Collection: Powerhouse Museum
Is it a:
a) machine for making gear wheels for clocks
b) machine for cleaning knives
c) portable darkroom for developing rolls of film
d) portable agitator-type washing machine
Monthly Archive for September, 2010
Photography by Sotha Bourn © Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved
The object above is actually part of the Tank Stream sewer, and surprisingly one of the most significant objects in our collection.
The Tank Stream started as an actual naturally occurring water source and was one of Governor Philip’s formative reasons for choosing the site for the Colony’s first settlement in 1788. It rose in marshy wetland on the western side of the area now occupied by Hyde Park, formed a channel between present-day Market and King Streets, and flowed down to Sydney Cove, entering the Cove at about the middle of what is now Bridge Street. However, it soon became evident that it was not a reliable source of water and during a drought in 1789-90 reservoirs or ‘tanks’ for storing water were cut into the sandstone in its side.
Painting by J Skinner Prout
The stream was used as the colony’s primary source of water for 40 years, but by the 1820s it was so polluted that it was judged unfit for consumption.
It was superseded as a source of domestic water by Lachlan Swamp located on the present site of Centennial Park. In the 1820s a tunnel was commenced to bring water from Lachlan Swamp. Named ‘Busby’s Bore’, the tunnel was completed in the 1830s.
Attributed to C H Woolcott held in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
As Sydney continued to develop the Tank Stream became an open drain and sections of it were variously diverted, channelled, enclosed in pipes, or incorporated into an oviform sewer. In the 1930s a new sewerage system was constructed and the Tank Stream reverted to carrying stormwater only.
Collection: Powerhouse Museum
Writers, especially those of the mid-20th century have romanticised the Tank Stream. Said one in the 1940s,
“the Tank Stream, that ‘purling rivulet’ which … was the ‘life blood’ of the early settlement, and the cradle of the Australian nation, has been transformed into a stormwater channel that flows unseen beneath the city streets”*. Nor could the little rivulet be dismissed lightly, wrote another in the 1950s: “What building great or small, in the line of its course, has not bowed to its dictates? The AMP building is built partly on piles driven into the muddy depths. Many an owner has been committed to installing pumps to deal with seepages in basements. The throb, throb, shows that the stream is still alive”**.
Another of those great buildings affected by ‘the little rivulet’ was the Sydney GPO. It was during the erection of this city landmark and the formation of Martin Place in the 1860-1870s that the Tank Stream, by then an open oviform sewer, was covered in at that site.
Little more than 100 years later, the Sydney of the 1990s had become a city of ‘adaptive redevelopment’ and the GPO was subject to an adaptive conversion, transformed from a post office to a luxury hotel, with fashionable ‘uber-chic’ retail outlets, bars and restaurants.
During this redevelopment the Tank Stream conduit was removed where it crossed the building’s courtyard and replaced with a stainless steel pipe that now runs through the ceiling of the hotel’s underground ballroom. Most of the old conduit was a 1940s concrete drain but a small section was a brick oviform sewer. Apparently as a condition of the redevelopment of the site this section was salvaged and part of it incorporated into an interpretive display adjacent to the ‘food and lifestyle experience’ on the lower ground floor of the GPO, where in situ conduit has also been exposed to view.
The archeological remains of the Tank Stream from King Street to Circular Quay are listed on the NSW State Heritage Register and are on the Interim Register of the National Estate. Such listings apparently do not prevent removal and replacement of these remains during redevelopment projects, not even sections that were built in the mid-1800s. However, awareness of the heritage significance of such relics has at least resulted in the oviform section beneath the GPO being saved from destruction. The oviform sewer is about 1.5 metres high and 1.2 metres wide and made of brick. Removing it from the ground intact and transporting it away was a complex and expensive operation that involved bracing two separate lengths of it in situ with expanding foam, then encasing them in a framework of steel girders.
Image courtesy of Sydney Water
A metre-long slice was treated by a traditional stonemason so that it could be used in the display at the GPO. The two remaining salvaged parts, each around two metres long, were preserved by the development project contractors, Grocon Pty Ltd. With the assistance of heritage architect, Ian Stapleton, these were subsequently donated to the Powerhouse Museum. They are impressive artefacts, intimately associated with Sydney’s development as a city.
