Monthly Archive for June, 2009

Michael Jackson- death of a pop icon

Published by Erika Dicker 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

MJ
Everyone at the Powerhouse Museum was saddened to hear of the death of Michael Jackson this morning.

He was an unmistakable icon of pop culture. Who can forget the 1982 album “Thriller” , which was one of the world’s highest selling records, and its video film clip which revolutionised the pop music film clip industry.

Love him or hate him, it is amazing how one man made such an impact on the music scene.

As a museum we often collect objects relating to pop culture, including one of the merchandised jackets from Jackson’s ‘Bad’ tour, so hopefully some of the story of his life can be told to future generations.

As some readers may know curator Peter Cox and his team are working on a huge exhibition about the 1980s, which will include popular culture, and hopefully we will see some of the highlights of Michael Jackson’s career included.

So rest in peace Michael Jackson, you will forever be remembered for impact you made on pop music.

Hot off the press

Published by Rudder Debbie 5 Comments Tags: , , , , .

50quid_1413190cPhoto courtesy of The Bank of England

Three early Boulton and Watt rotative steam engines still exist, and all are held by museums: Boulton’s own Lap engine in the London Science Museum, the Barclay Perkins engine in the National Museum of Scotland, and our very own Whitbread engine.

Which one has the Bank of England selected to depict on its next 50 pound banknote?

The winner is the Powerhouse Museum!

On 29 May, the Governor of the Bank of England announced that an image of the Whitbread engine will feature on the banknote, along with portraits of Matthew Boulton and James Watt and an image of Boulton’s Soho (Birmingham) Manufactory. Planned for release in 2010, the banknote recognises the importance of these men in the industrial revolution.

Although Mervyn King did not emulate Juan Antonio Samaranch and announce ‘the winner is – Sydney’, the feeling at the Powerhouse is a bit like the buzz when Sydney won the right to host the 2000 Olympics.

The decision was perhaps prompted by the existence of a nicely detailed drawing of our engine, a drawing suitable for reproduction on a modern security-conscious banknote. But we like to think it recognises the pleasing aesthetics of our engine and its significance in both engineering and economic history. The oldest existing rotative engine, it was erected in 1785 at Whitbread’s London brewery and worked there for 102 years before being donated to this museum. Maintained in steaming order and run occasionally, it brings visitors in contact with the amazing men who created it and with a very important era in history.

Debbie Rudder

Meet the curator- Michael Lea

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00z348872Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski © Powerhouse Museum all rights reserved

Name
Michael Lea

What is your speciality area?
Music and musical instruments. It’s a very diverse area so covers a lot of ground from historical to contemporary aspects through to musical traditions from a variety of cultures. We also look at music from a number of different angles that includes the science and design behind instruments as well as historical developments and also the way music has been used culturally in all its various forms. Music is found in many different contexts and you’ll see instruments from the collection on display in a wide variety of exhibitions at the museum.

Although I’ve got a background in music I also have a strong history and social sciences training so I’ve got a particular interest in Australian instrument makers, especially those that are now long forgotten. When possible I try to revive interest in them through research and articles and by putting their works on display or helping organise a performance where one might be played. Organising some of the performances at the museum is another part of the job.

How long have you been working at the Museum?
Is that a polite question to ask? I’ve been the curator in this area since 1998 but began working with the music collection in 1985.

What is your favourite object in the collection?
The whole collection is fascinating so that’s a tough one to answer. That being said though, one of my faves is the Maccaferri plastic guitar that you can see below. Another is this small banjo mandolin I’m holding in the photo which was made in Australia in the late 1940s or 1950s. This one was donated to the museum by Melbourne instrument maker Roger Buckmaster. Pacific was the name of an instrument company that was established by Hec McLennan in Melbourne and made guitars as well as these smaller instruments. They started in the 1940s around about the same time as Maton Guitars did, but possibly initially used McLennan’s name in the early stages rather than Pacific.

