03/12/2009
Recently we were visited by some eminent palaeontological preparators (conservators who are skilled in removing fossils from the rock in which they are encased). One of our visitors, Amy Davidson (Senior Principal Preparator in the Paleontology division of the American Museum of Natural History), wrote this about our fossil fishes from Strawberry Bank, Ilminster: I have never seen three dimensional preservation of that quality. In fact if I had not seen with my own eyes the exquisite preservation of gills and scales I would not have believed it possible. Our JESBI project, launching in March 2010, will concentrate on these very fossils, so it is good to be reasured of their great importance.
24/11/2009
As you can readily see I've not updated this page for a while, not because nothing has happened but simply because I've been rather busy. Next year looks like a good year for the Palaeontology collection at the BRLSI. First of all I am writing captions for the Fossil Gallery of the Virtual Museum pages (less that 150 entries remaining), which should be put up by February. Secondly we will be launching a project called Jurassic Ecosystem of Strawberry Bank, Ilminster (JESBI) in March 2010, this is a collaborative project with the University of Bristol's Palaeobiology Research Group (led by the well known Professor Mike Benton) to produce new research on an exciting collection of fossils collected over 150 years ago but as yet poorly studied... more on that in our next newsletter!
01/07/2009
The next gallery of our Virtual Museum is now available on line, you can now find out more about our collection of weapons in the Weaponry Gallery.
05/06/2009
Paul Stephens, our excellent web-master, has produced a new interface for accessing parts of our museum catalogues on-line. You can now browse the library catalogue or the mineral catalogue, with more to come soon.
10/03/2009
My apologies for not having posted anything new for nearly three months, much have my time has been taken up with preparing Mr. Darwin’s Fishes, which is now open and attracted plenty of visitors.
I am currently working on some web galleries featuring the BRLSI weaponry collections which have been cleaned, conserved and researched by our volunteer (and historic fire arms conservator) Brian Godwin. Those that read our newsletter may remember reading about his work in articles he has written for that (old issues can be found here).
We in collections (the numerous volunteers and I) work on many different projects, these currently include;
- Setting up a research project with Bristol University’s Palaeobiology Research Group and working with an MSC student on a re-description of some Ichthyosaur specimens.
- An audit of the Strawberry Bank fossil collection.
- Research into exhibitions on pre-historic and Roman Bath for 2010.
- Digitisation of parts of the fossil and ethnological collections for expansion of the virtual museum section of the web site.
- Ongoing archival cataloguing.
- Ongoing library conservation and cleaning.
- Research and database cross-referencing of many of the old MS catalogues.
16/12/2008
In assessing the condition of some fossils from the Carboniferous coal measures of Radstock, for loan to Radstock Museum, I found that there was one specimen (pictured here) that had some serious cracks running through it. The coal shales in which such exquisite fossils are preserved can be prone to this kind of damage over time, though fortunately it is not common in our collection. I am rectifying the problem by repeatedly feeding a low viscosity solution of Paraloid B72 down into these cracks; an Ethyle-Methacrylate co-polymer dissolved in Acetone. This acrylic resin will set in the cracks and hold the fossil together, though sadly it will prevent us lending this particularly fine specimen to Radstock Museum.
12/12/2008
The last few months have been exceedingly busy at the BRLSI with preparations for Mr. Darwin's Fishes punctuated by visits from a number of people including the Mayor of Bath, the Chairman of Trustees for Radstock Museum and researchers from the Department of Earth Sciences at Bristol University. Richard Maggs, Radstock Museum, came to discuss the loan of BRLSI fossils from the North Somerset region for a forth coming exhibition.Professor Mike Benton, Dr. Matrcello Ruta and Lorrie Barber,experts in fossil vertebrates, came to view and discuss with me our internationally important and completely unique collection of fish and marine reptile fossils from Strawberry Bank in Ilminster. We are now working towards a collaborative research partnership with Bristol University, so impressed were they with the collection. For more info please see the January/February BRLSI newsletter when it is released.
31/10/2008
Our two new display cabinets are now in use at the BRLSI. These beautiful cabinets are specified and built to best practice standards and provide a stable climatic environment for our more delicate museum objects. They are framed in elm (which does not produce acetic acid fumes as many woods do) and panelled using pH neutral boards, they are glazed with UV filtered safety glass and are lit internally by LED technology that produces no UV radiation and very little heat. You can learn more about the materials which are suitable for storing and displaying museum objects here. I am delighted with these cases, produced by the excellent chaps at Exis Uk in Bristol. We plan to update all our display facilities to a similar standard in the near future, so as better to present and care for our wonderful collection.
