Hidden treasures and stories from our collection
148 Insect model, queen bee, papier mache / metal, made by Dr Auzoux, Paris, France, 1883
If you’re in Maitland between 21 and 29 April, drop into Brough House in Church Street, to see some of the Powerhouse Museum’s beekeeping collection. It’s featuring in an exhibition called Amazing Bees, the contribution of JW and WS Pender to the Australasian Bee Industry.
Continue reading ‘Bee Delighted’
2007/30/1-29/21 Christmas card, Phoebe, Wilfrid and Charlotte Rolfe to Dahl and Geoffrey Collings and family, paper/ink, Dahl and Geoffrey Collings, Killcare Heights, New South Wales, Australia, 1946
Saturday 31st March, 8:30-9:30 is Earth hour and it gives us a chance to turn off the lights and do things we may not normally do. More than 2 million individuals and 2,000 businesses in Sydney took part in the First Earth hour in 2007. Earth Hour has grown to millions of people in over 5000 cities across 135 countries.
Continue reading ‘Things to do in the dark, ideas for Earth Hour’
Lightning strikes on the Sydney Harbour, 7 December, 1892. The photograph was exposed over four minutes giving an impression of five separate strikes. Government Astronomer H C Russell calculated the height of the Darling Harbour flash from the cloud to the water to be approximately 1540 feet.
Lieutenant William Dawes, who came out to Australia with the First Fleet, made the first recorded meteorological observations in Australia but the next set were probably made from Parramatta Observatory between October 1822 and March 1824.
Continue reading ‘World Meteorological Day – early meteorology in Australia’
Atomic absorption spectrophotometer. Powerhouse Museum Collection.
Dr Alan Walsh had an ‘aha’ moment while gardening in 1954. Straight away, he phoned a friend and said: We’ve been measuring the wrong bloody thing! A CSIRO chemist, he wasn’t referring to delphiniums (blue) or geraniums (red). He was thinking about atoms that emit characteristic colours when heated in a flame – elements such as strontium (red) and selenium (blue).
At that time, the concentration of certain atoms in a sample was determined by measuring the amount of light the sample EMITS when heated in a flame. He realised it would be better to measure how much light of a particular colour (wavelength) the sample ABSORBS. He thought his ‘atomic absorption’ method would be more accurate than the emission method.
Now Walsh had been thinking about this problem off and on for years. In his ‘aha’ moment he realised it was possible to get around the major stumbling block: the need to filter out the emitted light so it didn’t swamp the measuring device.
Walsh soon set up an experiment to test his ideas. It worked brilliantly. With the help of other scientists and technicians, he designed a new type of lamp containing the element to be measured. His technique did prove to be more accurate than the old method – and it was more sensitive, and useful for many more elements. His work led to the creation of a local industry making atomic absorption spectrophotometers (AAS). It also led to scientific and practical advances in many fields as CSIRO scientists developed new techniques and labs around the world purchased the instruments.
One of these instruments was offered to the Museum a few years ago by Tim and Kylie Bennett from Alstonville in northern NSW. They were planning to upgrade to a new AAS for their analytical service lab, and the donation of their old one was very welcome. They told us its original owner was the University of New England, where it had been used for studying domestic ruminant physiology.
Now that more information is available online, it appears highly likely that the ruminants studied were sheep and the instrument was used to show (among other things) that they need copper and zinc in their diet to grow good quality wool. A nice connection to our wool and textile collections!
More information is also available about the work of the Bennetts’ company, Soiltec. As its name suggests, it was involved in analysing agricultural soils, but it also analysed plant material. This work was largely aimed at helping farmers grow crops without adding unnecessary quantities of fertiliser to the soil. A nice connection to our sustainability theme!
Making connections is a vital role for museums. These include connections between objects and ideas; connections between disparate objects; connections between objects and images; and, most importantly, connections between objects, ideas and people. I hope my chemistry-themed blog posts for the International Year of Chemistry have made some interesting connections for you.
H4730 Scott’s unopened tin of tea made by Tower Tea Limited, England, 1895-1905, from the 1901-1904 British Antarctic Expedition. Gift of Mrs Watson, 1946.
On the base of this one pound (0.45 kg) unopened tin of Tower brand tea in our collection is the label “This tin of tea was cached by Commander R.F. Scott during his journey towards the South Pole in 1902. It was recovered and brought to New Zealand by the Shackleton expedition in 1908″. (This was Scott’s first expedition, not the one where he tragically died in 1912).
So, British Antarctic expeditioners drank tea which is to be expected. But what else? We know from Mawson’s wonderful account of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1914 in ‘The Home of the Blizzard’ that while on trips away from their hut hauling sledges over the ice, they drank tea for lunch and Cadbury’s cocoa with dried milk and sugar at breakfast and dinner. Man-hauling the sledges took heavy demands on the body so Mawson thought foods high in energy from meat, starches and sugar would sustain them.
Drawing of a Nansen cooker from 'The Home of the Blizzard'. As the name suggests it was developed by the Norwegian Arctic explorer.
The main sledging meal of the day was pretty unappetising. It was crushed up wholemeal Plasmon biscuits with pieces of pemmican (dried beef and beef fat flavoured with currants used by Arctic explorers) made by Bovril. This was cooked in the Nansen cooker, a cylindrical aluminium vessel with an enclosed kerosene primus stove which cooked the “hoosh” in an inner vessel and melted snow for tea and cocoa in an outer section. Before setting out the food was taken out of the tins and packaging and repacked into weekly rations to save time and weight while sledging. The hoosh compound and cocoa/dried milk/sugar mixture were prepared in the right proportions while the tea was sewn into small muslin bags ready to be dropped into the cooker. These may have been the world’s first tea bags. The sledging supplies were put into calico bags then stored in waterproof bags on the sledges. The Museum has one of Mawson’s sledges which still has the box with a half circle of timber chocks to hold the bulky Nansen cooker in place.
Mawson’s sledge from the 1911-1914 expedition showing the box on which the Nansen cooker was placed. Gift of the Australian Museum, 1967.
Food consumed in Mawson’s hut at Cape Denison was totally different to that eaten by the summer sledging parties. Mawson was keenly aware of the monotony of being confined in the hut during Antarctic winters and the importance of food. Any and every special event was celebrated, especially birthdays.
Photograph of a menu celebrating Christmas in 1930 on board the ship “Discovery” with photographs of the British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Expedition members 1929-1931. Gift of Harold Fletcher, 1987.
Expeditioners took turns in being the hut cook and messman and Mrs Beeton inspired them all to outdo each other. They served up lashings of puff-pastry, steam-puddings, jellies, blanc-manges, curried and spiced seal, fried penguin and tinned vegetables. As Mawson put it “Cooks were broadly classified as ‘Crook Cooks’ and ‘Unconventional Cooks’ by the eating public. Such flattering titles as ‘Assistant Grand Past Master of the Crook Cooks’ Association’ or ‘Associate of the Society of Muddling Messmen’ were not empty inanities”.
Cooking in a hut in Antarctica where the inside temperature wasn’t much above freezing often caused problems. The hapless cooks served frozen honey on the toast, burnt the porridge and had tins exploding in the oven while thawing. The dried remnants of one tin of shattered baked beans were apparent on the hut walls and door for weeks. One of the cooks with a military background facetiously referred to this hazard as “platoon firing in the starboard oven”.
Numerous food companies donated goods for the 1911 expedition and many of them are familiar to us today including CSR, Nestles, Cerebos, Arnotts and Schwepps. All sorts of delicacies made the trip down to Antarctica including preserved figs, port wine, preserved fruit, and canned rabbit and fish. But by far the most popular was chocolate. It was distributed every Saturday night and became the hut currency being used for betting, games of chance and sweeps on the monthly wind-velocity readings. Two hut members who weren’t bothered with chocolate acted as the “bank” and bankruptcies occurred.
It’s apparent that the type of food eaten in the huts on Antarctic expeditions was the same or similar to what was being eaten by upper middleclass British and Australian families at the turn of the twentieth century, except for the inclusion of seal and penguin meat. So how has eating in extremes changed a century later? When Australians, James Castrission and Justin Jones, were the first to successfully paddle across the Tasman Sea in a kayak between Australia and New Zealand in 2007-2008 they had similar problems of nutritional requirements, convenience, cooking and the plain monotony of their food as explained in James’ very readable account, Crossing the Ditch.
