Artist Catrin Llwyd worked with National Museum Cardiff's Youth Forum to discuss the amazing Gillian Ayres exhibition. The group experimented with using paint in different ways - thinking about texture and colour and trying to paint without using a brush!
First of all though we wanted the group to look at Gillian Ayres' paintings in detail, so we spent quite a bit of time discussing her work and coming up with words that described the paintings or words that described our thoughts and feelings when looking at the paintings.
I loved some of the words and thoughts they came up with - put together some of them are like cut-up poems.
The first dinosaur footprints found anywhere in Europe
One sunny evening in September 1878, Welsh artist and naturalist Thomas Henry Thomas was wandering around the small village of Nottage, just outside Porthcawl. The rays of the setting sun were shining across a large slab of rock placed on the edge of the churchyard. The local villagers told him that the five strange markings on the rock were the footprints of the devil as he strode across the slab. The rock had lain between the church and the village pub for years, and was a local curiosity.
Thomas was a well-educated man, born in Pontypool in 1839, and had studied Art at the Royal Academy, before returning to Wales. He was a key member of the Cardiff Naturalists Society, and a well-respected artist as well. On discovering the footprints, illuminated by the setting sun in the churchyard, he was struck by the similarity between these markings and newly found dinosaur footprints in North America. He quickly sketched the prints and informed various local geologists. John Storrie, curator of the Cardiff Museum, visited the site and made a cast of the trackway.
The President of the Cardiff Naturalists Society was Colonel Turbervill, who arranged for the rock to be brought to the Cardiff Museum for safe-keeping.
Thomas H. Thomas wrote a short paper, in January 1879, describing the footprints and also his attempts at Bristol Zoo, to persuade a suspicious Emu to walk across modelling clay, for comparison! He described the footprints as "Tridactyl Uniserial Ichnolites", but left it to Professor W Sollas of Bristol University to publish a formal description, with the name Brontozoum thomasi. We now know that these footprints were made 220 million years ago by a medium-sized meat-eating dinosaur, similar to Megalosaurus which evolved later.
The original footprint slab was around 6' 6" long and 5' 6" wide, and about 6 inches thick, although excess rock was later removed to make it easier to handle and display. When the collections of the old Cardiff Museum were transferred to the new National Museum of Wales in 1907, the footprints were one of its most important acquisitions. Currently the fossil is on display in the
, as befitting the first dinosaur footprints found anywhere in Europe.
Wales has an important place in the evolutionary history of dinosaurs; not only this early set of footprints, but also another major trackway site near the town of Barry, which is one of the most significant sites of its age in Europe. The rocks of this area were laid down around 220 million years ago, at a time when Wales was a low-lying desert, similar to those in the Arabian Gulf today, and dinosaurs had just evolved. Over the next 20 million years, the sea-level rose and the deserts disappeared underwater. However the dinosaurs living on higher ground continued to diversify into different species, one of which was Dracoraptor, the small theropod dinosaur found near to Penarth in 2014, and now on display at the National Museum Cardiff.
Mae Amgueddfa Cymru wedi derbyn rhodd anhygoel gan y ffotograffydd Magnum, David Hurn. Mae Hurn yn un o ffotograffwyr dogfennol mwyaf dylanwadol Prydain. Ac yntau bellach yn byw ac yn gweithio yma yng Nghymru, mae wedi dychwelyd at ei wreiddiau Cymreig – ac yma y bydd ei gasgliad o ffotograffau’n aros diolch i’w rodd hael.
Mae’r casgliad yn rhannu’n ddwy ran, sef tua 1,500 o’i ffotograffau ef ei hun sy’n cwmpasu ei yrfa o dros drigain mlynedd fel ffotograffydd dogfennol; a thua 700 o ffotograffau gan ffotograffwyr eraill o’i gasgliad preifat. Wrth sôn am ei rodd, dywedodd Hurn:
“Fy atgofion gweledol/diwylliannol cynharaf yw ymweld â’r Amgueddfa pan oeddwn i’n bedair neu’n bump oed. Dwi’n cofio’r cerflun drwg – y Gusan gan Rodin – a chasys yn llawn stwff oedd pobl wedi ei roi. Wel, bellach mae gen i gyfle i dalu rhywbeth yn ôl – bydd rhywbeth gen i yno am byth. Mae’n fraint o’r mwyaf.”
Detholiad Diffiniol o Waith Oes
Dros y ddwy flynedd ddiwethaf, mae David wedi bod yn dewis ffotograffau o’i archif ef ei hun sy’n ddetholiad o waith ei oes. Mae’r casgliad o tua 1,500 o brintiau newydd yn cynnwys gwaith a wnaed yng Nghymru, Lloegr, yr Alban, Iwerddon, Arizona, Califfornia ac Efrog Newydd.
Mae’n cynnwys rhai o’i ffotograffau enwocaf, fel Dawns y Frenhines Charlotte, Barbarella a Grosvenor Square.
