Adventures in designing things that aren’t technically logos

By Sarah Barr, Volunteer, Scotland Creates

Our Scotland Creates volunteers are working with curators and other staff from National Museums Scotland to create an exhibition on the theme of Scotland Creates: A Sense of Place.

GREETINGS, FELLOW HUMANS.

So we’re trying to fashion ourselves some sort of logo so that when you come and visit our exhibits you’ll know what’s ours.

Logo. Ok. I’m good at drawing. This’ll be easy. It’ll take five minutes. Yes. Scribble scribble.

I came up with Dolly the Sheep’s face placed over the National Museum crossed punctuation marks, looking like a skull and crossbones. We called it the Dolly Roger. I was a proud little potato.

The Dolly Roger.

Then… Oh. Turns out there are guidelines and things we have to follow.

Lots of them. About fonts and colours and use of museum marks and whatnot.

Ah.

So instead of the Dolly Roger, someone with far more sense than me brought in a clever lady called Eilidh, who also had far more sense than me, from an advertising firm called Frame in Glasgow to have a session with us volunteers about logo design and branding.

Turns out that logos are HARD.

We talked about famous brands and how their logos pop out at us, how simplicity is what we should aim for, and making sure that the logo we come up with really conveys what the heart of the project is all about. So, we grabbed a small forest’s worth of Post-It notes and wrote down words we felt summed up the project and its values, coated a wall with them and gradually whittled them down to a handful of key words.

We then split ourselves up into smaller groups, each group taking a word and trying to come up with some simple, clear images to represent them. The whole group then voted on which images we liked best, which turned out to be:

• A classic house shape with a heart inside it (representing “Home”, as in, home-is-where-the-heart-is… do you see what we did there? Do you? Do you see?)
•  A magnifying glass in various guises (representing “Discovery” which we thought was an important part of identity in Edinburgh)
• Keys, a key, or a keyhole, sometimes dressed up as a thistle (representing a mix of those last two key words. Hah. Key words. Keys. Hah.)

Happy with our ideas for potential motifs, we then had to find a volunteer to put it all together into a logo (Technically, we’re to call it a “visual identity” because the National Museum only has one logo).

Cue some shuffling of feet, and me eventually being stupid and saying “I could give it a go?” or something like that, because I apparently haven’t learned my lesson from my attempt with the Dolly Roger and my brain clearly enjoys torturing me by making me offer to do things I can’t do very well. Huzzah!

So I am working on a handful designs for everyone else to vote on based on the motifs we came up with at the brainstorming session. (I say working; every time I saw my sketchbook and the museum CD called “Identity Guidelines” over the past fortnight I ran away and watched an entire season of Xena:Warrior Princess in the hope that magical little elves will have broken into my flat and done it for me.)

I am so very nearly done though, and will hopefully be done in… ten minutes including procrastinating by writing this blog post. Mostly because I finished Xena. And Game of Thrones. And The X-Files. And somehow haven’t eaten my laptop in a fit of rage at MS Paint and my touchpad, which are as much Adobe Photoshop and a graphics tablet as I am a fairy princess.

And here they are…

‘Home is where the heart is’ motifs.

Key and magnifying glass motifs.

A selection of thistle and keyhole motifs.

Anyway, I hope you like what eventually gets chosen!

Bye for now,

Sarah Barr

 

Japanese Tea Ceremony (Chanoyu)

By Victoria Adams, Assistant Curator East & Central Asia and Middle East & South Asia

Every year the University of Edinburgh holds an Innovative Learning Week, allowing students the opportunity to attend creative and experiential learning events. These open up new perspectives on their studies, inspiring debate and prompting future research.

National Museum of Scotland recently hosted a Japanese tea ceremony for students from the History of Art department, within the serene environment of the Japanese tea house (chashitsu) in the Lady Ivy Wu Looking East gallery.

