lifeasdaddy

Powerhouse Museum Favourites - Part 6: Maggie's ABC Book

Here's the book I'm talking about. 

It's a children's book, home made in 1894.  It contains many educational devices  which are still found in quality childrens books today.

The book is highly personalised, painstakingly hand illustrated and lettered. Not unusually for the time it includes Christian prayers for a child.

Numbers are also included, here counting up to twelve the basic commercial quantity of the age.  The advanced copperplate script is shown, days of the week,  months and compass points.

A page is devoted to each letter of the alphabet showing three simple and everyday words beginning with that letter and also showing a drawing of each item.  For example the letter "I" is exemplified by Ivy, Ink and Iron.

William Harrison (1881 - 1923)  made it when aged just 13 for his niece Maggie Harrison who lived in Argyle Terrace, Twerton on Avon,England.  William, although born in England was apparently living in Australia at the time he made the book and it contains images of Australiana in addition to things which would have been familiar to Maggie.

The quality of lettering and illustration  produced by a 13 year old boy is absolutely astounding.

Unsurprisingly, William Harrison went on to a significant career as Art Director and later advertising manager for Wunderlich Limited.

Other examples of his work in the PHM collection are:

- This set of 1896 Christmas cards he sent to his nieces Maggie and Kathleen

- A set of hand drawn designs  for Wunderlich Ceilings from 1907 - 1909.

- A photograph of the house he designed for himself and built in 1911 at 34 Manning Road, Double Bay.  2009 Google street view of this property here.

- A watercolour painting by Harrison of a house, circa 1920.

The treasure though is Maggie's ABC book.

Powerhouse Museum Favourites - Part 5: The Sydney Observatory

One of Edward's favourite places at the moment is the Sydney Observatory, part of the Powerhouse Museum.

He enjoyed his daytime visit to the Sydney Observatory in January this year and has been asking us  if he could return for a night viewing through the telesopes. Since it is school holiday time last week we all went to check out Saturn Night Fever, the current observatory night viewing programme.

"See Saturn without its famous rings as they turn side on to the Earth roughly every 15 years, Alpha Centauri our nearest stellar neighbour, the constellations Scorpius and Crux and many other celestial features through telescopes and experience space as never before in the 3D space theatre."

Our guide, who happened to have a Ph.D. in astrophysics, took our group to the rear courtyard and while there was a break in the cloud cover used a laser pointer to identify major constellations and stars.  Edward was pleased to see Scorpius and the Southern Cross.

(This pic is from Jan 2009 - but you get the ide of the 3-D glasses)

Then we had a session in the 3-D movie theatre to see the shorts  Extreme Places and Bigger than Big. In between the movies there was a question and answer session, and Edward impressed me, and surprised the astronomer by asking a question about goldilocks planets.  I had never even heard of goldilocks planets, but Ed read about them in one of his astronomy books.

Then up to the South Dome for some viewing. We could not see Saturn due to atmospheric conditions, but focussed the telescope on Alpha Centuri.

The telescope there is the oldest working telescope in Australia.  Custom built by Hugo Schroder in 1874, it has an 11.4 inch aperture.  Brief history by Geoff Barker here.  Details of recent restoration and updated photographs here.

Powerhouse Museum favourites - Part 4: The Collins medal.

If this is what I think it is, then it's significant because it was presented to one of Australia's best known naval heroes for his work captaining one of our most famous though ill-fated ships.  It's my second favourite.

The Powerhouse Museum describes it thus:

"N19261 Medal (-1) in case (-2), Australia: NSW, commemorative, presented by the City of Sydney to Captain J.A. Collins C.B.,R.A.N. for the sinking of B Colleoni by HMAS Sydney, 1940."

At age 14, John Augustine Collins entered the new Royal Australian Naval College in the first intake, 1913.  After various career postings he was promoted Captain in 1937 and after war came assumed command of HMAS Sydney (II) in November 1939.

