Powerhouse Museum Object of the Week

Fashions on the Court

Published on November 6, 2009 in Fashion, Costume and Dress and Object of the week. 0 Comments Tags: fashion, margaret court, serena williams, tennis.

Published by Melanie Pitkin

Nowadays, watching tennis is as much of a sport as playing it! While there is the game itself, the on court fashion is equally a crowd pleaser. During the Hopman Cup in Perth earlier this year, tennis legend Margaret Court observed that players’ outfits make them “look like they should be on the beach”. She argued that today’s fashion has gone overboard – it is clingy, shows everything and puts the spectators focus on the player’s body rather than on their game. While some may argue that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it does highlight the drastic shift in attitudes towards tennis and tennis fashions.

In the last 135 years since women first started playing tennis, we have gone from head to toe coverings to barely there, and both extremes can be seen in the Museum’s collection.

This late 19th century example from England comprises a long sleeved tunic jacket and ankle length skirt made from tussore silk. It is more like a fanciful costume than sporting attire and would have been worn with black stockings, laced shoes with a heel, hat and gloves. Fitted on the skirt of this particular example are a number of hooks and eyelets which allowed the wearer to fold up the bottom of the skirt while playing. Some other dresses from this time were even fitted with pockets or an apron for holding the balls, in readiness for serving, or the racquet while socialising off the court. Tennis dresses for women at this time were an indication of a ladies charm and elegance, a far cry from what they stand for today!

TEN-US OPEN-WILLIAMS SERVE Image courtesy of blackperspective.net

Our 21st century example is not really a dress, as such, but a ‘catsuit’! It was designed and made by Puma in 2002 and a similar one to this was worn by Serena Williams (see above) at the US Open in the same year (she beat her own sister in it to win the final!). It is a sleeveless one-piece suit with built in shorts, made of black polyester and a zip front. In other words, there isn’t much material and it’s worn like a second skin. It’s not elegant, but nor was it ever designed to be this way. Instead, it speaks business, strength and confidence and, for Serena Williams, an outfit like this can look very threatening to the opposition, showing off her muscular frame, which is in itself, an excellent strategy for gaining the psychological upper hand in a match.

Whether or not the ‘catsuit’ is a tennis fashion faux-pas, however, I am undecided. I think I’ve seen a lot worse on the tennis court – white socks with black sneakers, all over hair beads, the back-to-front cap, black leather knee high boots, one long sleeve and one short sleeve and wearing the same colour top or dress as the surface you’re playing on!

What do you think? Fashion faux-pas or fashion revolution? And, do you think we’ll ever see a revival of the ankle length skirt again!?

In case you’re baffled about which tennis player goes with each fashion faux-pas, here are the answers (L-R): Andre Agassi/Pete Sampras/Lleyton Hewitt, Venus Williams, Lleyton Hewitt, Serena Williams, Martina Hingis, Rafael Nadal.

Saddling up with Gucci

Published on November 3, 2009 in Fashion, Costume and Dress, News and Registrar's corner. 0 Comments Tags: fashion, gucci, horse racing, melbourne cup.

Published by Lynne McNairn

Horse racing and fashion have always been closely associated and with Melbourne Cup upon us I had a look for “Horse Racing Fashion” in our databaase. One item is this bright floral dress made by Gucci around 1970. Gucci had a strong association with horses, starting out as he did with a small family owned saddlery shop.

Guccio Gucci (1881-1953), began his career in 1920 when he opened a saddlery business in Florence, Italy. Using equestrian motifs as an inspiration, Guccio established the House of Gucci and opened his first fashion boutique in 1921. During his lifetime, Gucci introduced many of the designs for which the company has become known, such as the bamboo handle handbag and the suede moccasin with a metal bit. After his death in 1953, Gucci’s sons continued to expand the company overseas, using their father’s initials to establish the famous GG logo. Although now under the direction of new designers, The House of Gucci remains the best selling Italian brand, and certainly one of the most easily recognisable brands in the world.

You can really see the equestrian influence in the buttons which show not only the horse shoe but an accurate representation of a horse’s foot as well.