The ceremony was led by Mio Shapley, a qualified Master in the Urasenke tradition. Hiromi Moffat set the atmosphere by playing the shamisen, a three-stringed Japanese instrument played with a large plectrum (bachi). All four participants in the ceremony wore elegant kimono and hair ornaments.

Mio Shapley preparing Japanese green tea. Photo by Paul Dodds.

Tea has been drunk ceremonially in Japan since at least the 8^th century, although the basis of the existing tea ceremony probably dates from the 16th century. The highly symbolic ritual follows prescribed actions and gestures, demonstrative of purity and balance.

Traditionally the ceremony takes place within a tea house; a deliberately simple room usually set within an apparently uncultivated garden. It has no furnishings beyond the traditional tatami straw matting on the floor. A small sliding door requires the guest to bow humbly and enter on their knees, before symbolically closing the door to the outside world behind them. The room often contains an alcove used to display a naturalistic flower arrangement, and a hanging scroll with either a painting or calligraphy appropriate to the season or occasion. At the start of our ceremony, one of the students was asked to arrange seasonal foliage in a vase, and place it in the alcove.

A student arranging foliage before the ceremony. Photo by Paul Dodds.

Essential equipment for traditional tea preparation includes: the tea bowl (chawan) for drinking; the tea whisk (chasen) carved from a single piece of bamboo; the tea scoop (chashaku) and tea caddy (usuchaki or cha-ire), together with a cloth for wiping the bowl clean (chakin). Also necessary are a kettle (kama) and brazier (furo), and a long bamboo ladle (hishaku) for scooping boiling water from the kettle to the tea bowl. Additional items include storage containers made of natural materials such as wood or bamboo, and cloths for ritual cleaning and handling of hot items. All utensils are chosen with consideration for quality and aesthetics; some may be antique, passed down through generations. All are handled with great care and respect.

Mio Shapley pouring hot water for Japanese green tea. Photo by Paul Dodds.

The tea ceremony is highly spiritual and closely linked to Zen Buddhism. It is conducted in silence, and the calm, deliberate movements create a meditative atmosphere. The central tenets of the ceremony are harmony, respect, purity and tranquillity; participants also endeavour to cultivate a greater awareness of themselves, as part of their personal progression towards spiritual enlightenment.

Following the silent demonstration, a student was invited to prepare a second bowl of tea, whilst the first bowl was passed between her colleagues, accompanied by various traditional sweets (wagashi).

A University of Edinburgh student learns the etiquette of the Japanese tea ceremony. Photo by Paul Dodds.

University of Edinburgh students try Japanese green tea. Photo by Paul Dodds.

We would like to thank Mio and her colleagues for offering us a short glimpse into an ancient cultural tradition. This gave us all a moment to pause, reflect, savour, connect with each other, and then carry within us back into the pleasures and distractions of the everyday world.

 

Ilana Halperin: myth-making molluscs and cool corals

By Bryony Bond, Contemporary Art Consultant

Glasgow-based artist Ilana Halperin has been researching and developing ideas for a contemporary art exhibition inspired by National Museums Scotland’s collections. The exhibition, The Library, is open from 24 May-29 September 2013. Over the past few months, she’s been looking through National Museums Scotland’s collections, finding out about minerals, fossils, molluscs and rocks and uncovering some fascinating stories. In this series of blog posts, we share some of the fantastic things she’s found.

Artist Ilana Halperin has come across some incredible discoveries during her research at National Museums Scotland, but these have got to be some of the strangest. Who knew that snails were sculptors and molluscs were the real makers of the Golden Fleece?

“While at National Museums Scotland I’ve been branching out into other areas beyond geology and mineralogy: I’ve been spending time with corals and molluscs and the curators who look after those collections. I’ve been looking at some lovely things in those departments, such as carrier shells. As these molluscs grow their shells, they also pick up bits of rocks, coral or other shells and attach them to their own. So their shells become these crazy, fabulous sculptures.

Coral specimens in the National Museums Collection Centre.

Hexacorallia (coral).

Tubipora musica (organ pipe coral).

Xenophora conchyliophora (Atlantic carrier shell).

“I’ve also been looking at golden sea threads, which are rumoured to be the substance that the Golden Fleece was composed of. The threads are made by a particular bivalve to tether itself to a substrate, like an anchor. At various points these threads have been harvested and woven together. National Museums Scotland has a really beautiful pair of gloves and a matching scarf all woven from this thread!”

Gloves and scarf made from golden sea threads.

You can visit Ilana’s website here.

 

Ilana Halperin: the artist in the museum’s store

By Bryony Bond, Contemporary Art Consultant

Glasgow-based artist Ilana Halperin has been researching and developing ideas for a contemporary art exhibition inspired by National Museums Scotland’s collections. The exhibition, The Library, is open from 24 May-29 September 2013. Over the past few months, she’s been looking through National Museums Scotland’s collections, finding out about minerals, fossils, molluscs and rocks and uncovering some fascinating stories. In this series of blog posts, we share some of the fantastic things she’s found.

Born in New York, USA, in 1973, Ilana Halperin was fascinated by geology and museums at an early age.

“As a child, one of the main places that I went exploring and adventuring was the American Museum of Natural History, specifically the Harry Frank Guggenheim Hall of Minerals. In 1976 the Hall had just been redeveloped and reopened. It had been built to mimic the interior of a cave and all of the rocks and minerals were spot lit. So, even before I started carving stone there was an unadulterated, primary experience of being in this beautiful space where all these beautiful, incredible mysterious things were glittering in the dark.

“In the Hall you could explore and discover things, clamber over huge chunks of copper and jasper. The Hall was actually designed to make you want to climb all over it; the Museum wanted children and adults to interact with the geology. In an article I found about the reopening of the Hall, they even said they wanted people, ‘to touch these specimens, put their arms around them, fall in love with them.’ OK, very 1970s, but I guess you could say that I’m a case study for a success story. Because that incredible feeling of encountering these rocks and minerals, and having access to them like that, definitely had a huge impact on my development as a human being.”

In 1998 Ilana moved to Scotland to study at the Glasgow School of Art, and since then she’s gone on to make exhibitions in museums and galleries all over the world. While she’s working at National Museums Scotland, she’s also making a permanent display of geology for Shrewsbury Museum – not many artists get invited to do that! So why does Ilana like working with museums?

Ilana Halperin, installation view of STEINE, Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité, Berlin, Germany, 2012.

“I encounter ideas or objects I haven’t come across before, because every collection is completely different. You never know what you’re going to find out about, and what totally unexpected routes you might take. Certain objects, and conversations with the people who know about the collections, can open up a whole new world, or a completely new way of thinking about things.

“For example, at Manchester Museum I came across a cave cast, which was an object formed in a cave, and by a cave, over a period of one year. That object sparked off a whole new direction in my work, within my thinking about time and our relationship to geology. Then in Berlin, I was introduced to a collection of body stones, gall stones and kidney stones, and this was a huge revelation that the body could produce geology. I wasn’t aware of that until I was put into contact with that particular collection.”

Ilana Halperin, Physical Geology (new land mass/fast time), 2009, still from Super 8 film, 3 min 48 sec.

Ilana Halperin, Physical Geology (new land mass/fast time), 2009, still from Super 8 film, 3 min 48 sec.

You can visit Ilana’s website here.

 

When dads rocked the Museum

A guest post by David Marshall of playgroup Dads Rock

We congregated in our masses on a lovely sunny and warm April Saturday morning outside the National Museum of Scotland. Our kids and dads (30 kids and 25 dads) were all eager to get into the building to commence our morning of mask making, dinosaurs, stories and singing.

Outside the National Museum of Scotland.

We were welcomed by Alison Rae, Family Learning Officer, who has been amazing with the logistical arrangement with the run up to our visit, and today she didn’t disappoint. Alison and the Enabler team ensured we all moved to the Learning Centre and around the Museum with ease.

Once we had dropped off our buggies and all other child related “artefacts” we moved both in groups and in pairs around the Museum. The kids, in fact, led their dads around the Museum! Some explored the craft table set up in the Grand Gallery with a multitude of masks and various art/craft accessories at hand, and some, like my three-year-old daughter, lead me straight to the Earth in Space section, followed by what I can only explain as a kids’ haven, the Imagine gallery (weird mirrors and some lovely snug type spaces for those who would like a read).

Left: Mask-making in the Grand Gallery. Right: Reading a story in the Imagine gallery.

Before long, once the masks were all made and paraded around the Museum with pride, all of the small feet were wearying slightly so we retired up to the Learning Centre for a deserved lunchtime snack.

Then… it was into the usual Dads Rock session… oh yes… this was our time to give something back to National Museums Scotland for having us. Our resident storyteller and co-founder Thomas Lynch told two amazing stories, which we were all enthralled by (I think some parents more than the kids). Then it was time for me, David Marshall, fellow co-founder to get my trusted axe of wood and six metal strings out for a rendition of all of our favourite children’s rhymes and tunes, not forgetting our penultimate house rocker, Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’, which happened to draw in a large crowd who were spectating from afar, surely wondering what was going on. Well, I can answer that: 55 dads and their wonderful kids had an amazing morning to remember at National Museum of Scotland. We came, we conquered, and we ROCKED!!

Storytelling in the Learning Centre.

Rocking out to the Dads Rock anthem.

Dads Rock run free playgroups for dads and their kids (0-5) in Scotland.  It is a fun, positive and rocking place to come together, play and learn. There are currently two groups in Edinburgh and one starting in Fife and they hope to expand westward soon.

For more information email dads.rock@yahoo.co.uk or visit our blog or Facebook page and follow us on Twitter @DadsRockEdin.

 

Getting into the Viking spirit: bread making

By Elaine Macintyre, Digital Media Content Manager

The Vikings! exhibition at National Museum of Scotland gives an amazingly rounded picture of life in the Viking Age – not just the raiding and seafaring, the axes and helmets (WITHOUT horns), but life back home on the farm as well. Various fascinating artefacts help uncover what Viking Age people wore, how they ran their households and, of course, what they ate.

On display in one case are some charred, grey, unappetising-looking nuggets that actually transpire to be Viking bread, found in a grave in Birka in Sweden – nourishment for the afterlife, presumably. Yum.

Viking bread in the exhibition. Probably a bit stale.

Experts in Sweden have analysed the samples and come up with a recipe for making Viking bread. Given that my husband is a bit of a dab hand in the kitchen, we thought we’d give it a go. The tenuous link to Digital Media is that you can download the recipe from the National Museums Scotland website here.

The ‘official’ ingredients are:

About 150 g barley flour
About 50 g wholemeal flour
2 tsp crushed flax seeds
About 100 ml water
2 tsp lard or butter
A pinch of salt

Our version of the Viking bread ingredients.

We cheated slightly by using a barleycorn flour that mixes ground barley with wheat flakes, as this was the best we could find in the wholefood shop! We also used goosefat in place of butter or lard but as people in the Viking Age would have reared geese (as well as chickens, pigs, cows and sheep) we figured that was probably fairly authentic. You can buy ground flax seeds in wholefood shops and some big supermarkets – they’re also useful for gluten free baking, and are a great way of upping the omega 3 content of bread, cereal, porridge, etc. (Just so you know…)

Here’s how we got on making the Viking bread.

First, mix the dry ingredients together.

Next, add the water.

Mix the ingredients into a dough, then knead on a floured board.

Roll the dough into a ball.

Put the dough in a covered bowl and leave it somewhere warm to prove for a couple of hours. We put ours in the cupboard under the stairs, where the boiler is. The dough will expand a little bit, but not much as it doesn’t have yeast in it.

Roll out the dough and shape into a rough circle.

We fried our bread in a dry heavy frying pan, but you can also bake it in the oven if you prefer.

Bake the dough until it turns a nice burnt brown colour, a bit like a naan bread.

Serve with a hearty, warming stew.

So after all that effort, was it tasty? Well, yes: stodgy (as my gran would put it, it fair clags to your ribs), warming and perfect to accompany a stew on a cold evening!

 

Behind the scenes at the National Museums Collection Centre

By Carenza Murray, Work Experience Student with Collections Services

Hello everyone!

I’ve been the work experience placement at the wonderful National Museums Collections Centre in Granton for the last surprisingly short five days. For four days I’ve been based in the Collections Centre but on Tuesday I was in the National Museum of Scotland itself. If you - yes, you! – haven’t been yet, then you should go: the Museum is amazing in size and structure, and magnificent in its collection content, as, including the reserve collections, they have over four million objects and counting, in case you were wondering.

Monday

After arriving at the National Museums Collections Centre on a rather cold and dreary morning, what struck me at first was the very friendly and warm welcome from the staff at the Collections Centre. I thought it would be full of people who were going to be depressed and stocked up on way too much caffeine, but no, there was a surprisingly happy atmosphere for a Monday morning and some genuinely nice people too!

I was given the tour of the Collections Centre buildings (only five currently contain collections, as some of the older buildings are being demolished to make way for a shiny new storage building) and I was startled by the sheer size of the site. I’m not exaggerating when I write that it’s huge. When I first walked into Building 14 (the first building in the tour of the site), I was overwhelmed by the vast size of it; the buildings were all like the TARDIS.  I was quite unresponsive throughout the rest of the tour because I was speechless!

From whale bones to frogs pickled in jars the Collections Centre has it all.

In the afternoon, I learned how to handle the artefacts with the care that they require. I found it amazing how close conservators get to objects. I was able to see these objects from a conservator’s point of view, so with that came an almost overwhelming sense of responsibility. After that I knew that my work experience week was never going to be ordinary.

1, 2, 3 Lift! A lesson in object handling, and packing practising on an office chair,
before getting close to real objects.

Tuesday

Tuesday entailed a different venue to explore: the Museum itself on Chambers Street.

I was given a tour of this site: mind-blowing isn’t it? It’s hard to take in the actual age of some of the objects: when I was shown the Early People section of the Museum it was very difficult to think that the objects on display are over thousands, if not millions, of years old.

From the terrific T-Rex to the amazing amethyst geode, the range of collections of the Museum are spectacular.

On Tuesday afternoon, I was taken to the Loans and Collections Development departments, where I learned how objects are loaned and transported to and from the Museum, such as the current Vikings! exhibition, which is mostly on loan from the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm. I was also shown the ADLIB database, which contains information on most of the objects in the collection and their whereabouts. I found this very intriguing, especially the amount of work the system actually requires. You need to enter information about each component part of an object individually, for example, a teapot and its lid have separate object records.

Wednesday

Half way through the week, Wednesday involved looking at artefact conservation and paper and textile conservation back at Collections Centre HQ.

In the morning with the artefact conservators, I looked at how to conserve objects and the various different methods which can be used. It was incredible how varied their work can be. One day they’ll be working on some taxidermy, the next day they could be working on some objects made entirely of glass. It also struck me how precise you have to be in this work: a mistake could mean that an irreplaceable object is damaged beyond repair.

The afternoon entailed learning about the conservation of Paper and Textiles. The fragility of these objects is unbelievable, how they survived centuries of different owners and conditions is something I can’t understand. I made a padded hanger (which I think I made rather clumsily). These help to conserve clothing. They stop any acid within the wooden hangers from damaging the textile, and also support the costume seams. I was able to use my hanger on a piece of clothing, (after three attempts with different outfits) we found it fitted into a beautiful pink dress covered in small flowers which had a great level of detail and accuracy.

Third time lucky; the padded hanger fits!

Thursday

Thursday’s tasks included some work in the Analytical Research labs and a look at the conservation of different works of Engineering.