Fodd bynnag, ei ffotograffau craff a gofalus o Gymru yw prif ffocws y casgliad. Yn dilyn rhodd hael David, Amgueddfa Cymru yw ceidwad y casgliad mwyaf o’i luniau yn y byd.
Drwy gydol ei yrfa hir, mae Hurn wedi bod yn cyfnewid llun am lun â’i gyd-ffotograffwyr, llawer ohonynt yn gydweithwyr iddo yng nghwmni Magnum.
Mae’r casgliad pwysig ac amrywiol hwn o tua 700 ffotograff, sydd hefyd yn dod i law’r Amgueddfa, yn cynnwys gweithiau gan ffotograffwyr blaenllaw’r 20fed a’r 21ain ganrif.
Bydd detholiad o ffotograffau o gasgliad preifat David yn cael eu harddangos am y tro cyntaf yn Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Caerdydd o 30 Medi 2017 ymlaen. Bydd Llun am Lun: Ffotograffau o Gasgliad David Hurn yn lansio oriel ffotograffiaeth newydd yr Amgueddfa.
Casgliadau Ffotograffig yn Amgueddfa Cymru
Mae casgliadau ffotograffau Amgueddfa Cymru’n unigryw am eu bod yn cwmpasu cynifer o feysydd a phynciau, gan gynnwys celf, hanes cymdeithasol a diwydiannol a’r gwyddorau naturiol.
Mae hefyd yn cynnwys ffotograffau pwysig iawn, fel rhai o’r ffotograffau cynharaf i gael eu tynnu yng Nghymru gan y ffotograffydd arloesol John Dillwyn Llewelyn a’i deulu. Bydd rhodd David yn gweddnewid casgliadau ffotograffiaeth yr Amgueddfa ac yn creu cyfleoedd cyffrous i ehangu’r casgliadau mewn ffyrdd newydd.
Bydd yr arddangosfa yn Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Caerdydd yn dilyn cyflwyniad o waith David Hurn yn Photo London, y digwyddiad ffotograffiaeth rhyngwladol a gynhelir bob blwyddyn yn Somerset House, Llundain. Wedi’i churadu gan Martin Parr a David Hurn, mae arddangosfa Photo London, David Hurn’s Swaps, yn dathlu pen-blwydd Magnum Photos yn 70 oed.
For the Royal Horticultural Society’s Flower Show in Cardiff this year, we decided to build on previous experience of creating real botanical windows. We wanted something that would form an eye-catching backdrop to the collections on display within Amgueddfa Cymru's woodland-themed marquee.
The botanical windows began in 2015 with our Museum in a House exhibit for the Made in Roath festival. We wanted a display that would reflect aspects of our Museum work as well as to represent the herbarium itself. We pressed plants following the standard method for creating herbarium specimens as shown below. In this way, plant specimens last for hundreds of years on conservation grade card and out of light in herbarium cupboards.
Method for pressing plants for long-term storage in the botany collections:
Select a plant showing as many characters as possible – fruit, flowers, roots.
Place between blotting paper, arranging the plant at the same time, to limit the amount of overlapping material.
Place in a plant press and tie as tightly as possible.
Place in a drier between 20 and 30oC.
Change the blotting paper initially every day, and then less often until the plants are completely dry. This will take about a week.
Attach plant to conservation-grade card (for example made from cotton) using small strips of adhesive cotton tape. Place the tape strips strategically on the plant’s stems and leaves to hold it safely on the card. This technique allows for some flexing of the card without damage to the plant and for easy removal of the plant from the card for study.
Store out of light in an environment with humidity between 40 and 60 RH.
After pressing, we attached the plants to large sheets of tracing paper using small pieces of transparent tape strips (rather than the conservation grade materials we would normally use for the botany collections). The tracing paper was then wrapped carefully for transport to the site of the exhibit and then taped to sunny windows in the living room.
For the RHS Flower Show in 2016, we built on the initial idea but had the added complication of having to create our own windows to install in the marquee. We had nine 80 x 60 cm sheets of 2mm thick acrylic cut, with holes drilled into each of the corners for hanging. We attached the plants to these sheets using small transparent tape strips. Once at the Flower Show, we attached strong metal rings to the corner of each panel and hung the panels from the cross bars of the marquee by looping fishing line (the type strong enough to catch a 60lb fish!) through the metal rings. The only worry now was whether the ranges of temperature and humidity in the marquee would be too much for the transparent tape and we would arrive the next day to find the plants on the floor! We certainly would never subject pressed specimens from the collection to this environment. We were relieved to find that the panels held well the whole weekend – and with much praise from visitors.
