The Fan museum: Useful & beautiful

 On one of the hottest days of the year,

I went with a friend to The Fan Museum in Greenwich.
We couldn't use them unfortunately,
only look,
and learn more about fans.

There was a lot to look at.

Painted fans,

the only known fan leaf by Gaugin, 1887,

and by Sickert, 1889, painted on fine kid leather.

We saw how fans were made.

Historically some questionnable materials were used...

...ivory,

...and turtle shell.

Shells were also used to make fans,

mother of pearl and abalone.

There are fans from around the world.

Mozambique (in the centre),

China,

Togo.

Those countries can get pretty hot.

"Wonder if today London might be hotter than them?"

Here the great debate about 'form' and 'function',

'useful or beautiful',

continues...

Beautiful? No.

Useful? Yes.

"If only these weren't behind glass."

Beautiful?
The galleries, particularly that yellow and grey paintwork.

Useful?
"Award-winning ladies toilets".
They are very proud of them.

Magazines, well extracts from magazines, are displayed on the back of the toilet doors.

Something to read on the loo.

'The Fan'  "...and is just plain-old needed when it's 30 degrees in London."

The Fan Museum

has over 4,000 fans in its collection.

They can't all be on display at the same time,

so to give us many opportunities to see all these fans, 

the fan exhibition in the gallery upstairs is changed several times a year.

Currently, the exhibition is,
Seduced! Fans and the Art of Advertising.
On until 28th Sept 2014.
Coming soon in my next blog post.

The fans above should all be around whenever you happen to visit in the future
as they are part of their permanent collection.
As for the Gold certificate for their Ladies' loos,
visit in 2015 to find out if they have retained that prestigious award.

Taxidermy Tales

There's nothing like taxidermy, and sometimes models of animals,
for creating opportunities to talk with visitors in museums.

I know I love to chat, and talk to visitors, helping them to engage with objects in museums,

but sometimes all you need is a stuffed animal and they're off,

sharing their own experiences with these animals outside the museum.

Taxidermy in the Horniman Museum seems to bring out the storyteller
in the Great British public.

Like the couple, "not from London"

who had Grass snakes mating in their garden.

"They were there for hours. Entwined.

They were still there when we came back from the shops."

Then there was the woman who put her coat on to go out,

 put her hand in her pocket and pulled out a live mouse.

Then there was the lady, and you couldn't tell by looking at her,

who had had enough, she was pee'd off (I use that word advisedly)

with the badgers digging up her garden.

So when they began burrowing into the foundations of her house,

she took matters into her own hands, it was time to act.

She knew exactly what to do.

She wee'd in the hole they were digging.

"At night of course. They never came back!"

Then there's my favourite story, in a previous blog-post.

About the teenager who wasn't terribly complimentary about her brother's girlfriend.

Click here to read it.

On further reflection, it may have been a compliment.

It depends what you think of Pekinese.

Why not visit the Horniman Museum and see if the stuffed animals in the
Natural History Gallery.
It may inspire you to tell a tale or two.

Details on their website here.

Medicine Now

We took advantage of a strike day to take friends to the Wellcome Collection,

in particular the Medicine Now gallery.

Medicine Now explores ideas about science from the perspective of

scientists, doctors and patients.

My perspective on medicine could only come from a patient perspective,
but I had in my care, four budding scientists.

It's a gallery with a hands-on trolley...

...and staff to set you tasks.

Like building a skeleton.

How well do you know your bones?

"Meet Fiona & Steve"

Yep, they look anatomically correct.

It's not all science.

Some exhibits are art, responses to the human body, like

Palindrome by William Cobbing 2003. 

It takes a while for the penny to drop,

to work out why it doesn't quite look right.

"Oh yeah!"

 Next, internal organs,

getting them in the right places.

It was the liver that surprised me.

"I never knew the liver was so huge",

you can't tell from this photo.

"You can actually remove 90% of the liver and it will still function."

"Imagine losing your big toe.

Do you think you could balance?"

We practise lifting our big toes off the ground and trying to balance.

It's not easy. We need our big toes, they're important.

"Even in ancient Egypt they made prosthetic big toes."

"Out of what?"

"Leather and paper mainly, apparently they were comfortable."

Then we were introduced to a shrunken head.

A replica!

We still weren't that keen to touch it,

especially after hearing how they're made.

"Made for ceremonial purposes, the skull is removed, the head shrinks and it would stink."

"When finished with, they are discarded."

If you can't bear the sight of internal organs,

look away now.

At 70 years old, she donated her body, sliced for research and teaching.

I am intrigued as to what happened to her neck.

All her fluids have been replaced with plastic,

so unlike the shrunken head, I hope she doesn't smell.

Now you can see how big the liver is.

The Wellcome Collection encourage you to get involved.

Pick a word or two from the front of the card,

draw or write about them,

then add the card to the feedback wall.

I promise you, 'Unicorn' was on the front of the card.

I'm going to truly try and follow this advice from an insightful ten year old.

Top advice for a healthy life.