I was very excited about Thursday morning as Analytical Research is in some ways similar to what I want to do when I’m older: forensic anthropology. It didn’t disappoint. With the Analytical Scientist, I looked at different ways to analyse objects to find out many different things. It was a great insight into the way we understand objects.

Engineering conservation was very interesting in the afternoon. I was shown around another section of storage in which there were contraptions of all kinds. It was great to see that many of the items in storage still actually function. Some of the objects come into the Collection Centre in pieces, and some of the time the engineers have to guess what they would have looked like, which requires a great deal of patience. They then rebuild the object, and to see the finished piece is amazing. It’s rare to get the chance to see behind the scenes at Granton, so keep an eye out for any opportunities that come up, like Doors Open Day last year.

Cars and carriages in the National Museums Collection Centre.

Friday

My fifth and final day at the National Museums Collections Centre included a look at ways that objects from the collections are photographed.

I saw the range of objects that photography has to work around and I can tell you now, it’s not a walk in the park! Glass particularly is difficult. The photographers have to work around so many different objects and take photographs with a great deal of care. They also have to work with many different camera angles, and work with a high level of accuracy. It was very intriguing, but I don’t have a very high level of patience so I found it quite trying to get the perfect angle for an object.

So that’s it for my round up of my week here at Granton. It was a great experience and an unmissable opportunity. It was good to work with such great people and I am so lucky to have gotten the chance to work here.

Thanks for reading!

Hopefully, this blog gets your ‘seal’ of approval!

(What? Was that too cheesy for you?)

 

26 Treasures: a Year of Sestudes

A guest post by writer J. A. Sutherland

Every writer needs a discipline, some inspiration and sometimes, a bit of healthy competition.  Back in 2011, as part of the 26 Treasures exhibition, National Museum of Scotland invited members of the public to write a 62-word ‘sestude’ on their chosen ‘treasure’ from the Museum. This, I figured, ticked all three boxes.  I spent a while wandering until, suitably inspired, I scribbled a handful of sestudes and sent them in.

I didn’t win.

But I was undeterred, and figured I’d been given a good idea for a project.  Needing little excuse to spend more time in one of my favourite buildings in Edinburgh, I decided I would write my own selection of 26 Treasures, and post them on my blog over the course of 2012.  Well, every writer needs a challenge.

A sestude, in case this word is unfamiliar to you, is a newly-coined literary form, created by the ‘26’ collective. As 26′s Sara Sheridan suggests in her blog post, it is a ‘reflective study;’ a free-form piece, somewhat poetic in character, comprising only one stipulation: that it must be exactly 62 words in length.

Now that’s some discipline.

Practice, as we all know, makes… well, not perfection, but as I practised the form, and worked and re-worked the early scribblings, I realised that the sestude was, and is, an extremely versatile thing.  I played with various forms; some with conventional shape, rhythm and rhyme, some dramatic or conversational, others concrete, free or formed in the shape of the object that inspired them. For example, this half-hour-glass, belonging to Walter Scott:

A True Scott by J. A. Sutherland. The poem reads: “While the/ markets crashed, with/ uncharacteristic optimism/ the writer to whom Scotland/ owed so much, turning his/ half-full hour-glass over,/ set to write himself/ out of debt. Sir/ Water,/ dealt/ a/ double/ -dip, with/ his credits/ crunched, went bust;/ but something else burst/ inside his head. Having/ put blood into the cheeks/ of Scottish History, he/ died like many artists/ in the red.”

Choosing the objects was itself a challenge.  Sometimes it was simply what caught my eye; other times I sought out something fitting a theme, a date, an anniversary, or the product of an overheard conversation.  On the whole I stuck to the Scottish part of the Museum, and selected only one of the chosen objects from the original exhibition, the Gown of Repentance.

The gown of repentance, on display in the Scotland Transformed gallery.

With 52 weeks in the year, the plan was to post on my blog once a fortnight.  This occasionally slipped because I was keen to reflect particular points in the year.  There was an unlucky profusion of Fridays-the-13^th in 2012, which gave me the chance to write about superstition, witchcraft, and charms.  Saint-days, liturgical feasts, and the Bard’s Birthday provided more inspiration, and in the Festival Season, it was not just the Treasure in the Museum that fuelled my pen.