In 2017, we planned to recreate the botanical windows for the Flower Show, but with a slight twist. We had a woodland theme, so we chose Welsh trees for each panel: Oak, Beech, Hazel, Hawthorn, Holly, Scots Pine, Yew and Lime. To make the display really stand out, we printed a silhouette of the tree with its Welsh, English and scientific name onto transparent material for the backdrop. We taped the transparencies onto the acrylic and then taped the pressed plants onto the transparencies as before. Unfortunately, this year was particularly warm weather – the transparent tape holding the pressed plants did not last as long on some of the panels, so remedial work had to be carried out to keep the display looking good.
Over the last few months you may have seen the Saving Treasures; Telling Stories team on social media using the hashtag ‘Finds Friday’, where we’ve been showcasing some of our wonderful treasure and non-treasure items recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme Cymru.
This month we’d like to focus on two special finds from Wales: The Abergavenny Coin Hoardanda prehistoric feasting site in Llanmaes.
Why these two finds?
Both have been nominated in a nationwide competition, held by the British Museum and The Daily Telegraph, to search for the nation’s favourite treasure item from the ‘Top 20’ list.
2017 marks the 20th anniversary since the passing of the 1996 Treasure Act and items on the ‘Top 20’ list highlight some of the most important treasure discoveries since the Treasure Act.
We might be a tad biased towards which ones we’ll be voting for, but we want to share the history behind these finds as they really do have a story to tell, or in the case of Llanmaes, an enigmatic mystery as to what was actually happening at the site. You can read about the 20 items by clicking this link, and don't forget to vote!
Llanmaes
Our first nomination on the ‘Top 20’ treasure list is a site, rather than a single group of objects. The discovery is a prehistoric feasting place and settlement, uncovered in Llanmaes, in the Vale of Glamorgan.
This important site was discovered following the reporting of a potential treasure find by two metal detectorists in 2003, and excavation continued for the next seven years by archaeologists from the National Museum of Wales, assisted by students from Cardiff University and local volunteers.
The story behind Llanmaes
The earliest remains on the site, dating to about 2150-1950 BC, are the cremated remains of an adult male, which were buried in an urn. It seems that this burial provided the focus for later settlement, which yielded treasure objects such as a gold bead. One mystery object in the shape of a great white shark’s tooth has left archaeologists puzzled. We’re not too sure where it came from or why it was left there!
By the beginning of the Iron Age (about 675 BC) this settlement had been abandoned, but the site continued to be the focus of human activity in the form of feasting, which left behind an extensive midden deposit. This is the first known example from Wales, of a class of middens representing remarkable accumulations of cultural material gathered by communities at the beginning of the Iron Age. This has revealed an extraordinary prehistoric feasting mound, containing thousands of pig bones, further feasting vessels, bronze cauldrons, pottery and axes.
Unexpectedly, nearly three-quarters of the animal bones were from pigs – a far higher proportion than is usual for such deposits, and, even more remarkable is the discovery that the majority of the pigs’ bones were from the right fore-quarter of the animal. Similarly, some of the axe-heads are of a type associated with parts of northern France, so it seems as though people were converging on Llanmaes during the Early Iron Age from a wide area to engage in cultural activities which had clear rules and accepted practices.
Feasting seems to have come to an end at the site during the Roman period, when changing cultural practices made the earlier rituals less appropriate, but evidence of continued Roman occupation suggests that it still held meaning for local people into the 4th century AD.
The community at Llanmaes were closely involved with the excavations over the years, and the National Museum’s Archaeology department brought in a number of school groups to work with artists on creative responses, such as performances, inspired by the site.
Abergavenny hoard
In April 2002 three metal-detectorists had the find of their lives in a field near Abergavenny, Monmouthshire where they found a scattered hoard of 199 silver pennies.
The Abergavenny hoard is the earliest Norman hoard from Wales and provides a vivid picture of monetary circulation in the Welsh March in the 1080s CE. It includes 130 coins of the Anglo-Saxon king Edward the Confessor (1042-66) and 69 coins of the Norman king William the Conqueror (1066-87).
Where did they come from?
Norman incursions into Gwent (present-day Monmouthshire) had followed hard on the heels of the conquest of England by Duke William in 1066 and they brought with them the habit of using coins.
The 199 silver pennies provide a rich mixture of issues of Edward the Confessor (1042-66) and William the Conqueror (1066-87); there are coins of 104 moneyers from 36 mints, with Hereford prominent.
The coins had been lost or hidden in a cloth bag, after about 1080 CE and for most people living in that time they would have represented several months’ pay. However, the lack of positive archaeological context makes it impossible to judge whether the coins had been concealed deliberately or were simply lost. We shall probably never know quite why these coins ended up in the corner of a field in Monmouthshire but, as well as expanding our knowledge of the coinage itself, they will cast new light on monetary conditions in the area after the Norman Conquest.
And there we have it, our two treasure finds on the ‘Top 20’ treasures list.
The online voting continues until May 15th, and you can vote for LLanmaes or the Abergavenny Hoard by following this link:
