 17th century until 1965, when he retired. At the height of his career, he could transform a ton of clay a day into pots. He still found time for enjoying himself though and is infamously quoted saying he “never left a pub the same day he entered it”.

Isaac is also the star of one of the most famous pottery films ever made. “Isaac Button: Country Potter” is 40 mesmerizing minutes of silent black and white film, produced by the amateur film maker John Anderson in the few years before Isaac retired. John died last year, leaving the film to the Yorkshire Film Archive. His widow has passed on to York Museums Trust a wonderful collection of photographs taken by him whilst he made the film. She has also given us two mixing bowls by Isaac, made of the rich red Yorkshire clay and decorated with the jewel-like yellow slip and galena glaze. The bowls are featured in the “Honest Pots” exhibition which is currently on display at York Art Gallery until October 2nd 2011, alongside some of the photos of Isaac and the famous film.

Victorian handkerchief, Castle Museum Collection

The Victorian football handkerchief

The print has faded now but when new it would have been bright red and purple.
Handkerchiefs like this one were popular cheap gifts and there are over 250 in the Costume and Textile collection. Some are commemoratives celebrating royal events, others have printed maps, songs, poems and even political slogans.
A football kit in 1890 looked very different! Here you can see players wearing a flannelette shirt buttoned or laced up the front, flannel knickerbockers, thick socks and study lace up boots. Goalkeepers wore thicker wool jerseys. In this game, players from one team sport small school like caps, sometimes these were made out of velvet.

Find out more about these fascinating, legendary fossils.
Whitby Snakestone
The folklore of snakestones in the Whitby area dates back to at least the 16th Century. In “Britannia”, 1586, William Camden records stones from Whitby which “if you break them you find within stony serpents, wreathed up in circles, but generally without heads”.
Legend has it that when the abbey at Whitby was built it was infested with snakes. The Abbess of the time, St Hilda turned them into stone at which point they lost their heads. In later years local fossil dealers sometimes restored their heads by carving them onto ammonites found on the shore. This is one such example. In this case the ammonite is Hildoceras bifrons, the scientific name in memory of St Hilda.

In store, Geology Collection, Yorkshire Museum

We are relaunching ‘Collections Snapshot’. We will regularly look at the story behind interesting objects from our collections. Our first object is:

Victoria Cross

In store, Castle Museum, Military History Collection

This was awarded to Lieutenant Humphrey Osbaldston Brooke Firman, Royal Navy, for bravery after his death on 24th April 1916.  On this night, in Mesopotamia, he lead an attempt to bring supplies to the force. However, they were brought under heavy artillery fire at Kut-el-Amara. Lieutenant Firman and several of his crew from the ‘SS Julnar’ were killed, while the survivors and supplies were captured.
Recently, on 24th April 2008, a Service of Dedication took place for a memorial plaque commemorating Lieutenant Firman, at the War Memorial in New Malden. We were unable to lend the medal for the ceremony but we provided large scale copies of an image of the medal. This was much appreciated by the Memorial Committee.

This lovely armchair is made from oak and was made in one of a group of workshops operating in the Leeds area at this time. The decoration is Elizabethan in style and so perhaps a bit old fashioned for the time of its production. The chair was probably made for one of the new breed of Yorkshire gentlemen whose fortunes were based in the affluent towns of the West Riding, at the centre of the English clothing industry.

This group of furniture makers produced various forms at this period including chairs, chests and cupboards. Their work is characterised by its extremely good workmanship and decoration.

The distinctive design features of these workshops which can be seen in this chair include the double-scrolled pediment crest with earpieces, and the carved back panel with the diamond motif complete with pennant-like terminals.

This is probably one of the most celebrated types of bowls produced by Lucie Rie – the dribbly iron glazed rim is a famous design feature of her work.  It’s a large bowl (over 28cm in diameter) and has warped slightly due to its size.  Rie threw her pots with very thin walls and then made them even thinner by cutting back the pot with a razor.

The bowl, along with 42 other pieces, was given to us by the collector Henry Rothschild (1913 – 2009).  Rothschild was a hugely influential figure in the British crafts scene and founded the Primavera gallery in London in 1945.

Rothschild had a particular affection for bowls and described this bowl as his favourite, his “Desert Island Disc pot”.

Lucie Rie (1902 – 1995)

Bowl 1949 is on Display in the new Gallery of Pots at York Art Gallery.

This battery powered portable record player was made by Baird Ltd. in 1960 and is shown here with the original packaging. 

The black plastic base and gold metal stylus, arm and lid measures just 22cm in length and 11cm wide, but it can play both single and LP records.

The speed is produced by two drive wheels; one is triggered when the arm is in position for a single, providing 45rpm and the other wheel operates at 33rpm when there is an LP on the record player.

Three small feet open out from the base when the player is operating.  This allows it to stand above the surface and gives room for sound to come from the speaker underneath.  The record is held between the closed lid and the base.

The player was advertised as weighing less than 2lbs and operating on 1.5 volt batteries.  It sold for 15 guineas.

info by Katy