One of the reasons I like them is that rather than being high end collectables or professional instruments they were a basic day-to-day instrument that anyone might play and which today aren’t very widely known. They were at the lower end of the market using fairly cheap materials, which might account for the condition of some of them today – they were probably well used as a knock-around instrument rather than kept in a pristine state which might happen to more up market models. They often used paint stencils for their name and other things such as fret markers, rather than having actual inlay in the fingerboard. The guitars they made also used stencils on the body sometimes with figures of cowboys or even palm trees to add an exotic touch. The banjo mandolin is an intriguing thing in itself – one of a range of instruments that seem to have been cross bred with something else (in this case the banjo and the mandolin). To take the idea further…we’ve also got a walking stick violin in the collection! We don’t have much information about Hec McLennan and Pacific so I’d love to hear more if anyone knows.

What piece of research or exhibition are you most proud of in your career at the Museum?
In terms of research probably the work I’ve done on nineteenth century makers such as John Devereux (bowed strings) or Jordan Wainwright (flutes), both of who were amongst some of the earliest professional makers working in the European tradition in Australia and which not much was known about. Over the years we’ve also commissioned instruments from present day makers to document their work and have also commissioned some new music for exhibitions and programs from composers, both of which have been great ways for the museum to make a link with the creative process. For exhibitions one of the highlights with hindsight was working with the team on Ngaramang Bayumi: an exhibition about Australian Indigenous music and dance. It broke some new ground for the museum and involved lots of people working with us from the arts and communities around Australia. Working with Coxie and Brakie on the rock and roll exhibition, Real Wild Child, was a hoot too!

Maccaferri plastic guitar

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As I mentioned this is another of my favourite things in the collection. It was bought by the museum from Maccaferri’s plastics company in the USA in the 1950s as an example of what you could do with plastic, and it doesn’t sound too bad as an instrument either. Despite being made of plastic they weren’t toys but designed as well-made instruments that were cheap but also fairly reliable, as long as you didn’t drop it or turn it into one of Dali’s melting moments by putting it on a hot surface! As the instruction booklet wisely says “DO NOT drop it on a hard surface…it will break.”

Maccaferri was a guitarist and had also done some training with a luthier as a younger man, so knew a thing or two about guitar design. This “inside” knowledge and understanding really shows and is comparable to when a composer for example really begins understanding an instrument like guitar and writing to bring out its unique peculiarities and capabilities, (in the classical realm I think Villa Llobos did this really well and Leo Brouwer being a guitarist has done it in more recent times.) Maccaferri began working with the French instrument company, Selmer in the late 1920s. They began making his radical wooden acoustic guitar that had an internal soundboard which was a way of trying to get rid of wolf notes. (Jose Ramirez III also experimented with this idea – creating the de camera guitar – which is another fave of mine in the collection with a really beautiful sound!!). There were some other features he included such as the shape of the sound hole and tailpiece.

I love the way Maccaferri kept on thinking about guitars even though he went in a seemingly different direction by establishing a plastics company that manufactured reeds. When Maccaferri started making his own plastic guitars in the 1950s he put some of these design features in as well as some more radical features like the way the action (the height of the strings above the fretboard) can be adjusted by moving the tailpiece up or down rather than physically having to cut down or replace the bridge or doing a whole neck adjustment. I also can’t go past the description of the materials in the instruction booklet; “Made of special, highly resounding plastic of ever lasting beauty”.

At the same time he also made ukuleles that apparently sold really well, whereas the guitars didn’t sell very well at all. Stocks of unsold guitars were found in the 1980s and started coming onto the market complete with their instruction booklets. Some wooden acoustic guitars are described as cigar boxes but I’m not sure how you’d describe this one, although the great guitar fashionista of the 1980s Guitar Player magazines, Teisco Del Rey, suggested it had a variety of uses including as a jelly mould.

Michael Lea
Curator, music & musical instruments

The Traeger Pedal

Published by Erika Dicker 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

aus20_john_flynn

Imagine, you’re at the weekly pub trivia quiz, it’s the final round and you need 2 points to win.