Horse hoof button

Lynne McNairn
Registrar

Movember

Published on October 30, 2009 in News. 3 Comments Tags: blades, depression, Lawrence Hargrave, moustache, movember, prostate cancer, razor.

Published by Erika Dicker

Yes, it’s that time of year again…Movember! This annual charity event is responsible for handlebar and Fu Manchu moustaches around Australia, and indeed the world, each November. Originating in Melbourne in 2003, Movember aims to promote awareness and raises much-needed funds for men’s health issues, with a focus on prostate cancer and depression.

The first rule of Movember is to obviously begin the month with a clean-shaven face. One of the more interesting A-category objects in our collection comprises two folding cut-throat razors owned by John Fletcher Hargrave, father of aviation pioneer Lawrence Hargrave.
00537397 Photography Powerhouse Museum © all rights reserved

The blades are made from a section of recycled iron salvaged from one of the piles of old London Bridge, reputedly driven into the bed of the River Thames by King William Rufus in 1100. The use of iron shoes to manufacture items such as razor blades, tools and surgical instruments was quite common after the old London Bridge was demolished in 1830.

Given to J.F. Hargrave by his father at sixteen years of age, the razors are accompanied by a handmade silk bag and an envelope on which the provenance of the blades is handwritten.

The blades are significant due to their association with Lawrence Hargrave. The blades were passed to him upon his father’s death in 1885 and were kept in the family until they were kindly donated to the Powerhouse Museum by Mrs Helen Gray, Lawrence’s eldest daughter, in 1963.

So, at the end of the month when the Man of Movember has been crowned and the Tom Selleck wannabes go home, I’m sure a set like this will come in handy.

Kate Scott
Registrar

Early solar car

Published on October 27, 2009 in Object of the week and Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Engines. 0 Comments Tags: global green challenge, ian landon-smith, solar car.

Published by Margaret Simpson

Solar car racing is not new. The Powerhouse Museum has one of the cars that competed in the world’s first transcontinental solar car race, then called the Pentax World Solar Challenge, in 1987. Ours, dubbed Solar Resource, was designed and built by a small team of Sydney engineers headed by Ian Landon Smith in the garage of a North Shore home. Imagine what the locals thought when they took it out for a test drive back in the 80s!

The car managed to average 25.64 km/hr over the 3,000 km race from Darwin to Adelaide. The entrants in the current race are cruising at something like 90 km/hr and can go up to 140 km/hr. Although state-of-the-art at the time, Solar Resource has electro-mechanical control and is really pretty primitive by today’s standards. Solar Resource came first in the private entry class and 7th overall out of a field of 24 starters – but only 11 finished the race.

You don’t have to travel to Adelaide to see a solar car. Ours is on display in the Museum’s Transport exhibition, so come in and check out the 760 solar cells on the fibreglass and Kevlar body and contemplate how far we’ve come in 22 years.

Death in the Museum- part two- the crematorium

Published on October 23, 2009 in Death in the Museum. 3 Comments Tags: ashes, burial, coffin, creamtorium, death.

Published by Charles Pickett

In the first contribution to Death in the Museum, Erika wrote: ‘coffins have traditionally been made to protect the body, and thus been made out of strong materials such as steel and hardwood’.

It is interesting that this practice survives because most coffins are burned, not buried. Cremation is more popular (is that the word?) than burial in Australia. Cremation was rare in Western societies until the twentieth century – Rookwood Crematorium opened in 1925, Eastern Suburbs (Botany) in 1938, and the practice was not truly mainstream until the 1960s and 1970s. The churches – the Roman Catholic Church, especially – were opposed to cremation, although this opposition is less strident today.

In 1994 the Powerhouse acquired technology and other artefacts from Eastern Suburbs Crematorium. It seemed worthwhile to document this major change in funeral ritual and practice. In addition, technological efficiency and certainty were main arguments for cremation – mourners received the tangible remains of their loved one, rather than a site for its slow decomposition.

The cremation process at Botany is now fully automated, partly to reduce atmospheric pollution and furnace fuel consumption. The artefacts acquired by the Powerhouse included a 1938 ‘charging’ machine – a wheeled trolley used to transfer coffins from the funeral chapels to the furnace (as seen in the photo above). The coffins were loaded and unloaded with manual assistance by Crematorium staff.

