Precious - beautiful new exhibition from the V&A

On loan from the Victoria and Albert Museum, a selection of Edmund Waterton's amazing ring collection is now on exhibition at Wakefield Museum.  For the first time since 1871, these rings are displayed along with their original display box, from the Wakefield Museum collection. It is all a thing of beauty.

 

 

 

 

To celebrate this sumptuous exhibition, we are offering some free workshops to get involved with!

 

Wednesday 27 January

6pm,

FREE 

Adult hands-on workshop

Ring making

Design and make your own statement rings using glass beads, Swarovski crystals and pearls. You'll create stylish and fun jewellery that can accessorise any outfit!

 

Free, but booking essential as places are limited - call 01924 302700 or email

 

 

 

Tuesday 9 February

1.30pm to 3pm

FREE

Digital animation workshop for 12-16 year olds

Precious: 'The Power of the Ring'

Take inspiration from the amazing rings in the 'Precious' exhibition, create tales about 'The Power of the Ring' and animate using iPads.

 

Free, but booking essential as places are limited - call 01924 302700 or email

 

Friday 12 February

10am - 11.30am or 1.30pm - 3pm

FREE

Hands-on workshop for families with 6-12 year olds

It's a Ring Thing

Discover some amazing facts from Edmund Waterton's collection of rings and get creative with some ring related crafts.

 

Free, but booking essential as places are limited - call 01924 302700 or email

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dare we mention Christmas yet?

Catch the Light this Christmas!

As much as it feels wrong mentioning Christmas in October, we have a really exciting workshop being held in Wakefield Museum on 14th November, which is bound to get you into the spirit!

The perfect handmade gift for friends and family. Personalised tuition to create up to 5 beautiful light catchers with a range of colours to suit every taste, inspired by the stained glass in the museum collection.

Fused glass light catchers - design and make your own!

Learn how to cut the glass and work with it to create depth and intrigue. You’ll have bespoke gifts suitable for indoors or outdoors which catch the light and the admiration of everyone you know!

Saturday 14^th November 10-1pm  
Wakefield Museum Learning Zone, Wakefield One, Burton Street, Wakefield. 
Ages 18+
£50 per head includes all materials to make up to 5 pieces.

Booking is essential as numbers are limited to 8 participants. Click here to follow a link to online payments

Visit the Adult Workshops page to see the full listings!  

We have just two places left now on the wonderful paper bird making workshop with Andy Singleton on Wednesday 11th November - a free workshop as part of the Nightingale Festival - so book quickly to reserve your place on 01924 302700 or or email!

The Extraordinary Life of Charles Waterton - Comic Exhibition Launch

A special event is being held at Wakefield Museum
Wednesday 30 September 5pm to 7.30pm

To celebrate the launch of our new comic exhibition - The Extraordinary Life of Charles Waterton - we are very excited to announce that artists John Welding, Staz Johnson and Richard Bell will be in the museum, along with John Whitaker, the museum curator and writer of the Victorian adventurer comic.

The Victorian adventurer who captured a caiman crocodile by riding on its back - the perfect action comic hero!

Charles Waterton was famed for his interest in nature, and travelled widely collecting specimens before setting up the world's first nature reserve at Waterton Hall, near Wakefield. 

For more information about how the comic has been produced, see this earlier blog post.Wakefield Museum has an extensive collection of Waterton artefacts - including a giant Cayman which is exhibited in Wakefield Library and his diaries which detail his travel experiences and his life.

Waterton is well-known for his 'creations' - his taxidermy inventions of grotesques. 

To celebrate this aspect of Charles Waterton, we are also delighted to host - for one night only - the amazing Palace of Curiosities - a Victorian Travelling Sideshow with objects including a mermaid and a unicorn's horn!

In their own words:
Every now and then we find someone from history whose life really needs celebrating - Take Charles Waterton a Victorian man who created taxidermy of stuffed animals and presented them as political cartoon satire - The Palace of Curiosities is proud to announce we will be exhibiting at Wakefield Museum to honour this mans life and achievements on 30th September 2015 - 5pm-7.30pm as part of Wakefield's "The Art Walk".

The professor with his mermaid

Dirigibles and Tea!

'Come, ride in my dirigible and we shall talk of tea.'  

The fashion for tea has been replenished by the steampunk genre and its delight in 'tea duelling'.  Steampunk’s heady mix of high fashion blends cultures, infusing the modern with old style technology.   It is steeped in  a literacy which would have delighted the diarist Samuel Pepys who wrote on this day in 1660:

‘To the office, where Sir W. Batten, Colonel Slingsby, and I sat awhile, and Sir R. Ford coming to us about some business, we talked together of the interest of this kingdom to have a peace with Spain and a war with France and Holland; where Sir R. Ford talked like a man of great reason and experience. And afterwards I did send for a cup of tee (a China drink) of which I never had drank before, and went away.’
25th September 1660

However, it would be nearly another hundred years before tea would become infused into our national habits. The Astbury Ware teapot in our collection charmingly reflects the start of the dedicated teapot.   Production started in 1720 its small size reflecting the value of tea which had a 119% tax, the tea being prized by smugglers who shipped it to and from America.
  