(Department of Defence photo - HMAS Sydney arrives in Sydney for the first time 1936)

On 19 July 1940, HMAS Sydney (II)  captained by Collins engaged the Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni in battle. Naval gunfire was exchanged, but Sydney was the victor, sinking the Bartolomeo Colleoni in the first such allied naval victory in the mediterranean.  Captain Collins was honoured on 26 July 1940 by being made a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB)

When the ship returned to Sydney on 11 February 1941 it was met by huge crowds, about 150,000 people.  The crew marched through the streets of Sydney and were feted with a civic reception at the Sydney Town Hall.

 

 

(Department of Defence photo- HMAS Sydney II crew parade at Sydney's Martin Place after Meditteranian victories. 11th February 1941)

Here is the report from The Canberra Times of the follwoing day, Wednesday 12 February 1941. The reports says:

"Replicas of the plaque to celebrate the victory over the Italian cruiser were presented to ten representatives of the cruiser's company by the Lord Mayor, at the Town Hall.

A plaque has been placed on the gun turret on the quarter deck of the cruiser.

The Lord Mayor who carried out the opening ceremony, also presented a rose bowl to the ward room and a set of silver tankards to the officers mess.

Alderman Crick also said an identical plaque would be set up in the Sydney Town Hall."

This medal presented to Captain Collins is one of the replicas of that plaque.

As the newspaper report states, the identical plaque to that presented to the ship was set up in Sydney Town Hall.  I know it still exists, although I have not yet seen it myself.

The perfect companion item to the Powerhouse Museum's medal presented to Captain Collins would be this audio recording of the speech he gave that day, held by ScreenSound Australia.

The record also shows that the officers and crew were treated to a dinner at the Sydney Town Hall that night.  Captain Collins relinquished command of HMAS Sydney (II) on 14 May 1941.

Alas, the ship met a terrible fate on 20 November 1941and was sunk by the German raider Kormoran.  There were no survivors.

In the case of this medal, it will be interesting to find out how many medals were struck, and how many presented to members of the crew.  Some would likely have gone down with the ship.

At the moment, my guesstimate is that less than 20 would have been struck.

The archives of the City of Sydney will have some of that information and part will lay elsewhere.

There is an interesting file at the National Archives of Australiatitled HMAS Sydney - Replicas presented to Ships Co.  (NAA: SP338/1, 691/19)  It's 167 pages and runs from 14 August 1940 to 8 June 1943. According to Richard Summerrell's guide to Commonwealth Government records on the sinking of HMAS sydney (II), he states in Chapter 10:

 "Late on the evening of 10 February 1941 the HMAS Sydney returned to Sydney after its tour of duty in the Mediterranean. The next day an estimated crowd of 200 000 welcomed the officers and men of the ship when they marched through the city. This file deals with arrangements for the Sydney’s arrival at Circular Quay, for a civic reception on 11 February at the Town Hall, and for the presentation to the ship by the people of Sydney of a plaque in commemoration of Sydney’s sinking of the Bartolomeo Colleoni in the Mediterranean on 19 July 1940. The file includes letters from relatives of the crew both before and after the Sydney’s loss in November 1941, seeking presentation of replica plaques to those crew unable to collect them on the day of the presentation. Navy Office’s advice was that unpresented plaques had been placed in the Sydney’s safe and had therefore been lost with the ship."

It will be interesting to see the correspondence, especially any between Navy Office and the City of Sydney about the number of medals struck and their disposition.  I'm trying to get a copy of the NAA file.

John A. Collins went on to become a stellar person in the development of the Royal Australian Navy.  

In mid-1944 he was promoted Commodore and  became the first Australian to command the Australian Naval Squadron, as ships of the RAN were collectively known.  Prior to that a Royal Navy man had always been the senior operational commander.  He made HMAS Australia his flagship, and was seriously injured in October 1944 when that ship became one of the first victims of a deliberate Japanese suicide plane.

In July 1945 he returned to duty and made HMAS Shropshire his flagship.  

And this is where the story got very  interesting for me.  My father served in that ship.

After the long years of World War II, the guns were silent on 2 September 1945 when the Japanese surrender was accepted aboard USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

HMAS Shropshire was in Tokyo Bay on that day, and Commodore Collins was accorded the honour of representing the Royal Australian Navy at the surrender ceremony.

