Tag Archives: museum

A penguin in the museum

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HAMPSTEAD’S BURGH HOUSE was constructed in 1704 and retains many of its original architectural features. Several of its rooms house a fascinating museum with exhibits relating to the history of Hampstead. I have visited the museum many times, but it was only today (the 9th of March 2023) that I noticed a model penguin on display. This used to stand inside High Hill Bookshop, which was located on Hampstead High Street. Founded by Ian Norrie in 1956, it remained in business until 1988.

During my childhood, in the 1950s and 1960s, I used to visit Hampstead almost every Saturday morning with my parents and my sister. We used to park the family car near to Jack Straws Castle, which is close to Whitestone Pond – one of the highest spots in London. Then, we would walk down Heath Street and along the High Street until we reached High Hill Bookshop. My parents were keen to encourage my sister and I to read. Therefore, every time we visited the bookshop, we had to choose one book each, which they purchased for us. I cannot recall all of the books I chose, many of them Puffin paperbacks, but I do remember that during these visits I gradually built up my collection of the adventures of Tintin by Hergé.

According to an article (https://jessicanorrie.wordpress.com/2017/08/04/the-best-independent-bookshop-in-london/) by Norrie’s daughter, Jessica Norrie, there was a party for Penguin Books held in the shop in 1960. The model penguin, which I saw in Burgh House today, was in attendance at that party back in 1960. I was eight in 1960, but I am afraid that I cannot remember seeing the penguin. It must have been in the shop during some of my visits, but then my interest in choosing a book was greater than looking for model penguins.

The penguin in the museum is black and white. On the white section of the bird’s belly, there are words, including “October 12th, 1960. High Hill Bookshop Silver Jubilee Party” and, also, some signatures. One of the signatures is that of Allen Lane, founder of Penguin Books. He died 10 years after the party. Another signature is that of the novelist Olivia Manning, There are several other signatures, but I found them too difficult to decipher.

Seeing the penguin at Burgh House brought back happy memories of my childhood and, at the same time, made me sad because High Hill Bookshop was irreplaceable. Waterstone’s, which followed in its wake, although well-stocked, lacks the charm of Ian Norrie’s wonderful creation.

You can read more about Hampstead past and present in my recently published book “Beneath a Wide Sky: Hampstead and its Environs”, which is available from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/BENEATH-WIDE-SKY-HAMPSTEAD-ENVIRONS/dp/B09R2WRK92/

A pavilion for Ramadan

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IN 2023 RAMADAN WILL occur between about the 22nd of March and the 21st of April. To celebrate this holy Islamic month, a colourful pavilion has been erected in the courtyard of the Exhibition Road entrance to the Victoria and Albert (‘V&A’) museum. It has been designed by Shahed Saleem and set up by The Ramadan Tent Project and the V&A. According to the museum’s webpage (www.vam.ac.uk/event/ok1kLZm29xJ/ramadan-pavilion-march-may-2023), the pavilion:
“…draws inspiration from the V&A’s Prints and Drawings collection to represent the history of the mosque and Muslims in Britain.”

Another webpage (https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/museum-life/the-ramadan-pavilion-by-shahed-saleem) contains some interesting information about the history of Islamic edifices in the UK. The first mosque in Britain was built in 1889 in Liverpool by 20 British converts to Islam. It was housed in a Georgian terraced house. Since the arrival of many Muslim migrants in the UK im the 1950s and ‘60s, there is now a sizeable Muslim population in the country, and they worship in Britain’s approximately 1800 mosques. The earliest of these were in converted buildings, but now there are plenty of purpose-built mosques. Of these, one of the most beautiful and original is the mosque in Mill Road, Cambridge.

Shahed Saleem is an architect who specialises in designing mosques. Apparently, his pavilion at the V&A is the result of years spent studying mosques in Britain. With his Ramadan Pavilion, Saleem hopes that it will encourage people, who have never entered mosques, to explore mosque architecture and encourage them to enter these holy places to discover more about them. Well, that is an admirable aim, but from what I have seen of the pavilion, it is unlikely to fulfil that aim.