Even at a distance, if you don't get the chance to visit,

you can still get involved, via social media.

Curious Conversations is a participatory project.

Each week the Wellcome Collection poses a new question on Twitter and facebook.

Inspired by the answers they receive, Rob Bidder creates a new drawing.

Have a look at the Curious Questions page on their website here.

Such a great way of getting involved. #CuriousConversations

There are some inspiring answers.

A good day out, back to school tomorrow

with a little more insight into the human body.

The Wellcome Collection's opening hours vary,

check out their website here.

Free admission.

Update

The Wellcome Collection have just been in touch to explain the 'unicorn'.

If you'd like to read why 'unicorn' is on the front of the cards above and is the most popular word picked by visitors.

Click on & read this "The Power of Unicorns"

HMS Belfast a War Ship

 I have looked at Life on Board HMS Belfast in a previous post, here.

Food, laundry, spare-time, sleep and shopping.

But HMS Belfast is a war ship,

commissioned in 1939,

at the beginning of the second World War.

My kids have studied the second world war,

in both primary and secondary school.

Would this ship connect to the history they had learnt at school?

What would our kids make of war?

What did war at sea look like?

There are guns.

These guns, if fired, would hit Scratchwood motorway services,

the southernmost services on the M1, 14 miles away.

Deep below deck,

shells are stored, ready to be sent to the gun turrets.

 Each 6" shell weighs as much as two small children.

We could demonstrate that weight, sometimes it's useful having twins.

Steering the ship was done from a safe position, below deck,

but you still had to wear your anti-flash gloves and hoods

to protect you in the event of fire.

War is strategic, it involves planning,

team work where every man had a specific job.

We worked together to locate aircraft parts,

studying the map, plotting journeys and moving ships and helicopters into position.

 Ooops!

We did it!

 It was important to take orders rather than 'selfies'.

If you didn't follow orders, and you misbehaved,

you could end up in the punishment cells

being shouted at and having to unwind rope.

Having been caught drunk on duty,

this guy is too busy throwing up into a bucket to unwind any more rope.

The top misdemeanours were being drunk, absent without leave and fighting. 

For some reason the punishment cells appealed,

we fought to try out the wooden pillow.

 Now moored on the Thames by the City of London

HMS Belfast doesn't look so big.

It is though.
It's two football pitches long and nine decks high,
they can all be explored, many are below the waterline.

All those different greys.

That's called dazzle paint, designed to confuse the enemy when it is spotted at sea.

It does a pretty good camouflage job in the City too.

As for war,

secondary school history has given them some context for the life of HMS Belfast,

the Second World War and later conflicts.

I learnt a lot from the older two.

For our primary school children, HMS Belfast was appreciated more for being a ship,

what it did and how it worked.

It is perhaps difficult to comprehend the realities of war for the crew on HMS Belfast,

at sea, in action.

I'll leave you with words from archive footage, heard in the Gun Turret Experience,

spoken by former crew who had fired those guns.

Food for thought.

"...we wanted to get the ships, not the crew..."

At that point, I gulped.

HMS Belfast is open everyday.

Occasionally there are still veterans on board to meet and hear their stories.

Details on their website, here.

I recommend the children's audio tour. It was the one we used for our family,

aged eleven to adult.

Form Through Colour

Ever walked around an exhibition

working out which piece you would take home if you were allowed?

Well in Form Through Colour at Somerset House

those daydreams can become a reality.

Price on application.

Christopher Farr with over twenty-five years of experience in rug design

has created rugs, based on the paintings, prints and textile studies of Anni Albers,

Josef Albers and Gary Hume.

They are for sale.

Anni and Josef Albers worked at the Bauhaus, Germany, in the 1920s and 30s.

Along with Farr's contemporary rugs,

you can see plans, ideas and documents from their life and work.

Anni was very much influenced by textiles from Latin America.

She visited over fourteen times to learn fom,

"my great teachers, the weavers of ancient Peru".

Josef taught drawing and colour.

His colour course 'Interaction of Colour', exploring, learning and teaching about colour

was published and used world-wide.

It wasn't so long ago that most art books were published in black and white.

Christopher Farr has worked with Gary Hume to

create huge rugs based on his life-size paintings of hospital doors. 

Like Anni and Josef Alber's work, these rugs explore colour and shape.

The shapes geometric, but his use of colour is more subtle. 

Colour can be affected, not only by dye, but also by different rug making techniques.

There is weaving...

...and there is knotting.

These are knotted by hand!

You do wonder why all these rugs are on the walls.

But it does reflect the wishes of Anni, who made "pictoral weavings",

with no practical purpose.

Ah, a rug I could use.

Then there's the obligatory museum selfie.

This sort of took itself.

Standing in front of Hume's, Green Door, 1988,

we found ourselves framed by the gallery doors.

Subtle colour changes, non-geometric shapes.

Form Through Colour is on at Somerset House, East Wing, until 31st August 2014.

Details on their website, here.

Admission free.

Rugs, price on application.