Visits to other Museums, such as the Writer’s Museum, The People’s Story, and Edinburgh Art Galleries; street signs and plaques, people, and pieces of poetry – all of these were part of the process, not to mention spending some time in the Museum’s Research Library.  I even visited the Museum of Childhood in London, where another 26 Treasures project was on display.  But as the year progressed, I became increasingly concerned with a nagging question.

Would I achieve my 26-target?

In fact, I knew that I would – I’m far too stubborn to give up.  The difficulty, as the year drew to a close, was deciding what to omit.  I had selected many more than 26 objects, and had a book-full of scribbled ideas and half-completed sestudes.  One of my aims, besides boasting a word-count of 1,612 (not including titles) was to use these ‘Treasures’ as a basis of exploring deeper themes of Scottishness.

What, if anything, does history teach us; what does it mean to be Scottish (especially for those who were born in England); what part do Institutions and Establishments play in our culture; what is our ‘Identity’ – whatever that means? For personal reasons, I consciously avoided choosing anything with a military connotation.  This is because I strongly renounce all forms of warfare.

When, in 2014, our Nation will need to consider the questions above, the clamour of Bannockburn will be ringing in the background.  I find that rather sad.

Consequently, I chose for my final item something that isn’t in the Museum – or anywhere at all.  For the whole year there was an empty glass case awaiting completion.  It now houses a splendid revolving optic. Into this empty case, I placed an entirely amorphous treasure: the Future.

The empty case, now home to a revolving optic.

So what were the items that didn’t make it into the mix of my 26?  A dainty, silver wax-jack and snuffer, the bannock toaster, an enamel cross designed by Phoebe Anna Traquair, and a firm favourite I was sorry to leave out: the Salter’s Duck.

A rotor from Salter’s duck, an experimental wave machine, on display in the Scotland: A Changing Nation gallery.

This duck does not quack, but water flaps its beak-like shape to generate power from the sea.  With opinion sharply divided on the proliferation of wind-farms, it cannot be denied that Scotland has wind and waves in abundance.  This may be the thing, rather than the battles over our land, that will decide our country’s – and our planet’s – future.

Handle it with care.

You can read J. A. Sutherland’s 26 Treasures on his blog, Through the Turret Window. Find out more about 26 Treasures here.

 

The Slaughter of the Danes: Viking wargames at National Museum of Scotland

A guest post by John Ewing, Falkirk District Wargames Club

Sunday 10 March sees the National Museum of Scotland host its first Wargaming Event, as Clubs from Falkirk and Edinburgh demonstrate how Wargaming can make the study of history fun.

Wargames take many forms and involve many different activities from collecting and painting model soldiers and preparing terrain to fight over, to researching the background of a battle or war you want to fight. All contribute to creating a game which tests the skills of the players and is fun to take part in.

Sunday’s game is inspired by a little known battle from Scotland’s history, one which took place over a thousand years ago in Aberdeenshire. There are no contemporary records of the battle but it left its name on the landscape:  Croju Dane, the Slaughter of the Dane, known today as Cruden Bay.

It is said that in the year 1012, a Scots army led by Malcolm II, King of Alba, fought a long and bloody battle against a force of invading Danes led by Cnut, then Prince of Denmark. The battle took place on flat ground near the shore of the bay where the Danes had drawn up their ships. It raged for most of the day and many men on both sides were killed or wounded. When darkness fell, the armies retreated, exhausted, and camped near the battlefield.

Left: 17th century depiction of Malcolm II. Right: 13th century portrait of Cnut. images from Wikipedia.

When dawn broke next day the sight of the slaughter and many dead caused both sides to pause and reflect. Encouraged by the clerics present, both leaders agreed a truce and a treaty was signed which resulted in the Danes withdrawing their forces, leaving the Scots to bury the dead and erect a chapel dedicated to St Olaf to mark the site.