In place of pemmican and biscuits they took modern dehydrated meals which they cryo-vacked into airtight plastic bags. Instead of a Nansen cooker they used a flameless heating pad in a small bucket with 100 ml of salt water (the salt water infused with the pad and created an exothermic reaction providing the same amount of heat as a microwave for 40 seconds). A meal would be poured into a foil bag with a sachet of olive oil and fresh water and the foil bag added to the “cooking water” for heating. Their favourites were roast chicken, spaghetti Bolognese and chicken babotjie. The worst meal was Thai green curry. Chocolate bars were used to barter and a homemade fruit cake was their delicacy. James and Justin are now in training for their next great adventure, Crossing the Ice, a world first attempt at an unsupported 2200 km, 3-month trek on skis hauling sledges, like Scott, to the South Pole. They leave in November 2011. I expect they’ll be packing lots of roast chicken and spag. bol.
I recently had the privilege to undertake a 20 day internship at the Powerhouse Museum under the supervision of curator, Paul Donnelly. I was given the task of documenting an acquisition consisting of a series of ceramic pieces by Joyce Gittoes (b.1915). Researching the life of Joyce has been an immense honour as she has had an amazing journey, dedicating her life to her family and her art. The ceramic art by Joyce is unique, firstly in its dedication to the ceramic medium, and then in its focused subject matter. The evolution of her own artistic style is evident in the Museum’s collection which has work from her early career and her later works which are dedicated to the native fauna, the landscape and the cultural history of Australia. This recent acquisition complements the Museum’s earlier acquisition of Yellow House artworks.
Joyce studied ceramics during the Arts and Crafts movement in Australia in the 1950s under Mollie Douglas. All of Joyce’s work has been produced with great technique and skill. Her individual style is bold and expressive breaking away from the Japanese aesthetic style that was popular with her contemporaries. Joyce’s sculptures in the Museum’s collection from her early career were designed to be exhibited in the Yellow House. ‘Peg Leg Pete’ (1970-72) is a work that was inspired by the Surrealist artist Rene Magritte. The half-fish half-man sculpture was often placed in the fish pond at the Yellow House.
Peg-Leg Pete, ceramic sculpture of a fish-man, stylised modelled earthenware, Joyce Gittoes, Bardwell Park, Sydney, NSW, 1970-72 Collection Powerhouse Museum
The Yellow House was an artist collective established in the early 1970s in Sydney. It was organised by artists Martin Sharp, Brett Whitely, Greg Waite and Joyce’s son, George Gittoes. This period of contemporary art during the early 1970s is heralded as the hippy era in Australia’s art scene. The Yellow House in Macleay St, Potts Point in Sydney, was named after Van Gough’s studio in the south of France which he used as an escape from the stress of life in Paris. Van Gough wrote in a letter to his brother that he wanted to one day turn the studio into an artist’s boarding house, with live performance ‘happenings’, exhibition space and installations. George Gittoes was the creator of the Yellow House Puppet theatre. A re-creation of this room with the original puppets along with selected ceramics by Joyce Gittoes was acquired by the Museum prior to the ceramic acquisition which I have been working on for my internship. This work is almost in direct contrast to her later work which took on an Australiana theme, focusing on native animals and the landscape. These animal sculptures were exhibited during the 1980s in galleries around NSW and the Northern Territory and were made through the love that Joyce had for the native animals and native culture of Australia. They are unique in the detail that Joyce gave each one.
Owl, stylised modelled earthenware sculpture, Joyce Gittoes, Bardwell Park, Sydney, NSW, 1975-1990 Collecton: Powerhouse Museum
The owls, which are a personal favourite of many collectors, have individual characteristics; the barn owl, Boobook owls and the Barking owl have been made life-sized and with a great amount of detail given to the individual species. Joyce was often told by her patrons that, “each one (of her animals) appears to have a soul”. Quote, Joyce Gittoes, Artist Statement, 1986.
Post by Sarah Heenan, Curatorial intern with Dr Paul Donnelly, Curator, design & society.
2007/62/6-1 'Synroc', ceramic / steel, made by Australian Nuclear Science Technology Organisation, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 1984-2007
The disposal of nuclear waste has been a controversial issue for decades. Synroc is an innovative solution to dealing with the problem of the long term storage of nuclear wastes that contain radioactive isotopes with long half-lives. It was originally developed in 1978 by Australian geochemist Professor Ted Ringwood and his team at the Australian National University.
Synroc is an advanced ceramic made up of the same types of minerals that have held uranium and thorium naturally in the Earth’s crust for billions of years. Radioactive waste atoms displace some host atoms, and so are chemically bound into a mineral matrix similar to natural rock, held until their radioactivity levels have decayed away.
The original type of Synroc was 57% titanium dioxide (rutile, TiO2) with the minerals hollandite (BaAl2Ti6O16), zirconolite (CaZrTi2O7) and perovskite (CaTiO3). Nuclear waste materials are added to the mixed powdered minerals and the ceramic is formed by heat and high compression. The Synroc is then placed in steel canisters.
91/23 Artificial Rock, Models (4), Synroc Manufacture, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology, Australia, 1990. Collection Powerhouse Museum
The original type of Synroc was intended mainly for the storage of liquid high level wastes from the reprocessing of light water reactor fuel. However, many countries did not reprocess this type of fuel; those that did had already chosen borosilicate glass as the storage medium because it was the most technically mature technology. This made it difficult to market Synroc, even though it was demonstrated to have superior waste storage properties. Unlike borosilicate glass, which is amorphous, Synroc incorporates the radioactive waste into the crystal structure of its individual grains, reducing the possibility of the waste leaking out.
At the Australian government’s request, a Synroc study group was set up in 1989 to look at ways in which the product could be commercialised. This group was comprised of four Australian companies, BHP (now BHP Billiton), CRA (now Rio Tinto), Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) and Western Mining Corporation (now part of BHP Billiton), together with ANSTO (Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation) and the Australian National University. This group has further developed Synroc technology, resulting in a variety of ceramic and glass-ceramic Synroc formulations designed to cope with a diverse range of radioactive waste types, particularly those resulting from the construction of nuclear weapons.
91/22 Synthetic Rock, (4), Synroc Raw Materials, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Australia, 1990 Collection: Powerhouse Museum
In the late 90s the US Department of Energy selected Synroc for its plutonium immobilisation program, designed to lock up surplus plutonium from the US and Russian nuclear weapons programs. The immobilisation program was later dropped for political reasons. In 2005, the Synroc process was chosen for a multi-million dollar demonstration contract to eliminate five tonnes of plutonium-contaminated waste at British Nuclear Fuel’s Sellafield plant, on the northwest coast of England. Other projects aimed at cleaning up nuclear contamination are also considering the use of Synroc.
The museum has a number of Synroc samples in its collection, including samples of the original mineral components in powdered form, cutaway discs of Synroc material and complete simulated discs of material stacked in a waste container. Some of these samples can be seen on display in the Success and Innovation and Nuclear Matters exhibitions. One also features in Science Underground, curator-led tours of our basement store during Ultimo Science Festival, from 16-28 August 2011.
85/1042 French children’s toy theatre, “La Pleine Mer” (The Open Sea), 1836, showing the three main elements, a sea background, waves in the centre and tropical vegetation foreground. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
After working at this Museum for decades I still find it breathtaking uncovering the treasures we have buried away down in our vaults. An academic from New Zealand emailed me to have a look at a French children’s toy theatre, “La Pleine Mer” (The Open Sea). I vaguely knew about it but never got it all out. What an amazing and incredibly rare object. You can think of it as natural history and French exploration colliding with education and entertainment for children.
The theatre has 27 printed and hand-coloured lithographic cardboard pieces with scenes set in the South Pacific. The backdrop has two French ships under sail, the middle ground a vaudeville-style group of five waves to give a bit of depth and a foreground of lush tropical vegetation around a reef battered by breakers.
The theatre, which was made J. Pintard, Rue Saint-Jacques, Paris, in 1836, has 6 scripts (in French) and lithographs produced by Charles Letaille. The idea was that an adult or older child read the script while younger children slid in or attached a number of loose pieces including boats and individual figures inserted into the scene as directed in the play.
Collection Powerhouse Museum
This all sounds fairly standard for a children’s toy theatre until you look carefully at the content of the script, which we’ve had translated. They give the most amazing and exotic descriptions of maritime adventures and aspects of Australia, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands and New Guinea in the 1830s which couldn’t be more further removed from the lives of the wealthy French children for whom it was made.
One play, “The Whale” describes a whale hunt and tells children about the uses of whale products (whale rib bones for umbrellas and whale fat boiled on board in large vats for oil). It concludes with the gruesome description of the crampon-wearing sailors climbing over the carcass of the whale tied to the side of the ship to remove the ribs, skin and fat.
Detail of a scene from the toy theatre’s “The Shark” play. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
Another one, “The Shark” begins with a deceptively tranquil description of a ship becalmed in the hot tropics. The pace picks up quickly with nail biting anticipation as it is revealed that the ship’s master is repeatedly diving from the ship hauling himself up on a rope to cool off from the heat while a short distance away a shark’s fin creates a “frothing shimmering wake”. Climbing into a small boat, the sailors go to his rescue. Gripped with fear they “could all foresee the struggle that was about to take place between themselves and the shark; a terrible struggle with a man as the contest”. Ironically, the victim in the play ends up being the 16-foot shark which is split open by the ship’s cook. In a play which initially evokes terror the mood is transformed into humour when the sailors discover that a man’s otter-skin hat belonging to the ship’s doctor is inside the shark’s stomach. (Clothes and belongings hung over the side of ships were regularly eaten by sharks).
Inspiration for theatre’s “The Shark” scene was taken from John Singleton Copley’s 1778 painting “Watson and the Shark” in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Image: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
The really interesting thing about the lithographic images and the content of the plays can be traced to paintings, books and journals of the period. According to Louise Mitchell, a former Powerhouse Curator, who wrote about the theatre in her article “La Pleine Mer Sailing over a cardboard sea” in “The Australian Antique Collector”, in 1988, the lithograph depicting New Holland natives tumbling from their capsized canoe while spearing fish, can be traced to an illustration by the Scottish engraver and miniaturist, John Heaviside Clark (c.1777-1863). Clark had never seen Australian aborigines but adhered to the popular European imagery of them as being noble and savage sportsmen. The illustration appeared in a book published in London in 1813 with the title “Field sports … of the Native Inhabitants of New South Wales”. The shark attack lithograph was derived from the well-known American romantic horror-painting of 1778 by John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) “Watson and the Shark”.
In keeping with most toymakers of the period, the theatre’s manufacturer, Pintard produced a variety of toys and related material aimed at educating children in art, geography, scripture, history and natural history. This theatre looked at navigation, maritime life, exploration, geography and the people of the Pacific. Advertising his stock at the conclusion of the “La Pleine Mer” script, he claimed that the moral teaching in its purest form is the basis of all these little educational works. Not only is this toy probably one of the earliest in our collection directly related to Australia but the stories, the humour, the melodrama and images are as fresh today as they were in 1836.
Benny Zable Image courtesy Powerhouse Museum
The theme for World Environment Day (WED) in 2011 is ‘Forests: nature at your service’.
Over the last forty years there have been many protests in Australia on a wide variety of issues. Significant among them is preserving forests for now and the future. Protests on this issue have ensured that there are a range of forests, like those at Terania Creek, the Daintree, Chaelundi State Forest and some of the South East forest in Eden, New South Wales. Some areas of the South-East forests have recently been incorporated into National Parks, others continue to be woodchipped.
The forest protests in the twentieth century have involved the strong presence of people like the mime artist Benny Zable. He has opposed the logging of the South- East forests and the damming of the Franklin River as well as mining on Fraser Island. His protest costume emblazoned with the slogan ‘Consume Be Silent And Die’ was on display in the Museum’s permanent exhibition Ecologic for nine years. Benny was often arrested at protests simply for standing there.
Protest on environmental issues have taken numerous forms, like the community action of 13 middle class housewives who combed with the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) in the 1970s to stop the development on bush land in Sydney. Known as The Battle for Kellys Bush the struggle took ten years to change legislation and create a park It is regarded as the beginning of the Green Bans.
2010/ 59/1 Kellys bush protest stand, used at one of the community awareness events, Hunters Hill early 1970s. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
Organisations such as Greenpeace and the Wilderness Society have played an important part in the process of environmental change. They have raised awareness on the many issues and mobilised the public.
The organisation ‘Clean up the Harbour’ was begun by yachtsman Ian Kiernan in 1989 and evolved into ‘Clean up Sydney’, and eventually into Clean up Australia. Its power is such that it has gone global to become ‘Clean up the World’ with an estimated 35 million people from 120 countries taking part every year.
Clean up the harbour sign. Collection Powerhouse Museum
As Ian Kiernan describes Clean Up Australia and its events as
“ Friendly, non-confrontational, but a very powerful protest ”.
. He says it is the people telling the government to look after the harbour. Interview 2000
With massive changes in the way information is spread, a consequence is the way we protest. Community action through organisations like Earth hour and pressure groups like GetUp! used the tools of social media to their benefit. They provoke community engagement and enable increasing numbers of people to have a voice. The outcome is an increasing pace and impact on social and environmental change.
While our digitisation project is well underway, with 80% of collection objects currently listed online, there is much more work to be done. Your donation will assist the Powerhouse to add high quality photographs and full background information for the 50% of online objects with incomplete listings.