Visiting the Collection at Salford Museum and Art Gallery with Peter Ogilvie- 6th October

Today I had a meeting at Salford Museum and art Gallery to see Peter Ogilvie the Collections Manager and the gatekeeper to the vaults. I’ll be honest with you I didn’t quite now what to expect when I arrived and was a little anxious about the visit. 

 It took the receptionist around 10 minutes to locate Peter and I thought at first that he had forgotten about the meeting it was only later on that I realised why it had taken so long to track him down. After a warm handshake I was taken down some stairs and the steel safe door was opened with a large bunch of keys . Peter tells me that the museum opened in 1850 and was the first unconditionally free public library,  and didn’t have a collection as such and the collection has just grown over time.

 The first Room as you may expect was racked out with floor to ceiling paintings, from 20^th Century British Moderns to Victorian Portraits in Gilt frames, to a collection of  local Miners paintings given therapeutic art once the pits had closed. Many of the paintings appear in the "Your Paintings “ website (now Artuk)which lists all the paintings in the UK in public collections. Peter tells me that it took them the best part of a year to photograph all of Salfords paintings.

 The next room contained at least as many water colours and works on paper, many from Northern Artists and whole rack of local history paintings containing local scenes and areas of local importance. I didn’t realise but Salford Museum has a remit to take in such works , or objects that have local importance or significance and I suppose this is why it was important for them to secure the Pilkingtons tile Archive.

After this second room I was impressed by the sheer number of paintings, it was only on entering the next section of the collection that I began to feel overwhelmed. A room full of social history objects, industrial objects and machinery, a pair of what looked like ancient“inuit” ski’s, a dolly tub, even a soda stream. This section was populated with objects that have been donated to the museum by the public, objects that are significant to a time in history, this theme carried on to the next huge room floor to ceiling racking contain intriguing archive boxes of costumes, dress uniforms, tri-corn hats, doctors bags, childrens toys.

  This room then spilled out to house another museums collection that closed down in Salford some time ago, lots of childrens toys and games, from the Victorian era right up to the eighties. This room then led on to a furniture room, and then an occupation room where objects are field by the profession, doctor, chemist, carpenter etc. By this point I was completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things, and the final room was cupboards wall to wall with ceramics, glass and pewter ware.

The collection has over 120,000 items at the last count and this is spread throughout the basement of the whole of the Museum and Art gallery. It was on leaving the collection that realised why it had taken 10 minutes to track Peter down in the labyrinth of History underneath the museum. 

What struck me was the sheer weight of objects and the need to store them as part of our shared history, many of these items will never see the light of day again, catalogued and boxed until somebody takes an interest and asks for a viewing. I wondered if this is just another aspect to our society for hoarding, consumerism and placing value on material objects, but then each object has a story and its truths are just waiting to be unlocked or re-told. I will be visiting again soon to pull out some WW1 era objects that might spark some ideas or take my project down a different path.

 

Thomas Paine - a welcome distraction at the Working Class Movement Library - 29th September

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After a full sunny morning of trawling through archive records at Salford Local History Library  I thought I would treat myself to a visit to the Working Class Movement Library. The weather was turning and the wind was starting to blow a gale as I sat in the grounds of the University.  I crossed Chapel street and rang the bell and received a warm welcome at the library. What I wanted to see was the pamphlet “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine. I had read a little about the corset maker revolutionary and wanted to read for myself the words that sparked such controversy.

 The library assistant showed me into the reading room and then produced the archive box containing the book and some other reading material around the pamphlet. The book that contained the piece was hand bound and incredibly old, I presume it was published on or around the 1870’s , each page was punched through with the original letter press giving each page a textured feel not seen in today's printing. You could feel the mark of the maker and it was akin to reading a handwritten letter. The only problem was that the typeset was unusual in that the capital S looked like a lowercase f. Now this gave the whole reading a twist as many words I had to read twice as I was reading them with a lisp! For example “support” read as “fupport” and “sentiment” as “fentiment” after the first few hundred words or so I got used to it and enjoyed the first half very much.
 
 Thomas Paine is very clever in setting up his audience with an argument that you can all agree on , he then like all great philosophers uses this same premise to de-bunk other taken truths and succeeds in changing your viewpoint as you read. I can see how such a pamphlet stirred minds and created action. In hindsight though I think it would have been great if he had cast his rhetoric to the viewpoint of the Native Americans who at the time were experiencing a ruthless and programmed horrific genocide.

The more I read the more I begin to feel demoralised about the state of the word and the fact that history does repeat itself. The other great book Ive been reading at the moment is “The Silk Roads” by Peter Frankopan a history of the world from the viewpoint of the East. From this it is apparent that the collection of taxes and share capital has always been the great motivator of war and greed of Mankind and that history has been a repeat of conquer and be conquered throughout all of history, from great nations and civilisations, to hordes of Vandals and Mongols, Fascists and Empiricist's, all at the expense of the common man and woman. Many of the earliest writings are mere ledger books about trade and who owes who.

Out of all this came a glimmer of hope as Lynette passed me a leaflet for an up a upcoming convention.

