Mae’n swyddogol – peidiwch da chi â bod heb ddilledyn melfed yr hydref hwn! Dyma farn rhai o gylchgronau mwyaf dylanwadol y byd ffasiwn ar hyn o bryd. Ond er y chwiw presennol am bopeth melfed, mae’r defnydd moethus hwn wedi bod yn rhan o gwpwrdd dillad y genedl ers canrifoedd lawer.

Yn hanesyddol, fe ystyrir melfed fel dynodydd cyfoeth a statws – ffaith sy’n cael ei amlygu yng nghasgliadau gwisgoedd a thecstiliau yr Amgueddfa. Mae’r casgliadau hyn yn cynnwys gwrthrychau fu unwaith yn eiddo i rai o feistri tir enwocaf Cymru – teuluoedd cefnog, fel y Morganiaid o Dŷ Tredegar, a oedd yn addurno eu tai ac yn gwisgo defnyddiau costus i ddatgan eu cyfoeth i’r byd.

Ymhlith yr eitemau sydd ar gof a chadw yn yr Amgueddfa mae siaced felfed lliw eirin tywyll a wnaed yn 1770 ar gyfer Syr Watkin Williams-Wynn, y Pedwerydd Barwnig. Wedi ei eni yn 1749 ar ’stâd Wynnstay, ger Rhiwabon, roedd Syr Watkin yn adnabyddus fel un o noddwyr amlycaf y celfyddydau yng Nghymru. Yn ogystal â phrynu darnau o gelf, crochenwaith a dodrefn gan gynllunwyr mawr y dydd, roedd hefyd yn hoff o wario ar ddillad.

Pan oedd yn 19 mlwydd oed, aeth Syr Watkin ar Daith Fawr o Ewrop – rhan annatod o lwybr bywyd bonheddwr ifanc yn y cyfnod hwn. Rhwng Mehefin 1768 a Chwefror y flwyddyn ganlynol, bu’n crwydro Ffrainc, Y Swistir a’r Eidal. Mae llyfrau cyfrifon ’stâd Wynnstay yn dangos iddo wario £220 ar ddillad yn ystod y daith. Prynodd wisgoedd ym Mharis, siwt felfed blodeuog yn Lyon a llathenni o felfed gan sidanwr yn Turin.

Mae’n bosibl mai’r felfed hwn a ddefnyddiwyd i wneud y siaced sydd erbyn hyn ym meddiant yr Amgueddfa. Nid siaced bob dydd mo hon – mae hi wedi ei theilwra’n gywrain a’i brodio gydag edafedd sidan, rhubanau a secwinau aur. Mae’n debyg mai teiliwr yn Llundain fu’n gyfrifol am ei thorri a’i gwnïo. Roedd teilwriaid ffasiynol y cyfnod yn cyflogi nifer o frodwyr proffesiynol i addurno eu gwaith – dynion, nid menywod, oedd y rhain.

Yn 1770 cynhaliwyd parti chwedlonol yn Wynnstay i nodi penblwydd Syr Watkin yn 21 oed. Tybed ai’r gôt felfed oedd amdano’r noson honno? Daeth 15,000 i’r dathliad a thri llond coets o gogyddion o Lundain. Ar y fwydlen roedd 30 bustach, 50 mochyn, 50 llo, 18 oen, 37 twrci a llu o ddanteithion eraill. Does ryfedd i Syr Watkin fagu cryn dipyn o bwysau erbyn diwedd ei oes!

Display for Unknown Wales at Amgueddfa Genedlaethol Caerdydd / National Museum Cardiff

The Unknown Wales event is this Saturday 8 October 2016 – now in its 6^th year. People are invited to National Museum Cardiff’s Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre to listen to talks celebrating Welsh wildlife. For the first time, we have created a small display in the Museum’s galleries to complement these talks.

Our Natural Science curators chose the specimens on display from the millions available in the Museum’s collections. The collections are diverse, including pressed plants, fossils, taxidermy animals, fluid-preserved worms, pinned insects, and more. Look out for the Unknown Wales display case at the top of the restaurant stairs in National Museum Cardiff.

At Unknown Wales this year, eight speakers will tell us about their research into garden birds, Pine Martens, limpets, fungi, coal tip invertebrates, and the Marsh Fritillary Butterfly. Finally, we are pleased to welcome Professor Mike Benton who will bring last year’s big discovery, the new Welsh Dinosaur, back to life for us. Listen back to the BBC Wales Science Cafe preview of the event: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07ws0hj

Book a place at the Unknown Wales day this Saturday 8 October, 10am - 4pm (free entry): https://museum.wales/cardiff/whatson/9247/Unknown-Wales-A-Celebration-of-Welsh-Wildlife/

Here's a round-up of what happened at Unknown Wales 2015.

Nothing lasts forever, not even in your favourite museum. The job of the conservator is to preserve the national collection but decay is all around us. Sometimes it feels like being a surgeon on an intensive care unit. Fortunately we do have a lot of science and technology to help us.

I have recently written about how we refurbished a collection store because corrosive gases being emitted from wooden cupboards caused some metal objects to show early signs of decay. In this blog I want to walk you through the science and analysis behind this project.

Iron rusts, every kid knows that. Leave a nail out in the garden and within weeks, days perhaps, you will notice it develops a lovely orange colour; given enough time, some moisture and oxygen it will eventually become flaky, friable and disintegrate. What happens when iron rusts? Iron atoms react with oxygen and water molecules, leading to oxidation of iron. The result are hydrated iron oxides, a small family of minerals commonly called rust.

Rusting iron has long been a bane of humanity. The Forth Bridge has to be repainted over and over again because it didn’t it would rust and collapse into the Firth below. The same is true of our own Menai Suspension Bridge here in Wales. Wales was the place for the invention of a rust-proofing process for household products made of iron. In the late 17^th Century, Thomas Allgood of Pontypool developed a coating for iron involving the use of an oil varnish and heat. This process was called ‘japanning’, as a European imitation of Asian lacquerwork. Pontypool Museum has lots of information about these old local industries on its website so please visit there if you would like to know more.

National Museum in Cardiff has a collection of Welsh japanned ware which was largely acquired during the early years of the National Museum. Many of these objects do not consist of iron alone: lead, tin, copper and zinc all feature in varying proportions in different parts of some of the objects. Complicated parts, such as handles and bases, were parts made from softer metals or alloys. We can find out what materials an object is made of using a completely non-invasive technology called X-ray Fluorescence (XRF). XRF directs X-rays towards an object and analyses the X-rays that bounce back. As different elements have their own, unique X-ray fluorescence which the instrument can identify and even use to quantify the elemental composition of objects without having to take a physical sample.

The problem for the museum conservator is that many of these metals, too, corrode under certain circumstances. In the case of the objects which were subject to the previous blog the corrosion of parts with a high lead component was accelerated by the high organic acid concentration within the old storage cupboards. A number of analytical tests exist for identifying and quantifying organic acids in air; we used small discs with an absorbent material that were exposed to the air in the store (both inside and outside of the cabinets) and later analysed in the lab. The results of this test showed that the concentration of acetic acid was 623µg/m³ (250ppb) inside the cabinets and 19µg/m³ (8ppb) in the store, and the concentration of formic acid 304µg/m³ (159ppb) inside the cabinets and 10µg/m³ (5ppb) in the store.

We know that both acetic and formic acids are emitted by wood, and both acids can react with various metals to produce, in some cases, some impressive corrosion products. Clearly, the concentrations of both acids were higher inside the storage furniture than in the store itself, giving us a massive clue that the problem was caused by the cabinets and not air pollution entering the store through the air conditioning system. The fresh air supply into the store, on the other hand, kept the concentration of pollutants low in the store itself.

Corrosion and decay comes in many forms, and we also use other technologies to help us identify corrosion products. Of these more in a future blog. In the meantime we are continuing to eliminate the sources of corrosive substances from the museum to help preserve the national collection.

Find out more about care of collections at Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales here.

On the weekend of the 17^th and 18^th of September, Cardiff celebrated Roald Dahl’s 100^th birthday with The City of the Unexpected - a weekend extravaganza of theatre, performance, participatory events and storytelling.

National Museum Cardiff was just one of the venues across the city which transformed itself in honour of Dahl’s weird and wonderful world. We created a ‘Museum of the Unexpected’, with twenty-five strange surprises scattered throughout the galleries. From upside-down paintings to a dinosaur tea party, visitors got the chance to see the displays as never before.

The sight of people exploring the exhibits in search of the next silly scenario was something to behold, and we got great feedback on social media with the #UnexpectedCity tag.

On Saturday, we played host to a huge theatrical performance in the Main Hall, complete with snowball fights, lots of dancing and an appearance by the elusive Mr Fox! Our family learning work placement trainees also ran one of their great music and art workshops, and there was even a chance for visitors to display their own work next to the masterpieces in our art galleries.

On Sunday, the museum hosted Roald Dahl readings by secret celebrities. Daniel Glyn read from ‘James and the Giant Peach’ in our Wriggle exhibition, while Johnny Ball attracted crowds to the Clore Discovery Centre for his rendition of ‘The BFG’. Those in the Reardon Smith Lecture theatre were treated to a double reading by Blue Peter presenter Lindsey Russell and actress/politician/children’s TV legend Floella Benjamin.

Check out the Storify story below to see more pictures and feedback from what was a magical weekend.

If all that has put you a Roald Dahl mood, why not visit Quentin Blake: Inside Stories, an exhibition on Dahl's most famous illustrator?

What’s it all about?

Archaeological collections in museums across Wales are being given a boost over the next few years by the project Saving Treasures, Telling Stories.

Focusing on items discovered by metal detectorists, its key aims include collecting and collections development, training and community engagement with local heritage and archaeology.

Saving Treasures

Hundreds of items discovered by metal detectorists are reported to PAS Cymru every year, allowing them to be recorded and made publicly accessible via https://finds.org.uk/.

In 2015, 37 of these were declared Treasure under the 1996 Treasure Act http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/24/contents, many of which were acquired for local museums by Saving Treasures, on behalf of the people of Wales.

Over the next three years the project will build on this progress, hoping to foster strategic collecting by museums as well as responsible discovering and reporting by metal detectorists.

It will provide training to museum professionals and volunteers to equip them with the skills and knowledge to best collect, interpret and display their treasures.

Telling Stories

Saving Treasures is not just about museums. It’s also about people, especially those who live in the communities where the treasures have been discovered.

In order to reach out to non-traditional museum audiences the project is funding up to six Community Archaeology projects, which will be run by local museums working with community groups to help interpret their collections and bring them closer to their collective pasts.

The first Community Archaeology project, called the ‘The Lost Treasures of Swansea Bay’, is run by Swansea Museum and inspired by a fantastic collection of finds made by a local metal detectorist on Swansea Bay.

Each item has a tale to tell and together they are helping archaeologists build the story of human activity in the Bay over thousands of years.

Saving Treasures is a partnership between Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, the Welsh Museums Federation and the Portable Antiquities Scheme in Wales (PAS Cymru), and is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Keep an eye out for the next blog in what will be a continuous series of updates throughout the life of the project, to find out more about the mysterious Lost Treasures of Swansea Bay…