02/10/2008
I have just updated all the pages for Darwin and Beyond; you can navigate there from the home page. Alternatively you will find the full programme here or you can learn more about BRLSI's unique conection to Darwin here.
30/09/2008
The online description of the BRLSI collections has been updated today. Originally written by Rob Randall (our chairman of the collections sub-committee and long standing collections volunteer) in 2002, many of the figures and a few other facts were in need of updating due to the huge amount of progress in cataloguing the collections since that time. The updated version is also illustrated with items from the collections. Have you ever wondered what the extent of BRLSI's collections are? You can visit the updated page here.
26/09/2008
Last week Jude Harris and I, accompanied by film maker Paul Green, visited the Natural History Museum in London to film fish specimens collected by Darwin (see my entry for 22/08/2008). A day spent filming in the spirit specimen store of the Darwin centre is a fascinating though strangely eerie experience. The footage of specimens, rotating on a black background at a stately 1.7rpm, will be edited to a script made up from notes made by Darwin and Jenyns. This audio-visual exhibit will form a centre piece to Mr Darwin’s Fishes. See the full programme of events for Darwin and Beyond (2009) by clicking here.
The day after I visited London Amy Frost (Curator of Beckford’s Tower for Bath Preservation Trust and expert on Palladianism in Bath) and I put the finishing touches to a small joint exhibition entitled Bath: a Palladian City. The exhibits include books on Palladian architecture (including John Wood’s marvellously titled The Origin of Building, or the Plagiarism of the Heathens Detected) and a model of Queen Square before the alterations of the 19th century. The exhibition is open until the 11th October, click here to see the poster.
09/09/2008
Today, building on work done by our chairman of the collections sub-committee, Rob Randall, I have been editing a list of books to include in an exhibit called Darwin’s Bookshelf. The development of Darwin’s ideas depended both on the work of his contemporaries and that of many scientists, naturalists and philosophers before them.
In a letter to Baden Powel, in 1860, Darwin wrote:
"No person, not even the most ignorant, could suppose that I meant to arrogate to myself the origination of the doctrine that species had not been independently created. The only novelty in my work is the attempt to show how species become modified, & to a certain extent how the theory of descent explains certain large classes of facts; & in these respects I received no assistance from my predecessors."
These influences can be reflected in the contents of Darwin’s bookshelf. We know what Darwin read from his notes, letters and references; fortunately many of these books are to be found in the library that his friend Jenyns left to the BRLSI. It is from the Jenyns library that we will attempt to reconstruct (albeit partially) the contents of Darwin’s Bookshelf.
02/09/2008
Last Thursday, 28th August, Jude and I visited another collection of fishes; that of Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery (our partners in the touring Nature Collected exhibition). We will be borrowing some fish specimens from them for Mr. Darwin’s Fishes in 2009, not because they have specimens that were collected by Darwin but because their collection can demonstrate both the problems and advantages of the technique of preserving fishes by pickling! We will use various pickled fish, including recently collected specimens (not yet bleached white by the alcohol), dried out and putrefied specimens (when pickling goes wrong!) and dissected specimens, to demonstrate how Darwin prepared and preserved his specimens during the five year voyage of HMS Beagle.
22/08/2008
Finally, I am able to make good my promise to update this page more regularly!
A few weeks ago BRLSI volunteer Jude Harris (who conceived of and is co-curating our forth coming exhibition Mr. Darwin's Fishes) and I visited Oliver Crimmen, Fish Curator for the Natural History Museum, London. We are working in partnership with the NHM and spent an exciting afternoon photographing fish specimens collected on Darwin's voyage aboard HMS Beagle, specimens which were described as new to science by Leonard Jenyns, a former BRLSI member.
Mr. Darwin's Fishes will tell the story of Darwin's collaboration with Jenyns through the correspondence between the two that remain in the BRLSI's collections.
28/5/2008
Last week Helen and Jan (from Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery) and I took down Nature Collected from Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, packed the specimens and moved the whole lot to Torquay where we put it back together again. This was hard work as the cases had to be modified and then carried up two flights of stairs. The cases themselves were requisitioned for the exhibition and were never intended for touring; consequently they are VERY heavy and unwieldy! As I am currently designing two new cases for the BRLSI I am now making sure that they have really good locking castors and that they fit in the lift.
Today (as usual on a Wednesday) we have a number of volunteers in the basement, here’s what they are currently up to:
Rob Randall and Denise Cusick are performing and audit of our ethnology and archaeology store, rationalising the packing of items and assuring that the storage location is accurately recorded in our catalogues.