We also acquired a converted coffee grinder, used to ensure that the funery ashes attained a fine consistency.
94_225_1
With possibly an excess of curatorial zeal the acquiring curator, Eddie Butler-Bowdon, organised a photographic trip to Botany to record the crematorium works in action. Museum photographer Andrew Frolows’ images are memorable, capturing an experience quite different to that on the other side of the funeral chapel wall. 0022252 0022251 0022255 0022256

An occasional debate occurs regarding the environment consequences of cremation and burial. This usually involves comparing the energy input and pollution output of a crematorium against that of indefinitely maintaining a cemetery.

Yet at a personal level the industrial violence of cremation was the abiding impression. Perhaps this is merely a new variant of the Victorian fear – dramatised in literature and music – of being buried alive. The most important consideration, perhaps, is the experience of the mourners, not that of curators (who are paid to be nosy).

We’d like to know your experiences and thoughts of cremation. Would you like to be cremated or buried?

Movement in the collection

Published on October 20, 2009 in Registrar's corner. 2 Comments Tags: object movement, registration.

Published by Erika Dicker

Registration staff are (among many other things) responsible for moving Museum objects from A to B, this could be from one shelf to the one below or from the collection store to the main gallery space or between one of the numerous departments who require them for whatever reason. We just had some recent stats come in and thought we would share with you just how many movements of collection material happen in one year, last financial year to be precise.

For this year alone Registration and Stores staff have facilitated 60,353 object movements!

That is a whole lot of moving around, now for some interesting details associated with this figure of 60,353 –

Of these

652 were loans returned, that is objects carefully returned to lenders, with many kind thanks

On the flip side 513 movements sent out to other institutions big and small as part of our outgoing loans policy

1,490 were objects being moved to our photography studio

6,572 were objects heading to the conservation labs for some TLC

5,062 were movements of the historic wool collection, as part of the TAM Collection Maintenance project

306 were objects moved to the Display store at Castle Hill

And 4607 movements in and around the other stores at Castle Hill

00z06418

And the rest were movements to and from exhibition (including travelling exhibitions) and in and around the ultimo collection stores. This breaks down to

28,950 movements in the basement alone

6463 to REXAS – this is the Registration Exhibition Assembly Space

969 to the Switch house for exhibitions including Modern Times and the Odditoreum

138 to the Boiler Hall for ecologic, space, transport and Design Tech

320 to the Turbine hall for universal machine and the Australian Communities gallery

482 to the Wran building for Inspired, musical instruments, Gene Sherman, Yinalung Yenu, Student Fashion, Target Theatre, the Café and the boardroom

Now if you don’t mind we might have a little lay down.

contributed by Alison Brennan
Registrar, Exhibitions and Collections

A Snowy souvenir

Published on October 16, 2009 in Object of the week. 0 Comments Tags: 60th anniversary, snowy mountain scheme, souvenir.

Published by Rudder Debbie

The 60th anniversary of the launch of the Snowy Mountains Scheme will be celebrated on 17 October 2009. Such grand engineering projects tend to generate tourism – and souvenirs to remind tourists of their visit. They also remind us of the public relations exercises that help publicly funded projects reach their goals rather than be cut short by politicians. So which souvenir would a family with three young boys be likely to purchase in Cooma: a tea towel, teaspoon, pennant, or a map and cross section of the Scheme?

The Longworth family purchased this souvenir, and a moulded plastic topographic map of the area, for their educational value as well as to help them remember their journey and the experience of seeing the monumental Scheme transform the landscape. Ironically these souvenirs had long been forgotten when one of the Longworth boys finally tidied his boyhood bedroom in 1999 and discovered them behind his old wardrobe.

This object is a moulded plastic representation of two major cross sections of the mountains, showing reservoirs, tunnels, pumping stations and power stations. It has added historical value, when compared to representations of the completed Scheme, because it shows Kosciusko Reservoir and Power Station, which were never built – for cost and environmental reasons rather than loss of political will.

We’d love to hear if anyone else remembers these Snowy souvenirs?

Debbie Rudder

Ps: The Museum will have a small display in our foyer to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the scheme, don’t forget to have a look if you are coming to visit.