Question 1. Which Australian Icon appears on the back of the Australian $20 note?
a tough one! but some may know that it’s the Reverend John Flynn, who started the world’s first air ambulance service, The Royal Flying Doctors. He is pictured next to The Victory, the plane to fly the first mission for flying doctors.

The final question: (if you answer this one you win and take home the meat tray!) What is the funny looking pedalled device pictured under The Victory?
Well, that’s another amazing story of Australian ingenuity, listen to curator Matthew Connell tell it…

Meet the curator- Debbie Rudder

Published by Rudder Debbie 1 Comment Tags: , , .

00z34916Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski © Powerhouse Museum all rights reserved

Name
Debbie Rudder

What is your speciality area?
Energy. I inherited an amazing collection of engines, electricity generators, model engines and related material. I’ve acquired some interesting objects and archival material to complement this collection and bring it up to date. My main research interests are: how our past use of energy informs present and future energy use; and the history and practice of innovation. I studied chemistry and history and philosophy of science at university and I’m passionate about understanding how things work (in a very broad sense), the language of science and technology (especially the use of metaphor), the history of mass production, and sharing my enthusiasm for big ideas.

How long have you been working at the Museum?
18 years.

What is your favourite object in the collection?
I can’t go past the Boulton and Watt engine: the most valuable object in the collection; a visual feast, especially when it moves majestically under steam; a source of endless interest; and frequently the subject of my interaction with our wonderful volunteers, who present talks about it daily and answer visitors’ questions.

It is amazing that the world’s oldest rotative steam engine is here in Sydney, having been installed at Whitbread’s London brewery in 1785 and having worked there for 102 years. It was saved from the scrapheap by a request from one of the founders of this museum. Over its working life, it underwent such change that few parts now date from 1785, but it retained the same form and function and still incorporates the four innovations that made Boulton and Watt rotative engines successful and allowed them to change the world.

What piece of research or exhibition are you most proud of in your career at the Museum?
The Australian innovation project has been a great team effort. To date it has resulted in an exhibition (Success and Innovation), database, book (Making it), CD-ROM, website (Australia Innovates), new object acquisitions, deeper collection knowledge, and interaction with many interesting innovators. I learnt to be a curator during the exhibition, widened my skills and knowledge as one of the developers of the CD-ROM, and enjoyed leading the website team.

Matthew Boulton and the Imperial Bank Mint in St Petersburg

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At first glance, this drawing shows an old building holding a steam engine and other machinery. Then the eye focuses on the figures, men in formal eighteenth century Russian dress;
russian
perhaps they are there to provide scale, or to suggest that this is an important building holding important machinery. The drawing is one proposal for the St Petersburg Mint. When a steam-powered mint was eventually built in that city, the engine and coining machinery were supplied by Matthew Boulton, an extraordinary entrepreneur who lived from 1728 to 1809.

The drawing shows a cross-section, but it is a lively illustration rather than a cold technical drawing. Look at the boiler to the left:
boiler
shaped like a haystack, it has red hot coals below, red flames licking up its sides, and water bubbling away inside to produce steam for the engine.

The engine looks like our Boulton and Watt as it was in the 1790s when the drawing was executed. The overhead beam that transfers motion from the piston (shown inside the vertical cylinder on the left) and eventually to the drive wheel (the toothed wheel at centre right) is timber; our engine’s original timber beam was later replaced by one made of cast iron.
closeup
The condenser and air pump (which together evacuate the cylinder on each stroke, so that fresh steam can enter and move the piston) are shown in the square cooling tank; this arrangement was Watt’s most significant invention.

In front of the engine, and driven by it, are a mill for rolling metal (on the left) and another machine with crank and flywheel. We see glimpses of other machines behind the engine.

Boulton designed and made coining machines. He supplied skilled workers to erect the machinery, get it running, design coins and medals, engrave the dies, and train local workers. It was while addressing a problem on the St Petersburg project that he became the first person to write down the principles of the production line, over a century before Ransom Olds and Henry Ford applied these ideas to car manufacture. He is certainly a person worth commemorating this year, the 200th anniversary of his death, and to contemplate how much, and how little, has changed over those two centuries.