Wouldn’t it be nice if you could zoom along on Google Street View to a well known place, like the Ouse Bridge in York, and see what it looked like 200 years ago – from the perspective of a well-respected contemporary artist. A bit like this:

York’s Ouse Bridge – photographed by Google

York’s Old Ouse Bridge – painted in the 19th century

With the help of a dedicated group of volunteers from the Friends of York Art Gallery, YMT’s Digital Team has been taking all the topographical artworks from York Art Gallery’s Evelyn Collection and pinning them to a map of York.

Here are all the images pinned to the map so far!

Click here to go to the Historypin website and see all the works uploaded so far. By clicking on the small images on the map you can navigate around the collection.

With a few clicks you can travel to High Petergate

Find out what it looked like in 1849

And find out more about who painted this picture

We currently have just over 100 images pinned to the map and we plan to get around 700-1000 uploaded. The volunteers have been working really hard. As well as locating the images, they have been adding additional information to our catalogue records by leaving comments.

This project is still in its early stages, but we are going to expand the number of volunteers soon, so watch this space as YMT’s Historypin site develops.

Jet beads – YORYM : 2012.779.3.8

In October 2011 York Museums Trust received an exciting collection of Bronze Age objects excavated by a father and son in the pioneering days of post-war archaeology. David Lamplough, then a young boy, and his father William, a secondary school teacher and amateur archaeologist, carried out rescue excavations on Bronze Age barrows and occupation sites across North Yorkshire along with their friend John ‘Ronnie’ Lidster. There are several things about this unique collection that make it extremely interesting.

The collection

Lamplough artefacts in storage

So what’s in the collection? The bulk of the collection encompasses flint tools, reconstructed ceramic vessels and the cremated remains of individuals, but we also have a few, considerably less day-to-day objects. There are a series of worked bone artefacts, including a very rare scabbard hook and a fine pin. We also have a few fragmentary pieces of copper alloy that came from cremations as well as some jet beads.

Putting the objects in context

The accompanying paper archive is what give the objects their context and, as any archaeologist will tell you, context is the most important thing! William Lamplough’s records provide a crucial insight into archaeological practice in the 1950’s. As an amateur archaeologist he had no formal training, yet he meticulously recorded what he found at every site, seemingly adding to his archive and modifying it as more discoveries were made and new conclusions reached.

Along with these records is what might be described as a series of essays on the Bronze Age in Yorkshire and Britain in general. William writes extensively about subjects ranging from the palaeoenvironment (how the environment might have looked like in the past) to what the prehistoric cultures he was studying might have been like themselves. He quotes various contemporary scholars who were writing in the 1950s, but also draws on historical sources such as the Domesday Book and Gildas.

What’s next for the Lamplough collection?

The next logical step was to talk to the people who were around when all of this was happening, and to allow their experiences to contribute to our knowledge of this wonderful archive. David Lamplough agreed to being interviewed about his experiences of early archaeology. To me it seems that this will open up a whole conversation about the way that archaeology was practiced in the 1950s. Below is an introductory video from this interview, in which David introduces himself and gives us a bit of information about how he and his father found themselves digging on the moors.

Lamplough Collection Introduction from dtymt on Vimeo.

By blogging about this research, I am hoping to show just how organic a process this sort of endeavour is. Hopefully I will be able to delve deeper into the histories of the artefacts and perhaps into the way that David and his father (along with others who are mentioned in the archive) conducted archaeology in the 1950s, how they became interested in such an important subject, and how archaeology was perceived by the wider public before it became a formal science.

A bit about me

My name is Emily and, as a Masters student studying Digital Heritage at the University of York, I am primarily concerned with the dissemination of archaeological knowledge using digital media and other forms of narrative. I am currently on placement with York Museums Trust, working on this exciting project.

Photojournalism student Lily Hartley spent a week working with York Museums Trust’s press officer Lee Clark and left us with some great images taken during her short stay.

For the past week, I have been stationed in the York Museums Trust marketing office, acting as an in-house photographer. As a Photojournalism student at Staffordshire University, I am required to experience the real world of work once in a while, and to participate in a stint of ‘work experience’.

Whilst a little nervous at first (I was, after all, just a student in a place full of professionals!), I’ve found that this week has been both educational and very enjoyable.

Everyone seemed to want something photographed, and I’ve been kept very busy this week, documenting everything from Tansy beetles to WW1 machine guns! Here are some of the highlights…

John Hoyland poses for a press photograph with a First World War machine gun outside York Castle Museum

A Tansy Beetle in York Museum Gardens. The rare species has been introduced to the gardens recently and the local press were invited to a photo call

Natalie McCaul holds a rare silver boar badge, worn by supporters of King Richard III, which has been acquired by the Yorkshire Museum

A sunny shot of York Museum Gardens taken for the marketing department's publicity materials

This picture of a shell comes from Lily's trip to the trust's natural sciences stores

Lines of neatly arranged butterflies - another shot taken during the trip to the store

Volunteers at work in the York Observatory, taken by Lily for our the trust's Volunteers Co-ordinator

Another volunteer hard at work, this time in the Yorkshire Museum's library

I want to thank everyone in the marketing department for making me feel welcome and giving me the opportunity to learn about what will (hopefully) one day become my field of work!

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.