Dust as Art

Published on October 13, 2009 in Registrar's corner. 4 Comments Tags: dust, jewellery, teruo akatsu.

Published by Lynne McNairn

Dust has been headline news recently with the dramatic dust storm over Sydney. This reminded me of an object in our collection literally made of dust! It is a necklace called ‘Illusion dust’ made by Japanese jewellery maker Teruo Akatsu in 1993.

Akatsu says of his work -

I aim to transform ‘negative’ jewellery into positive existence by accumulating dust over it. The use of dust is suggestive of the passing and accumulation of time. I collect dust from everyday places and thread it on to stainless-steel wires or incorporate it into sheets of material. The colours and nature of the dust play an important part in my jewellery making.

The general conception of jewellery is focussed on the fact that it adorns the body. However, this kind of understanding limits appreciation of my kind of jewellery. If we look at jewellery in terms of the relationship between the body and its surroundings, then we begin to see how we relate ourselves to objects, other people and our whole environment. With this in mind, the characteristics – including the advantages and disadvantages of the materials themselves, add meanings to my work. With the paradoxical nature of my work, I hope to question the true meaning of jewellery.

I like the fact that the Museum has collected an object made of dust when, for the most part, we go to a lot of effort at minimising this very thing!

Lynne McNairn
Registrar

Skylab debris

Published on October 9, 2009 in Object of the week and Space and beyond. 1 Comment Tags: space.

Published by Kerrie Dougherty

With all the media attention focussed on the Apollo 11 Moon landing 40th anniversary, another space anniversary of particular interest to Australia passed un-noticed in July. Thirty years ago, in the early hours of July 12, 1979, the United States’ first space station, Skylab, re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere and broke up scattering debris across the southern Indian Ocean and the south-eastern part of Western Australia. Launched in 1973, Skylab had been home to three crews of astronauts in 73-74.

Although the heaviest fragments of the station fell into the Indian Ocean, a large amount of Skylab debris fell in a swath from the coastal town of Esperance to the Nullarbor Plain, beyond the community of Balladonia. One of the pieces that landed on the Nullarbor was a large cylindrical oxygen tank that burst on striking the ground, breaking into two fragments which bounced in different directions. The largest fragment, the main body of the tank, ultimately found its way into the special Skylab collection of the Esperance Museum. The smaller piece, the end cap of the oxygen tank, remained undiscovered until the early 1990s when it was found by a stockman.

The circular lid had landed with its insulated exterior to the ground, so that its curved shape formed a shallow dish that caught rainwater, turning it into a very unusual drinking bowl for the cattle and native animals of the area. In fact, it was seeing animals drinking at a place where there should have been no water available that led to its discovery.

As you can see in the image, the end cap is torn and bent as a result of being ripped away from the rest of the tank and its exterior is covered by a composite insulation material with a woven fibreglass outer surface.

October 4th to 10th is World Space Week!

Engines- restoration or conservation?

Published on October 6, 2009 in Object of the week and Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Engines. 0 Comments Tags: comet engine, conservation, engines, petrol, restoration.

Published by Rudder Debbie

Collecting and tinkering with engines is still a popular hobby today. Although fewer young people are getting involved than in the past, some are discovering the fascination of these objects and the skills to be developed by working with them. A large element of this hobby’s attractiveness is the challenge of getting engines running, and, for many collectors, restoring engines to their original appearance.

The debate between restoration and conservation is important in this collecting area. As you can see from the photo of this Australian-made Comet engine, museums tend to argue strongly in favour of conservation. In the past, museums favoured restoration, and they still do in the case of engines found in extremely poor condition. It is the engines discovered with mostly original parts and with some of their original surface intact that are in contention; where a keen restorer will see a little paint amidst the rust, a museum conservator will see precious evidence of the original paintwork marred by a little rust, which can be treated so it does not consume more of the surface. In the case of rare engines like this one, it is hard to argue against the conservation stance.

Debbie Rudder

Powerhouse Museum Object of the Week

Fashions on the Court

Saddling up with Gucci

Movember

Early solar car

Death in the Museum- part two- the crematorium

Movement in the collection

A Snowy souvenir

Dust as Art

Skylab debris

Engines- restoration or conservation?

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