Sheila Metcalf and Rosemarie Davies are working through William Lonsdale’s geological catalogue, Lonsdale was the BRLSI’s first curator between 1824 and 1829. Many of his descriptions are in French, often using archaic geological terms, and they are meticulously translating it.
Brian Godwin (Historic Firearms advisor to the National Trust) is continuing his work cleaning and conserving our fantastic collection of bladed weaponry. He is currently working on a number of Kris, the traditional dagger of Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, Southern Thailand and the southern Philippines (see this article in Wikipedia) and will report on his work in the next BRLSI newsletter.
There is some bad news to report, sadly we were not awarded a grant by the Wellcome Trust which would have supported our Darwin and Beyond programme (particularly the exhibitions we have planned). We will, of course, carry on regardless but we will have to find cheep solutions to some of our plans.
15/4/2008
Following a visit to the excellent Torquay Museum (an organisation with a history and origins very similar to our own) I have been working out a way to move display cases into a space which is accessed by a stair case with a low roof, the answer; cut the legs off and re-attach them in the gallery! This is just another way to make the BRLSI’s collections more accessible and will allow Nature Collected to be shown in an even wider variety of Museum venues. You can visit the web site of Torquay Museum here.
The volunteer team are constantly working to improve the conservation, cataloguing, documentation and accessibility of the collections. This work enables us to better understand how the BRLSI’s museum library and archives have grown and the relevance they continue to have to the City of Bath and beyond. I will be updating this page more regularly from now on, so over the coming weeks and months please visit this page for up to date news from the collections.
25/3/2008
Late in 2007 an independent evaluation of Nature Collected: a touring exhibition was commissioned using funding from Renaissance in the Regions.
This report is now available to read and a copy is being kept in the office for your benefit, please enquire with Brenda, Angela or Carol to see this reference copy.
Some quotes from the report are:
“Nature Collected is a highly successful collaborative project which has proved very popular with the public”
"Nature Collected provides a case study for a sucessful regional collaboration that has resulted in very positive outcomes for all partners"
If you want to visit Nature collected the current touring schedule is:
BRISTOL CITY MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY 16 Nov 2007—17 May 2008
TORQUAY MUSEUM 24 May 2008— 4 October 2008
DORSET COUNTY MUSEUM, DORCHESTER 7 Feb 2009—18 April 2009
ROYAL CORNWALL MUSEUM, TRURO 13 June 2009—19 Sept 2009
21/7/2007
Nature Collected: A touring Exhibition
Opening at the BRLSI 22nd September
Produced in partnership by Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution and Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery, supported by Renaissance in the Regions.
“Nature Collected” is our new touring natural history exhibition featuring objects and artefacts from across the South West region. Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution have worked in partnership with Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery (PCMAG) to produce an exhibition that helps to explain how, why and what people collect from nature.
Helen Fothergill (Keeper of Natural History, PCMAG), Jan Freedman (Assistant Keeper of Natural History, PCMAG) and I have visited museums in Bristol, Weston-super-Mare, Taunton, Torquay, Exeter and Truro; trawling collections and quizzing curators to find specimens and stories that tell the story of natural history collecting through time.
At the core of the exhibition are items from the BRLSI and PCMAG collections. The specimens chosen tell the story of the collectors and their motivations and how attitudes have changed through time. A seven foot long Narwhal tusk, which can be lifted to feel its weight, helps explain how collecting has dispelled the myth of the unicorn in the 17th century. Another example of the type of thing a visitor might expect to encounter at the exhibition is the extinct passenger pigeon (also from the BRLSI collections, see right). The idea is to give visitors an understanding of the way in which natural history collections tie in to our modern understanding of ecology, conservation and extinction.
The exhibition was opened in Plymouth on the 6th July and I have promoted it with talks in Bristol, Plymouth and here in Bath. Now we just need to get it ready to tour!
The exhibition is financially supported by Renaissance in the Regions (a programme to transform England’s regional museums into great centres of life and learning fit for the 21st century, with strategic direction from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and will tour the South West of England for the next two years.
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Amy Davidson and I opening a draw of Pachcormus sp fish fossils from Strawberry Bank
A Pachcormus sp fish fossil from Strawberry Bank with even its gills preserved!
Asterophyllites equisetiformis; a spectactular carboniferous plant fossil currently undergoing conservation.
New display cases at the BRLSI.
Paul Green and Jude Harris filming Mr Darwin's Fishes at the Natural History Museum in London.
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