The Woolworth Building. Photography by Charles Pickett.
Two recent happenings in New York City set me thinking about skyscrapers. One was a small controversy about the Empire State Building. The other was the anniversary of the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre towers.
I’ll come back to 9/11 later, but first to the Empire State. It hasn’t been the world’s tallest building since the 1970s but is still more famous and more visited than the several towers which have outranked it since its completion in 1931. About four million people visit the Empire State’s two observation floors every year.
As a result of the Empire State’s fame, there was a minor media buzz recently when plans were revealed to build a new office tower just two blocks west. The new project is envisioned as a 67-floor, 363 metre tower, shorter than the Empire State’s 102 floors and 443 metres. But its potential proximity caused the Empire State’s owners to argue that the new building’s height and design would encroach on the most famous image of New York’s skyline.
Foyer of the Empire State Building. Photography by Charles Pickett.
It’s fascinating that the city which gave the skyscraper to the world (although Chicago also has a claim to this title) can still make a fuss over a new one. The first generation of skyscrapers, completed around 1900, are mostly still clustered in the financial district at lower Manhattan. The Woolworth Building, the Equitable Life Building and others are must-sees for anyone interested in architecture and urban history (so is a visit to the excellent Skyscraper Museum near Battery Park), but the scattered mid-Town towers of the 1930s are bigger attractions on the tourist trail. As well as the Empire State, the foyers of the Chrysler Building and the Rockefeller Centre are daily thronged with wide-eyed visitors, no doubt to the weariness of those lucky enough to boast these fabulous structures as work addresses.
Unlike more recent ‘tallest in the worlds’, the Empire State held this title for more than forty years until the World Trade Centre was completed in 1972. Today there are 14 towers taller than the Empire State, plus a few currently under construction. These new skyscrapers are primarily located in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur, Nanjing, Dubai, Kuwait City and other Asian and Gulf cities (see here for more information).
Skyscrapers are the most prominent artefact of the headlong modernisation of Asia and the Gulf. This skyscraper boom has attracted criticism in the West for its disregard of environmental and urban sustainability. It has also fuelled local cultural and political divisions. Undoubtedly the most extreme opponent of skyscrapers was Mohamed Atta, who piloted one of the planes which destroyed the World Trade Centre. Atta’s argument with the West was founded in his architecture and urban planning studies at the universities of Cairo and Hamburg. His Hamburg Masters thesis examined the threat posed to ancient cities by modern development. He reserved particular criticism for tall buildings, which he claimed destroyed the privacy and seclusion necessary for Muslim domestic life, and argued that skyscrapers should be demolished in Aleppo and other Middle Eastern cities.
As Daniel Brook observed, ‘Atta did not choose the World Trade Centre as a target…But when Atta was told he would lead a mission to destroy America’s tallest and most famous modernist high-rise complex—the apotheosis of the building type he dreamed of razing in Aleppo—he may have felt the hand of divine providence at work’.
Atta’s crime has clearly not weakened the Islamic world’s appreciation of skyscrapers. Very tall buildings came into being through the confluence of three things: the elevator, steel framed building structures and land and property prices high enough to justify the expense of building tall. But most of the towers built to attract attention are not accountants’ products: they are designed to make a statement of their city’s wealth and importance. This is what the Woolworth Building and the Empire State Building did for New York. It’s also what the current tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa (828 metres, 162 floors) is meant to do for Dubai’s reputation as a new financial and tourist centre. However the new super tall towers – Taipei 101 Tower, the International Commerce Centre, Hong Kong, etc – are not household names internationally, suggesting that the publicity value of extreme height may be in decline.
Q1 building, Gold Coast, Australia. © Eric Sierins/Max Dupain & Associates
At least, this appears to be the case in Australia. The Gold Coast apartment tower Q1, completed in 2005 (323 metres, 80 floors), is somewhere between 30 and 40 in the world height ranking. However it is also the tallest residential building in the world.
Despite this status Q1 lacks appreciation in its home country. Sydneysiders tend to be dismissive of the Gold Coast and blasé about tall buildings, while Melbournians were miffed that the northern upstart overshadowed their new Eureka Tower. They take city rivalry seriously in the southern capital.