Conscience and Conscription: Resistance to war, Friday 14th and Saturday 15th October 2016. There are a series of talks organised by the abolish war campaign , Cyril Pearce is talking and a whole host of other talks. I followed the trail to the abolish war campaign and found a link to a brilliant talk by a lecturer from Bradford called Professor Paul Rogers : "Future Wars and How to Prevent Them". This talk is in two versions the long one is the most comprehensive and I found it to be totally uplifting and hopeful that people are studying this and looking into how we can effect change. More on this in future musings.

more info on abolish war here : http://www.abolishwar.org.uk/ 

The you tube Paul Rodgers talk is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDg4F769ciw&t=715s

Abraham Lomax, 16,000 experiments - Salford Local History Library 29th September 2016

This morning I took some time to visit Salford Local History Library and have a quick peek at the archival records for the Pilkington Tiles Archive which Duncan McCormick the librarian had kindly dug out for me.

The folder contained some 122 pages each one documenting an object, letter, artwork that forms part of the History of the company. The file was put together by Barry and Angela of the Lancastrian Pottery Society. What struck me most amongst the many correspondence and documents was how similar daily life seemed to be to ours. There were rent and rates demands, insurance documents, share capital and tax returns. Letters from prospective employees, legal demands for slander, magazine cuttings, artwork ideas, and a thousand patent requests. Just reading through the list of documents and objects gave me a real feel for the company and what it achieved. The company was a bit of an anomaly really, creating its own identity outside of Stafford and Stoke the pottery capital of the world. I think this gave it a real unique identity, it was also different for the workers who were used to the satanic mills and coal mines. The pottery was a place of imagination, colour, art and spectacle.

 I highlighted some things that I think will be of interest to the project one of them being the notebooks of Abraham Lomax who was the ceramic chemist left to experiment with glazes and clay bodies. He did some 16,000 experiments over his initial first years with much of his work providing the factory with important discoveries and glaze recipes for years to come.  The other is a book by Franklin Shaw entitled “my Fifty years” which I believe will touch on the the War years.

The Archive and the way it is documented is interesting in itself as life becomes History to be stored and sorted through at a later date. The pressing arguments of the day become a memory or artifact with little relevance apart from the lives it has touched at the and for someone looking for clues for the future.

Pilkingtons Lancastrian Pottery Society talk at Salford Museum and Art Gallery 17th September

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On Saturday 17^th September I attended a talk at Salford Museum and Art Gallery about Pilkington Tiles the talk was from Barry and Angela who are from the Lancastrian Pottery Society. The talk centered around the formation of the company from the 4 brothers who owned the coal company and discovered the clay deposits in the Pendleton Fault. Their first thought was to build a brick factory but they found out that the clay was unsuitable for this from an expert who suggested it could be used to create tiles and there was at the time a huge demand for ceramic tiles.

 The story for me got interesting when the brothers approached a Mr. William Burton who was well respected and currently employed at Wedgewood. The brothers courted Burton and he was finally released from Wedgewood in 1891.  William Burton was a Ceramic chemist and came with quite a reputation, he was responsible and sole master of Pilikington tiles, free to hire whomever he wished, many of whom he poached from the many Potteries of Stoke and Stafford, much to other companies disapproval!

 The company grew on this mans vision, his dazzling exhibitions and showmanship and spirit, he was also a great advocate for workers rights and pioneered many of today's practises of health and safety especially with regard ventilation and the use of lead in many of the enamel paints used in the potteries. 

  William Burton also employed many great artists both male and female and fostered an extremely creative and exciting environment to work in one such Artist was John Forsyth who created some beautiful tile pieces and fine examples of lustre ware, he also created the Peace vase that is on display dedicated to the end of the First World War. Forsyth also created an extraordinary vision of 6 massive tile panels celebrating the history of Ceramics that went on display in the Liverpool Museum. This tile piece was one of the only artworks to survive the bombings of WWII.

 Salford Museum and Art Gallery managed to secure the companies Archive when the company sadly went into receivership in 2010 when its overdraft ad loans were called in.  I will be accessing this in the coming weeks and look forward to finding out more about this great local employer and the people who worked there.

More information on the Lancastrian Pottery Society here : http://www.pilkingtons-lancastrian.co.uk/

Fighting Resistance WW1 - Artist Residency at Salford Museum and Art Gallery & Working Class Movement Library

I am pleased to announce that I have received Arts Council funding for a new project working with Salford Museum and Art Gallery and the Working Class Movement Library. I will be Artist in Residence as part of an open Network Residency with access to both institutions with the aim of creating a new body of work for public exhibition.

 The project is based on a contemporary artistic response to the World War I centenary looking at Conscientious Objectors, War profiteering, War resistance and Shame Propaganda. I will have access to the Pilkington Tile and Pottery archive which is now part of the Salford Museum and Art Gallery collection.

 As part of this year long project I will be working with Mark Devereux Projects,  and also partnering with Castlfield Galleries New Art Spaces Churchgate House in Bolton where I have a great studio space to work from.

 The exciting thing about the project is that it is research driven and there are no pre-conceptions about the artwork that will be created. This gives me freedom to follow my muse and artistic process, to create a contemporary response to World War I.

Research has started to day with the arrival of two great books, The Pot Book by Edmund De Waal - an A-z guide of over 300 makers, schools and styles throughout history and Comrades in Conscience by Cyril Pearce - The story of an English community's opposition to the Great War.


This blog will be used to document the project as it develops