Here's an excerpt from the ship's deck log of that day:

(National Archives of Australia SP551/1 Bundle 503 - photograph by blog author)

The Ship's post office had made a special mail canceling stamp to mark the occasion of the end of the war and my father, like many others, sent a letter home postmarked "Tokyo Bay 2 Sep 1945"; and also like many others taking signatures from shipmates :

You'll notice the signature at the bottom right hand corner: "John Collins".

The same John Collins??

It would be nice to think so, but there was also a Stoker named John Collins, as well as Commodore John Collins in the ship on that great day.

I'll have to check with my dear Dad and see.

It is worth noting that apart from this medal believed to have been presented to Captain Colllins, there is one other example of the replica plaque in the collection of the Powerhouse Museum, and it appears here.

So it seems that the Powerhouse Museum has two specimens of war related numismatics both of which are very rare, and highly significant.  As far as I can tell at the moment, the Australian War Memorial - our nation's great repository of things military and relating to war -  has zero specimens.

Now, enough of things relating to war, naval history and the sea.

ADDED 10/08/09:  Vice Admiral Sir John Collins eventually wrote his memoirs As Luck Would Have It which were published in 1965.

And on page 97 appears this reminiscence of the presentation of medals to each member of the ship at Sydney Town Hall:

H.M.A.S. Sydney, Meditemmell7l-lJ

families and girlfriends. This over, we set out on our march

to the TO'wn Hall.

I had warned the ship's company it would be a march at

attention with no waving to the crowd. As we marched up

Macquarie Street I saw, out of the corner of my eye, my

five-year-old daughter with her grandmother. Seeing her

father again was tOo much for Gillian. She broke away from

the grand-parental hand and rushed across the street \vaving

a flag at me. A press photographer must have been on the

spot, for next morning the picrure in the paper showed that

I had remembered my own orders. Gillian is waving a flag

a few feet away from me but I was happy to see that my

head and eyes were to the front. The sailors would have been

amused had I been shown waving back, and it would have

been difficult to know how many days' No. 11 punishment

to give myself!

The city of Sydney gave her name-ship a wonderful reception,

including presenting a medallion to each crew

member. A large plaque of the same design was presented to

the ship and secured to Y rurret. That, like the plaque from

Swan Hunter's workmen, also rests at the bonom of the

Indian Ocean.

The only untoward incident occurred as the ship went into

dry dock at Cockatoo Island a few days after arrival. The

entrance to the dock is rather trid:y in a southerly wind as

there is no room for rugs forward.

It is essential to get a wire

out from the bows to the nose of the dock as soon as the

ship is positioned, otherwise she will blow down on shoal

water. Out went the heaving lines but the dockyard riggers

refused to handle them. There Was some dispute on about

the time allowed for washing hands after breakfast! We

had lowered boats on approaching the dock and thus we

were able to get our own hands ashore to man the wires

before it was toO late. vVe were not amused by Our welcome

to

Cockatoo Island.

97

Inside the Odditoreum

Edward becomes part of the display in the Odditoreum by sticking his head through a hole and becoming part of the Hill of Heads:

At the Powerhouse Museum until 13 September 2009.

Powerhouse Museum Favourites - Part 3: Exploring naval history.

One of my specialist areas of interest is naval history, and particularly that of the Royal Australian Navy and the United States Navy.

Preparing for our Talks Afternoon presentation I thought I could prove my proposition that the Powerhouse Museum can be all things to all people by checking some of their naval history holdings.

There are some real gems there.

There's  the Sydney-Emden medal, which commemorates the naval surface battle of 9 November 1914 during which HMAS Sydney (I) sank the German warship SMS Emden.This was a tremendously significant naval victory in a year which had seen precious few victories for the "allied" powers.  It was also celebrated as the first naval victory by a Royal Australian Navy (RAN) ship, after the navy had been formed in 1911.  Previously it had run as a colonial outpost of the Royal Navy.  So there it was significant as one more step towards national maturity - having our own capable naval force. Cutting the colonial apron strings and all that.  The online collection detail at the PHM perversely only shows the reverse of the medal, the obverse almost certainly looks like this one.

My friend Mac Gregory recently received a query about a similar medal too.