Malcolm II and his successors went on to fight other battles as the Kingdom of Alba evolved into the Scotland we know today, whilst Prince Cnut became better known to history as King Canute, ruler of England, Denmark and Norway.

As little is known about the actual battle, we have not tried to recreate it but instead used it as inspiration for the game today – a chance to explore what might have been and test your skills as a commander of warriors from the Viking Age.

Viking sword hilt on display in the Early People gallery in National Museum of Scotland.

The figures being used come from the collections of members of the Falkirk District Wargames Club. The eagle-eyed may notice that some of them are more usually to be found in other armies from the period.

The battle will be fought over a 14 foot by 6 foot table using scenic tiles from the Club’s collection. More usually games are played on rather simpler boards or mats and smaller tables. Even an ordinary dinner table can be turned into a battlefield with a little imagination.

For more information on the Club, check the website at www.falkirkwargamesclub.org.uk

Remember: “History can be fun”!

 

Batgirl was a librarian!

By Emma Robinson, Library and Information Assistant

Did you know that Batgirl was a librarian? No? Apparently the creators believed that being a librarian was a perfect contrast to Barbara Gordon’s alter-ego of superhero Batgirl.  Presumably they believed the opposite of a kick-ass, pvc-costumed superhero would be an introverted, quiet and mild-mannered librarian.

The idea of librarians being specs-sporting cardigan-wearers, hair tied tightly into a bun, is fairly outdated and a stereotype that many new to the profession try to avoid at all costs. (Although to be fair I have been known to partake of all three at the same time!) According to CILIP, the professional body for librarians, information specialists and knowledge managers, as a modern day information professional you have to have the ability to ‘design, create, identify, locate, retrieve and exploit information in all formats’. The idea of librarians hiding in dusty book stacks (which we have plenty of) cataloguing and stamping books (which we do plenty of) and doing not much else is a stereotype that does need challenging. Yes, stamping books in dusty book stacks does still happen occasionally, but there’s a heck of a lot more to it.

First and foremost a good librarian must be a people person. That’s what’s it’s all about really: put simply it’s about helping people find stuff! Secondly they have to be technologically switched-on and know equally as much about the digital word as they do about the printed one.

Batgirl to the rescue!

Many librarians also pride themselves on being crusaders (superheroes even!) for ethical access to information, whether it be our visitors’ rights to accessing information about our objects and collections, to our library users’ rights to privacy. In fact, we librarians like nothing better than sharing and sourcing information. The more tricky the request, the more we generally like it!

The Research Library at National Museum of Scotland.

Within the Information Services team we manage the Research Library and the Library at the National War Museum as well as the National Museum of Scotland’s Info Zone, and, as is the case with many smaller specialist libraries, most of us multi-task and work in several different areas of library work.

The Info Zone at National Museum of Scotland.

Amongst other things, we preserve things for the future by storing and organising material within our Archives, as well as shelving and collections management (yes, in dusty as well as clean book stacks) and answering the myriad of enquiries we get from staff and the public; we manage access to e-journals and e-books; provide access to items we don’t have in our own collections through various library networks including the British Library; provide up-to-the-minute online resources to enable Museum staff easier access to information; manage the Museum’s Research Repository as well as managing the Museum’s intranet. It certainly keeps us busy!

Another benefit of working in a multi-tasking multi-disciplinary Library is that most staff develop a well-rounded general knowledge covering most of the disciplines within the Museum. Clearly demonstrated by being Christmas Pub Quiz winners two years running.

So whether you want to call yourself a Librarian, an Information Manager, a Library Resource Officer or an Information Facilitator. Whether you spend your time cataloguing books, organising information, managing and taking part in large scale book moves or managing data; whether you wear flats, Jimmy Choos or Dr Martens, one thing is for sure: underestimate us at your peril, we are multitasking information professionals! If you are still in any doubt, I’ll send Batgirl round to convince you!