Undoubtedly, Saleem’s pavilion incorporates elements of mosque architecture and design. Sadly, it looks to me more like a children’s play area than a homage to Islamic architecture. I love Islamic architecture, but feel that the multi-coloured pavilion, which resembles something made with over-sized Lego bricks, does not respect the great beauty, delicacy, and intricateness that can be found in mosques both old and modern.

A new museum on the map

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THE MUSEUM OF ART and Photography (‘MAP’) in central Bangalore has just opened (on the 18th of February 2023. Facing the Visvesvaraya Industrial & Technical Museum, MAP is housed in a brand new building with some attractive architectural features.

The edifice has five floors and a basement, which is home to an exorbitantly priced café, run by a company called Smoor. The ground floor has a reception area, a book/gift shop, and some gallery space. This is currently housing an exhibition of fascinating, attractive sculptures by LN Tallur. Some of the works of this contemporary artist allude to Hindu deities in a novel way.

The first floor is home to an auditorium, named after one of MAP’s major donors, Mazumdar-Shaw. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, a childhood friend of my wife, is a keen collector of art and has helped finance many other cultural establishments. On the same floor, there is a digital exhibition, whose subject matter can be chosen by the visitor.

The second floor is dedicated to offices and a library. Above this on the third floor, there is currently an exhibition of photographs by Jyoti Bhatt (born 1934), who began his artistic career in the famous art school in Baroda (Vadodara) in Gujarat. His works range from excellent straightforward documentary photography to highly creative artistic photography and collage work.

On the fourth floor, we enjoyed a beautiful exhibition called “Visible/Invisible”. Curated by Kamini Sawhney, Arnika Ahldag, Vaishnavi Kambadur, Riya Kumar and Arshad Hakim, this show explores the visual representation of women in artworks through the ages. Words alone can not do justice to the impactful nature of the display, but I will give you a rough idea of its range. In addition to paintings, modern and old, there are sculptures; photographs; tapestries,; traditional textiles; prints; and a video installation. Most of the artworks in this show were created by Indians or members if the Indian diaspora. The show successfully demonstrates how women have been portrayed over the centuries and how this has changed, especially more recently.

The fifth floor has a terrace from which there are some great views. There were some tables and chairs up there, but the café, if it exists, was not open.

Some years ago, we were in Bangalore when its branch of the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) was opened in a restored palatial mansion near the Bangalore Golf Club. A beautifully designed annex was built next to the old building. When it was opened, I decided that it was a ‘must-see’ attraction in Bangalore. It remains so, but MAP in its newly constructed home will join NGMA amongst my suggestions of what should not be missed by visitors (and inhabitants) in Bangalore.

An empty cupola in Chennai

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ONE OF THE FIRST things that a visitor sees when entering Chennai’s Fort St George is a cupola supported by eight fluted pillars topped with Ionic capitals. It looks as if it ought to contain something, but it is empty.

In 1792, after losing a military campaign against the army of the British East India Company, the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, surrendered two of his sons as hostages to be held by the British. They were handed over to the British commander Lord Cornwallis. Tipu’s sons were taken to be held by the British until he had paid them an enormous sum of money, deemed to be reparations for damages that were supposed to have been inflicted on his British opponents. He managed to pay this ‘ransom’ after a couple of years, and his sons were returned.

Cornwallis was regarded as a great hero by the British. In about 1800, Thomas Banks sculpted an enormous stone statue of Cornwallis standing on a tall stone cylindrical base. The base has figures sculpted in bas-relief. The bas-relief depicts the moment when Tipu’s sons were handed over to Cornwallis.

At first, the statue was housed in the above-mentioned cupola. Later, it was moved indoors, first to the Long Room of the Connemara Library, and then later to the museum in Fort St George. It was moved indoors from its original position beneath the cupola, because, to quote an informative panel near it:
“… of ill feeling caused by certain reliefs on its base.”
Well, at least it was never toppled to the ground as was the case with, for example, statues of Stalin, Enver Hoxha, and the Bristol slaver Edward Colston.

A postman and his spear

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Happy New Year!

NEXT TO THE POST OFFICE on the corner of Bangalore’s Museum and State Bank of India Roads, there is a recently opened Museum of Communication. Housed in an old-fashioned Bangalorean bungalow, it is effectively a museum of the Indian postal services. This well laid out museum contains a variety of exhibits ranging from postage stamps to large pieces of mechanised equipment. I will describe a few of the many exhibits that interested me.

There is a photograph of the world’s highest post office (somewhere in the Himalayas). There is an enormous piece of equipment, which occupies the whole of a room. It was used for transmission of money orders. Several panels described the history of the Indian freedom struggle and that of the Indian Post.

Outside on the museum’s shady verandah, there is a collection of old letter boxes. They include boxes of various shapes, sizes, and colours. One of them bears the Portuguese words “CAIXA POSTAL”. Once upon a time, it must have been used in one of Portugal’s Indian colonies, but there was no information about its original location.

Outside the museum, and still in use, there is a hexagonal pillar box, very similar to one placed at the Bowring Institute in the late 1880s. Unlike the one at Bowring, which bears the British Indian postal insignia, the box near the museum has been modified to make it look like a post-Independence Indian Post pillar box.

Next to the entrance to the museum, also on the verandah, there is aalifesize model of an Indian postman of yesteryear. Wearing a green and white uniform (including a turban) with some red trim, he has a sack slung over his left shoulder. His right hand is stretche out in front of him. In it he holds a wooden shaft tipped with a sharp metal spear tip. Four small bells are attached to the base of this tip. A lantern hangs from his right wrist.

In the past, the postman mafe his way from village to village along paths through the jungle. The spear tip and its staff were used to ward off wild animals. The lantern was used to light his way, and the bells were rung to alert villagers to his arrival.

Visiting the museum was an interesting experience. Seeing the hardships that postmen used to face should make us pleased that we can now communicate using fax, email, and other modern inventions.

Transported back to childhood on the Isle of Wight

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IN THE EARLY 1970s, I used to travel on the London Underground’s line from Golders Green to Euston or Warren Street, both stations being near University College London, where I was a student. Back in those days, smoking was permitted on the Underground. Each Northern line tube train had two carriages for smokers. I have never smoked, but I used to travel in the smokers’ carriages because they were usually emptier than the other ones in which smoking was forbidden. Thinking back on this, I suppose that I must have been passively smoking on the Underground. On the other hand, because there were fewer people in the smoking carriages, my chances of catching other people’s airborne germs must have been reduced.

From an early age, before I became a daily commuter, I liked travelling in the rear carriages of the Northern Line tubes. These carriages contained control panels, which the train’s guards operated to open and close the doors and to inform the driver when the train was ready to leave. As a child, I was fascinated by watching the guard at work. Actually, there was little else to watch after the tube entered the tunnel after leaving Golders Green. Incidentally, what was the rear carriage, was also the front carriage when the train changed direction on reaching the end of a line.

The Northern Line trains I have been describing were built by Metro-Cammell in 1938. By the end of the 1980s, the trains were taken out of service and newer units began operating on the Northern Line. The 1938 trains were shipped out to the Isle of Wight, where they carried passengers on the Island Line. After many years of service on the island, the sea air caused these venerable trains to corrode and deteriorate. In the early years of the 21st century, they were taken out of service.

In late October 2022, we visited the train museum at Havenstreet on the Isle of Wight. One of the exhibits is a collection of old train carriages and engines in a large shed. Amongst these exhibits is one of the former Northern Line carriages built in 1938. Visitors are permitted to enter it. I was delighted to find that the example on display was one of the rear carriages containing the guard’s control panels. Seeing these again after so many years was a curiously moving experience. I felt for a moment that I had been transported back to my childhood days, when travelling in these trains used to fill me with wonder.

Some Islamic figurative art in the Victoria and Albert Museum

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THE VICTORIA AND Albert Museum (‘V&A’) in London’s South Kensington is one of my favourite museums. It contains a huge variety of exquisite artefacts. Some of them were obtained by fair means, and others, such as Tipu’s Tiger (an 18th century mechanical toy), by means that some might consider foul. I do not propose to write about the current discussions on the ethics of museum collections, but instead I will concentrate on some interesting tiles that arrived in the museum from Persia, where they were made during the Safavid Dynasty that was established in 1501 AD, and lasted until 1722.

The 36 tiles, arranged in 4 rows of 9, together depict a garden in which a lady is reclining with her 5 attractively dressed attendants around her, all wearing headgear: their uncovered faces are portrayed fully. This tiled panelling might have been originally made as part of an extensive architectural project in early 17th century Isfahan, the capital of the Safavid Dynasty. Other similar tiled panelling can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, so wrote Farshid Emami in his paper “All the City’s Courtesans: A Now-Lost Safavid Pavilion and Its Figural Tile Panels” (published in the Metropolitan Museum Journal in 2019). The panel is shaped so that it could be fitted beneath a window.

The Safavid Dynasty was Islamic. Unlike many other groups in the Islamic world, which discourage or forbid figurative representation, the Safavid rulers, who were great patrons of the arts, developed a dynastic artistic style in which the depiction of human figures played an important role. The tiles that are on display are a fine example of this. According to the V&A’s website (https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O93167/tile-panel/) these tiles were:

“Bought from L.S. Myers, 6 Savile Row, for £275…”

Myers & Co, which flourished at the above-mentioned address in the 19th century, usually dealt with prints. “A Biographical Dictionary of Nineteenth Century Antique and Curiosity Dealers” by MW Westgarth (publ. 2009) revealed:

“Abraham Myers (born c1815/16) traded as a curiosity dealer in Old Bond Street and at New Bond Street, London, from the 1850s. Myers is listed as ‘antiquary dealer’ at 179 New Bond Street in Kelly’s Directory, 1878 and 1886 and at 6 Savile Row in 1886–91.”

So, assuming that LS Myers was associated with this firm, the tiling might well have been bought between 1886 and 1891.

Every visit to the V&A, which might take much of a lifetime to explore fully, is exciting because each time I visit the place, I discover something fascinating, which I had not noticed before. These tiles are no exception to this.

A Persian carpet and a Socialist

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The Victoria and Albert Museum houses a huge, antique carpet from Ardibil (in Persia).It was made in about AD 1539, and is one of the oldest accurately dated carpets.

You will need to read my book “Beyond Marylebone and Mayfair: Exploring West London” to discover the link between this carpet and a Socialist activist, who lived in Hammersmith.

Buy your copy of my book at Lutyens & Rubinstein (Kensington Park Road) OR from Amazon (https://www.amazon.co.uk/BEYOND-MARYLEBONE…/dp/B0B7CR679W/)

The oyster merchant’s clock tower

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BURNHAM-ON-CROUCH in Essex is a picturesque port on the River Crouch. Currently, it is a leisure resort and a centre for ship maintenance and boating. It was once famed for what grew in great numbers on the muddy bed under the water of the Crouch: oysters. For several centuries before the river became polluted in the 19th century, the oyster beds in the Crouch (and a few other places in Essex) were very profitable, providing much employment.  

“On the shores of England the principal nurseries of oysters, not only for the English markets, but also for the foreign, are those on the coast of Essex and the estuaries adjoining: those taken there are called ‘ Natives/ Mr. Sweeting claims the name as peculiarly applicable to his fishery, as within his memory no strange oysters have ever been introduced…”

Men were required both to dredge the oyster beds and process the molluscs as well as to protect the precious creatures from thieves based in other places on the Essex coast.

Today (11th of July 2022), we visited the small but excellent museum in Burnham-on-Crouch. On the ground floor, we saw a retired mechanised oyster grading machine (made in France and capable of sorting 7000 oysters per hour) amongst the exhibits. On the upper floor of the museum, which is housed in a former boat repair building, we met the museum’s treasurer, who is a mine of interesting local history. He told us several things about Burnham’s oyster heydays. I hope that what I am about to tell you is a reasonably accurate summary of what he told us. If it is not totally accurate, I hope that he and you, dear reader, will forgive me.

For 10 years, I used to live in north Kent and often visited Whitstable to enjoy eating oysters for which this Kentish seaport is famous. The treasurer in Burnham told us that many of what are described as ‘Whitstable oysters’ were born in the mud beneath the river in Burnham-on-Crouch. From what I can recall, the young oysters, which grow in the mud beneath the Crouch, are dredged and then placed on boards to which they attach themselves. Keeping them submerged in seawater, the boards to which the young oysters are attached, were transported to Whitstable where they matured in its waters. The Burnham oysters were ‘native’, meaning that they began their lives there; they were not imported, as Thomas Campbell Eyton described in “A history of the oyster and the oyster fisheries” (published in 1858):

“On the shores of England the principal nurseries of oysters, not only for the English markets, but also for the foreign, are those on the coast of Essex and the estuaries adjoining: those taken there are called ‘Natives’. Mr. Sweeting claims the name as peculiarly applicable to his fishery, as within his memory no strange oysters have ever been introduced.”

One of the exhibits in the museum is a large model of the octagonal Victorian clock tower that dominates Burnham-on-Crouch’s High Street. The tower stands next to the building that used to house the former St Mary’s School. It was erected in 1877 to honour the local philanthropist Laban Sweeting (1793-1876). So, what, you might ask, and what has he got to with what I have been writing about?

Laban Sweeting, mentioned in the quoted from Eyton’s book, was a philanthropist; a member of The Burnham River Company; and he was one of the town’s oyster merchants. The museum has amongst its exhibits a small barrow, which used to be wheeled around Burnham by a member of the Sweeting family. It would have carried baskets of oysters ready for sale to the town’s populace.

We had visited Burnham once before, and although I was impressed by the clock tower, I knew nothing of its history. Neither did I know about the town’s association with oysters, which were poor people’s food in the 19th century, when chicken was a luxury. How times have changed.

Rum and cane in Madeira

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CALHETA IS A COASTAL town in Madeira about 1.5 hours drive west of the capital, Funchal. We went there for an outing to see something of Madeira away from its capital. While there we saw an interesting factory-cum-museum.

The island of Madeira was once a major producer of sugar cane. Some of the work was performed by black slaves, but unlike other places such as Brazil, the slaves in Madeira tended to be ‘employed ‘ as domestics and builders. Today, sugar cane is till grown in Madeira,  but the workers are local Madeirans.

Cane pressing machinery in Calheta

In Calheta,there is an enterprise called Sociedad dos Enghennos da Calheta. This is a factory where sugar cane is crushed between rollers to extract the sugar cane juice.  The juice is fermented in the factory to produce rum. It is also processed to make molasses. The place also makes traditional Madeiran cake called Bolo de Mel and soecial biscuits. All of these products can be sampled and bought at the factory. Visitors are free to wander around the factory and its attached museum, which contains a fine collection of vintage industrial machinery.

As with other museums we have seen in Madeira, the exhibits are well displayed. Although the main attraction of Calheta is its sandy beach – the only one in Madeira: it is created using sand imported from North Africa, the rum and cane factory/museum is well worth a visit.