Unfortunately these prejudices were not sufficiently considered when choosing a cover image for my book Homes in the Sky. Several readers told us that they had no idea where the cover pic was shot and/or had never heard of Q1. Oh well.
What is “The Vixen Look”?
In this post, we feature a video interview with Georgia Chapman, fashion and textile designer (including screen printed and digital textiles) and owner of Vixen Australia.
Vixen was co-founded in 1992 by Georgia Chapman and Meredith Rowe (Rowe left Vixen in 2000 to pursue other areas of design). The label is unique in Australia for successfully combining a crafts based practice and aesthetic with a high fashion product. The textiles and clothing appear not only on the catwalk but also in craft and design exhibitions at galleries and museums. Vixen was featured in the 2007 exhibition Smart works: design and the handmade, along with Robert Foster of F!NK & Co and Blanche Tilden who are also featured on our blog.
2003/213/1-1. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
The garments you can see in the images above and below belong to a single outfit which Vixen designed and made specifically for the Powerhouse Museum’s exhibition Sourcing the Muse in 2002. This exhibition was based on the Museum’s rich textile and dress collection and archive and the emergence over the last decade of a new generation of Australian fashion designers whose original and distinct signatures were marked by a knowledge of and passion for fashion and textile history. Eight Australian designers, including Vixen, were invited to look through the Museum’s textile and dress collection and select an item or collection of items to use as a source of inspiration for a new work they created for the exhibition.
2003/213/1-2. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
Vixen’s inspiration for this outfit was the Bohemian vibe of 1920s-1930s Paris. Georgia said:
[It was a time]…where style, morals, customs and art itself had all been subjected to an unprecedented acceleration. There was a sudden fascination with the exotic and the primitive. A strange hedonistic mix occurred. Based around this theme we delved into the archives to select textiles that when juxtaposed and melded together emulated this. The mix and contrast of elements is an inherent part of our design style.
2003/213/1-3. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
2003/213/1-4. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
You can read more about the production and significance of this outfit here. Also check out the talk Georgia presented at the Smart works symposium on D*Hub.
Editor’s note: The content for this post was adapted from original research and text written by Glynis Jones, Curator of Fashion. See full text here.
This year Caroma is celebrating 60 years of manufacturing in Australia. While we may associate the name with toilets and bathroom fittings, the company has been a leader in plastics production since the 1950s. It all began with a plastic syringe…
In 1949 penicillin injections were being used to treat most bacterial infections, but penicillin tended to clog up glass syringes and make them hard to clean. To solve the problem, Austrian immigrant, Charles Rothauser, created the world’s first plastic, disposable hypodermic syringe at his Adelaide factory.
Powerhouse Museum collection
He made the first syringes in polyethylene. However, because polyethylene softens with heat, the syringes had to be chemically sterilised prior to packaging, which made them expensive. In 1951 Rothauser produced the first injection- moulded syringes made of polypropylene, a plastic that can be heat-sterilised. Millions were made for Australian and export markets.
In 1956 Rothauser, renamed his plastics company “Caroma” and began manufacturing bathroom products, including the world’s first one-piece plastic toilet cistern. In the 1970s Caroma made plastic bathroom fittings fashionable with the Bathmates range, available in five colours – red, white, blue, yellow and brown.
Powerhouse Museum collection
Caroma is perhaps best known for developing the dual flush toilet. In 1980, with $130 000 government assistance, Bruce Thompson of Caroma developed a cistern with two buttons and flush volumes (11.0 litres and 5.5 litres). This wasn’t easy because the toilet bowl had to be redesigned to make sure less water could still remove the waste.
Thompson’s Duoset cistern saved 32 000 litres of water a year per household when it was trialled in a small South Australian town. Caroma’s success led to legislation in every state to make dual volume toilets compulsory in new buildings.
Powerhouse Museum collection
In 1994 the company completely redesigned the toilet in stylish porcelain in a modern ‘organic shape’. Its 6 and 3 litre dual flush cistern and matching bowl halved the amount of water normally flushed away.
The Smartflush range designed in 2004, further reduced the flushing volumes to 4.5L and 3.0L and were the first toilets to achieve the Water Services Association Australia (WSAA) AAAA water rating for water efficiency. Five years of research, development and testing of the cistern and pan design were required to achieve effective flushing with minimal water use.
Powerhouse Museum collection
Caroma’s combination of style and environmental awareness has attracted attention in the tough European sanitaryware market and their products are now shipped to more than 30 countries worldwide.
After 60 years, Caroma is still manufacturing some of its products in Australia, with plants in Norwood, South Australia, and Wetherill Park, New South Wales. One Caroma factory makes vitreous china toilet pans and cisterns, the main raw material being clay. The moulds are complex, and the process takes several days, as the wet clay dries slowly and is then glazed and fired in a large kiln. Another factory makes plastic cistern parts, plastic toilet seats, and some plastic cisterns. The processes used for making the plastic parts are injection moulding and compression moulding. For a detailed case study on how Caroma toilets are made and the importance of product quality see the Australia innovates website.
Here’s a sneak peek inside the Sydney factory.
Caroma's Sydney factory. Courtesy Caroma Industries.
Close up of production line. Courtesy Caroma Industries.
Toilets and pans emerging from the kiln. Courtesy Caroma Industries.
Pre-War Dinky Toys, 2008/158/1. Collection: Powerhouse Museum. Photography by Sotha Bourn.
When we asked our blog readers what topics they’d like to have more posts on, a number of you asked for Matchbox. So, in response, I’ll post a series on die-cast toy cars. I thought I’d start the toy car story off a bit earlier than Matchbox with the famous pre-War Dinky Toys.
In 1933, Frank Hornby, who incidentally invented Meccano and made Hornby Trains, introduced toy cars to go with his 0-gauge toy railways. The first set, the 22 series, appeared in 1933 under the name ‘Modelled Miniatures’, but from 1934 they were called Dinky Toys. The word dinky means ‘neat, trim, dainty’. In the same year a large range of vehicles, aeroplanes and ships were manufactured and by Christmas 1934 there were over 100 items.
Meccano magazines, 1930-1941, 2007/223/2. Collection: Powerhouse Museum. Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski.
As with all Hornby toy production, the toy vehicles were linked to an ingenious marketing campaign and ‘collecting Meccano Dinky Toys’ was advertised in the ‘Meccano Magazine’ as the new hobby for boys. By 1938 there were over 300 toys in the range.
These realistic toys, depicting transport seen on British roads, on the ocean and in the air, were enthusiastically embraced throughout Britain and the Empire. They were relatively inexpensive to buy and could be easily collected. In only 5 years they went from being accessories for railway layouts to being collectable in their own right.
Many Dinky Toys were destroyed or discarded during the Second World War, in part due to the British Government encouraging children to recycle their metal toys for the War effort, to produce aircraft and tanks. We have a small collection of pre-War Dinky Toys which escaped that fate, owned by a boy in Tasmania in the 1930s, far away from the conflict. Dinky Toys heralded the later post-War explosion of die-cast Matchbox, Corgi and, later, Hot Wheels toy vehicles.
Dinky Holland Coachcraft Streamlined Bus, 2008/158/1-5. Collection: Powerhouse Museum. Photography by Sotha Bourn.
Dinky Cierva Autogiro, 2008/158/1-13 and the full-size Autogiro VH-USR, B2361. Collection: Powerhouse Museum. Photography by Sotha Bourn.
My favourite Dinky products from the 1930s are the streamlined Holland Coachcraft bus made between 1936 and 1940 and the racing car based on an MG Magnette complete with silencer and boat tail rear body work. I also can’t go past the Autogiro, a forerunner of the helicopter, mainly because we have a rare, full-size Autogiro on display in the Museum.
Dinky racing car, 2008/158/1-1. Collection: Powerhouse Museum. Photography by Sotha Bourn.
Between 1931 and the brand’s demise in 1980, over one thousand different Dinky models were produced in the UK (excluding variations and the models made in other countries). They included cars, vans, trucks, buses, trains, military and farm vehicles, aircraft, ships and figures. The company established factories in France, Germany, Canada and other parts of the world.
Triumph TR2 Dinky toy, 2008/158/2. Collection: Powerhouse Museum. Photography by Sotha Bourn.
As far as post-War Dinky cars go, I like this Triumph TR2 sports car, produced in the 1950s in the 100 series which included other great British marques, including the MG Midget, Bristol 450, Austin Healey, Aston Martin and Sunbeam Alpine.
I’ve always been interested in how things work…I like the ambiguity of what is machine made and what is handmade.
Blanche Tilden (b.1968, Australia) is a contemporary glass and jewellery designer. Blanche studied glass and jewellery at Sydney College of the Arts (1988/89) and graduated BA (Visual Arts), Glass (1992) and Grad. Dip, Gold and Silversmithing at the Canberra School of Art (1995), followed by a year as a trainee with Susan Cohn at Workshop 3000 in Melbourne. Blanche established her own workshop in Sydney in 1997 and moved to Melbourne in 1999, before setting up and working in Studio Hacienda with fellow glass and jewellery designer, Phoebe Porter from 2005-2008.
In this post, we feature a special video interview of Blanche filmed for the Museum as part of the 2007 exhibition Smart Works: design and the handmade and look at a few of Blanche’s jewellery items in the Museum’s collection which are based on mechanical movements found in everyday objects, including bicycle chains, pulleys, levers and conveyor belts. While appearing mechanical, and being well-researched according to their function, these jewellery pieces are actually very light, flexible and meticulously made.
2000/50/1. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
The ‘Scissor’ necklace (above), made in 1998, is composed of hand cut titanium elements. The holes are drilled and the pieces heat-coloured to 600 degrees in a kiln. This provides the greyish-purple colour as well as protecting the metal when the glass rivets are heated. The rivets are borosilicate glass rods, cut with a diamond saw; one end is put through the links and heated by lampworking (over a flame), then squashed in a small hand-made jig to widen and flatten the end (the other end of that link is completed the same way). The whole necklace is then placed in a kiln to anneal the glass at a temperature of 560 degrees.
2000/50/2. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
The ‘Pulley’ and ‘Bicycle Chain’ necklaces (above and below respectively) are made using the same techniques. Blanche says of her work:
My jewellery explores the relations between the individual and the machine, consumption and obsolescence, the machine made and the hand made. When designing my work I look at mechanical movements found in everyday objects. Stemming from a desire to understand how things work, I use shapes inspired by bicycle chains, conveyor belts, pulleys, cranks and scissors, and I make my work with industrial materials such as titanium and borosilicate glass. My necklaces stimulate associations and memories that differ for each wearer. They remind us of the physical yet impersonal relationship that exists between the body and the machine. These are intimate objects of jewellery, built to human scale, hand made and machine inspired. They travel with the body.
2000/50/3. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
Appropriately, for a Museum of science and design, these jewellery pieces complement the ‘real’ mechanical components and tools used in industrial machines and equipment in the Museum’s collection!
To find out more about Blanche Tilden’s work and that of Studio Hacienda, see here on D*Hub. There is also another video on here of Blanche and Phoebe talking together at the 2007 Smart works symposium.
Editor’s note: The content for this post was adapted from original research and text written by Dr Grace Cochrane. See full text here.
The first group of the week to take part in the object handling refresher. Photography by Melanie Pitkin.
This week staff from the Museum’s curatorial, registration and conservation departments took part in an object handling refresher focusing on the Museum’s vast textiles collection with Registrar, Sarah Pointon and Conservator, Suzanne Chee. For the past few months, Sarah and Suzanne have been doing an incredible job re-housing some of the Museum’s most beautiful textiles in the basement, not only improving their accessibility to staff, researchers and members of the public participating in basement tours, but also concentrating on the finer and often overlooked details of what it takes to achieve best level storage practices.
Assistant Collections Manager, Einar Docker demonstrates the single sheet of acid free tissue used to protect textiles. Photography by Melanie Pitkin.
Sarah started the session by explaining the move to using one single sheet of acid free tissue paper to protect garments in storage trays as opposed to several sheets arranged together. When returning a tray into a drawer, the individual sheets of tissue (whose lightweight means they are very sensitive to movement) often bunch up or slide around and can be prone to catching on heavily embroidered or detailed garments. By using one single sheet, the sides can be gently tucked in to prevent movement and you can easily lift the sheet in one go (an especially practical capability for those curators among us who lead group basement tours and move about from one stored garment to the next!).
Photography by Melanie Pitkin.
Sarah shows the little details to make object packing and storage easier. Photography by Melanie Pitkin.
To make sure we cut the single sheet of acid free tissue to the right size of the storage tray each time, Sarah and Suzanne attached a piece of fabric to the correct length of the tray to our packaging rack (as Sarah demonstrates above).
Every object is tagged and barcoded (see around the tops of the coat hangers). Photography by Melanie Pitkin.
The Museum also physically labels every object. In addition to a number written on a fabric strip, which is then sewn to a concealed part of the garment, an acid free paper tag describing the object, its location and barcode is placed with it (in the case of the vests, above, they hang around the neck of the coat hanger). To minimise object handling, all tags suspended from the coat hanger face in the same direction (to the left). But, of course, they only continue to hang in that direction if we all remember to return the label to its original position!
We were also reminded of the importance of working with and handling objects more generally, not just in terms of textiles, and I’ve decided to include them here:
1. Always wear gloves when handling objects both for the object’s protection, as well as your own
2. Lift objects – never drag, push or pull them. Lift objects by their most stable surface – never use handles or other projecting parts.
3. Don’t stack fragile objects such as ceramics and glass.
4. Pad objects with pillows and tissues to prevent rolling and vibration.
5. Some objects may need to be secured by ties and straps during transit. Always use a barrier between the tie and the object.
6. Ask for assistance with the move if you are not confident doing it yourself. Always ask for assistance when moving large or heavy objects and large paper objects.
7. Use as few moves as possible. Move the trolley/tray etc. to the object, not the other way around.
8. Always use special equipment such as tweezers for stamps, flat support boards for paper objects etc.
9. Cover objects when it is required to move them outdoors
10. Never rush as this is when accidents are most likely to happen
You can never be reminded of safe object handling practices too many times and the Museum organises such refresher sessions as these on a fairly regular basis to ensure consistency and best standard practice across all departments working with collections. As further upgrades to our storage takes place, we will also share these with you on our blog.
- Photography by Sotha Bourn
This method of making wigs for display mannequins has been used in museums for over 20 years.
It is a great way for small museums and fashion students to create elegant wigs cheaply and easily. We have used white paper for our tutorial, but you could use anything you liked; ribbon, fabrics, unusual papers. You are only limited by your own imagination!
-
- You will need some double sided tape, scissors, and a ‘wig’ material. This could be paper, ribbon, material, or synthetic fabrics.
-
- Cut your material into strips (we used 2.5cm x 10cm) and place a piece of double sided tape at the top of each strip
-
- Stick your paper strips down each side of the mannequins head, creating a ‘part’
-
- Secure the bottom of the strips to the mannequin with some double sided tape
-
- Don’t pull the strips too tight, let her have some ‘body’ to her wig!
-
- To create the back of the wig stick on four more paper strips.
-
- Stick the back of the wig down with some more double sided tape.
-
- Take a strip of paper and something to roll with, we have used a paintbrush, a pen would also work!
-
- Roll the paper tighly around
-
- You can then stretch your roll open to start creating the hair ‘tendril’
-
- using double sided tape place a tendril on each side of the wig.
-
- Our wig has three tendrils on each side, you could put as many as you like.
-
- Take a longer piece of paper to begin to create the ‘bun’.
-
- Loop the paper over to create a few loops, and secure together with double sided tape.
-
- Attach the ‘bun’ to the wig using double sided tape.
-
- The side view
-
- The back view
-
- The finished product
-
- Photography by Sotha Bourn
Post by Suzanne Chee, Conservator
Collection: Powerhouse Museum
This week’s mystery object is one of my favourite objects from our collection. It is about 10cm in diameter and quite solid.
Is it…?
a) a hairball from the stomach of a bull
b) an early golfball carved from stone
c) a fossilised coconut
d) an early croquet ball made from resin
The answer will be posted on Friday! Happy guessing!