Sidebar: In the symbiosis between the City of Sydney and her namesake ships HMAS Sydney (I), HMAS Sydney (II) and HMAS Sydney (III), the City of Sydney was selected to be the recipient of one of the major prizes from the Emden, a 4-inch naval gun.

Turning our attention to the flagship of the RAN in World War One, HMAS Australia (I) there are a number of relics from the ship in the PHM collection, and a connection to one of the world's first arms limitation treaties - The Washington treaty of 1922 on the limitation of armament agreed between the United States of America, the British Empire (of which Australia was a part), France, Italy and Japan.

Flagship of the Royal Australian Navy, HMAS Australia, Sydney Harbour, between 1913-1924 / unknown photographer, originally uploaded by State Library of New South Wales collection.

The Washington Treaty dictated that certain countries would be permitted to have a limited number of warships, classified by displacement tonnage and armament; and additionally would agree to build only limited types of warships in the future.

HMAS Australia (I) was in excess of the treaty limits, so she had to be deliberately rendered unusable, as did her armament of 12-inch naval guns.  The ship was scuttled 23 miles off Sydney Heads in 1924.

Before the ship was scuttled, much of of the usable material was salvaged such as copper piping, and significantly  " £35,000 worth of fittings was removed and allocated to the Universities and Technical Colleges of the various states. At least some of these items remained in regular use as teaching aids for over fifty years." (ref. Sea Power Australia )

Sidebar: Documents at the National Archives of Australia detail much of the discussion about salvaging items from the HMAS Australia (I) and what was to be done with them, including the teak decking.  The teak decking was used to make special frames for photographs of the ship which were subsequently distributed to 1061 local government, city and shire councils around our great nation.  Some of these photographs must still be out there somewhere.  I wonder if the holders know what they've got!

Many of these salvaged and souvenired  items appear in the collection of the PHM, such as the muzzle end of a 12-inch gun barrel, part of a capstan bar,  a raising block, engine room phone,  a couple of breech openers, projectile hoist indicator,  action stations klaxon, and steam engines here, here and here, and a swash plate engine. Mostly items of use in technical and engineering trade education of the day.  They are the real nitty gritty of ship operations. Although now of little interest in themselves as museum pieces, but their very acquisition represents a time when governments of several countries were trying to limit the arms race during the economic hardships of the 1920s and making a failed attempt to prevent the next world war.

A reasonably good overview of the Washington Naval Treaty, although mainly from a US perspective is on wikipedia here.

My favourite naval history item in the collection though is the medal presented to Captain John Collins by the City of Sydney in 1941.  And that's the topic of my next blog post in this series.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Powerhouse Museum Favourites - Part 2: More on the Slave Medallion.

As I said, one of my favourite items in the Powerhouse Museum Collection is the Slave Medallion.

The one @ the Powerhouse Museum is black-on-white jasper ware, which struck me as being unusual, because the Wedgwood works was best known for white-on-blue jasper ware.

Checking around the internet I have found one example of the slave medallion in white-on-blue, this one at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia.

I referred before to the image of the supplicant black man being unpopular with some.  It grew to be abhorrent because the image took on a life of its own and was published far and wide. It also inspired similar images in art, and for quite a time reinforced an image of black inferiority.

ADDED 19/07/09:  Janson Hews of the Powerhouse Museum has pointed out an excellent example of the slave medallion with commentary at the V&A museum.

ADDED 31/07/09:  The page from the online Wedgwood Museum about the Slave Medallion is here.

I'm excited. An invitation for us to speak at the Powerhouse Museum about personal favourites.

Righto.  Diaries out.  

On Father's Day, Sunday the 6th of September, Edward and I have been invited to deliver a talk at the Powerhouse Museum as part of the Talks Afternoon series. 2pm in the Target Theatre.

Six sets of Fathers and children are going to present a talk on their personal favourite parts of the Museum.  Be it a collection item, space, activity or whatever. It's "What do you love about the Powerhouse Museum?"

It'll be fun.

Edward will choose five things to talk about.  I'll choose five things.

Originally it was thought the format would be a pecha kucha, which would have made it 20 slides with 20 seconds of narration each.  Now the presentation format has been slightly altered to permit each family use of as many slides as they wish with a suggested minimum of 20 and to show for 10 minutes.

6 teams.  10 minutes each.  That'll  be a one hour show.

Edward is very excited about the project.  He's working on his favourites list.  So am I.

I think that the theme I'll project for my part of the talk will be that the museum's holdings are so broad that it is truly a museum for all people.  No matter what your interest, there is something there for you.  That idea and a couple of other things.

The first favourite I have is a small ceramic medallion made by  Josiah Wedgwood's pottery works.  It was made in around 1787 to promote the abolition of the slave trade.

The motto around the edge is "AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER?" which was used in the campaign for the abolition of the slave trade.

Incongruously, even though it is currently on display in the Inspired! Design across time. semi-permanent exhibition, the online collection record says little about it.

The medallion is small.  Height 30mm, width 27mm, depth 3mm.

There's some slight confusion about the dating of the item, with the online collection record stating circa 1787, and the curatorial display plaque giving about 1840.

But it is a very powerful piece of iconography and represents one of the most important human rights movements of the past 300 years. Josiah Wedgwood was one of the most prominant industrialists of his time and his support was very important for the cause.  His inimitable ceramics were already fashionable in the period and this medallion was perhaps the first time a fashion item could be and was worn as a political statment. 

The image of a manacled black man in supplication was not however popular with all.

I'm going to make some more blog posts about this project over the next couple of months under the blog category Talks Afternoon. 

Edward and I cooking some roasted tomato soup.

This recipe is pretty easy, and we had good fun.

Edward:  Wash the tomatoes.

Me:  Halve and core the tomatoes.  When I say core I mean cut out the hard piece running along the centre fanning out at one end to which the stalk has been attached.

Edward:  Place the tomatoes cut side down in a roasting dish.  Then wash some fresh basil leaves including stalks and place them on the tomatoes.

Me:  Peel and quarter one medium brown onion.  Peel and slightly crush five cloves of garlic.  The garlic will be removed after roasting, so don't crush it too much.

Edward:  Scatter onion, garlic and some thyme over the tomatoes.

Me:  Roast in oven at around 200 degrees C. for about 45 minutes.

Remove from oven.

Remove garlic, basil and thyme from dish.  Allow to cool.

Edward and I:  Puree roasted tomatoes and onion to make soup.

Either reheat and serve or freeze to use later.

Bon appetite!

Melvin Vaniman's panorama: Sydney from a balloon, 27 March 1904

Sydney from a balloon, 27 March 1904, originally uploaded by State Library of New South Wales collection.

It's impossible to really tell how wonderful this image is on the little computer screen you are looking at now.

There's just one way to find out. The State Library of New South Wales has made some large scale prints of this circa 1904 panoramic photographs of Sydney and put them on display in the Mitchell Galleries as part of the Nelson Meers Foundation Heritage Collection.

I encourage you to take a look. It would be particularly good for high school level students in the next two weeks' school holidays. when I visited the exhibition today a few tourists were enjoying it too.

It's free. Until January 2010.

Exhibition guide here.  If you can't get there, read this. And a beautifully designed guide it is too.

Exhibition home here.

On Flickr here.

ADDED 11 July 2009:  This exhibition at the SLNSW does appear to be slightly recycled from the similar 2001 exhibition held at the SLNSW entitled "A different perspective: Vaniman the acrobatic photographer".

Click on these thumbnails from the 2001 exhibition to get some good views.

Maybe the giant prints currently on show in 2009 are new, although the library's "Achievements 2002/02" report does refer on page 13 to "its giant panoramic scenes of Sydney and beyond."

The current exhibition is no less worthy for having been shown before, and has the added benefit of a current 2009 panoramic view of Sydney Town Hall and the Queen Victoria Building for a then-and-now comparison.

Versailles, coin de parc

Versailles, coin de parc, originally uploaded by George Eastman House.

This is part of a wonderful set of photographs by Eugène Atget who photographed in and around Paris at the turn of 1900. The composition of this one is particularly interesting with intersecting vertical and diagonal elements.