Astbury Ware

Our trade with China for tea and its fine porcelain led to technological revolution in ceramics in Britain. Wrenthorpe pottery in Wakefield struggled to keep pace with Leeds, Castleford and the Don valley, because it lacked the ability to make the new porcelains. The pink enamelling on the 1780s Leeds ware teapot was a refreshing change to brown utilitarian pots. 

Leeds Ware

The excess tax and smuggling boiled over with the 1773 tea act and the Boston Tea party in America, the problems gained a head of steam and in 1784 Richard Twinning advised William Pitt the Younger to reduce the tax to 12.5%

It didn’t take too long before this stimulating brew of politics, changes in technology and trade popularised tea drinking into the national drink.

There are some fine services in the Wakefield's collection and many would be welcome in the wild world of steampunk. What they lack in cogs and top hats they more than make up for in decoration. The Rockingham set for example:

Rockingham tea set

But for sheer volume you have to go for our favourite - the 1870 Barge ware - a fine spectacle at any party:

Barge Ware

These wonderful tea pots, and more, are currently on display in Wakefield Museum.  The barge ware pot featured here really does have to be seen to be believed! 

For those of you with Steampunk or Victoriana inclinations, or intrigued to know more, come along to Wakefield Museum next Wednesday evening, when we will be host to the amazing Palace of Curiosities - a Victorian sideshow with a difference.  

Wonder at the bizarre collection of objects that will amaze and astound you all in a feast of incredulity and disbelief.  All the atmosphere, wonderment and macabre family fun of a Victorian travelling fairground curiosity sideshow – seeing is believing!

The Palace of Curiosities

Wednesday 30 September

Wakefield Museum

5pm to 7.30pm

Suitable for all!

The Extraordinary Life of Charles Waterton

Charles Waterton is being brought to life by three fantastic local illustrators.

A comic book version (or graphic novel, or sequential art if you prefer) of the life of Wakefield’s famous pioneering naturalist, writer and explorer, Charles Waterton of Walton Hall is currently in production.

It is a major part of the Nightingale Festival, celebrating the life of the naturalist who passed away 150 years ago this year.

The comic is in three parts, each part illustrated by a different local artist:

Charles Waterton Part One: The Early Years follows Waterton as a young boy, first climbing trees and gathering bird eggs at his home of Walton Hall, through his schoolboy adventures and mishaps avoiding prefects and schoolmasters wielding rods of correction, to his first travels to Spain where he narrowly avoided death at the hands of the Black Vomit plaque.

Part One is drawn by John Welding. John Welding has been drawing comics in one form or another for the last 25 years.

He started in the Eighties drawing for small press publications and fanzines and in the Nineties he penned and self-published a range of comics, the most acclaimed being his autobiographical Goathland Diary Comic series.

Work in progress. John Welding adds ink to pages from the Early Years.  Image courtesy of John Welding's blog

Work in progress. John Welding adds ink to pages from the Early Years.  Image courtesy of John Welding's blog

  

Charles Waterton Part Two: The Quest for Adventure is based on Charles Waterton’s celebrated book Wanderings in South America. The story follows Waterton’s quest to learn more about the deadly poison Wourali (now called curare) used by the local South American Amerindian tribes to tip their blow pipe darts, and his encounter with a twelve foot caiman that is now the centrepiece of Wakefield Museum’s displays.

Part Two is drawn by Staz Johnson. Staz is a comic book artist and penciller, best known for his work on DC Comics' Robin and Catwoman series. He has worked for 2000 AD, Dark Horse and Marvel comics to name a few. He grew up in Walton and lives in Horbury.

A thumbnail draft image from Staz Johnson's Quest for Adventure story

Charles Waterton Part Three: The Defence of Nature follows Charles Waterton’s attempts to build the world’s first nature park in the grounds of his home. Nobody had ever done this before and he had to deal with hungry poachers and polluting soap factories not to mention his own son who spent much of the family fortune on gambling and rings (more about this in December).

The opening panel from Richard Bell's The Defence of Nature comic

Part three is drawn by Richard Bell. Richard Bell was born at Walton Hall (then a maternity hospital) in 1951 and he studied natural history illustration at the Royal College of Art. His first book, A Sketchbook of the Natural History of Wakefield, includes a comic strip feature about Charles Waterton and the world’s first nature reserve. Richard Bell’s acrylic on canvas painting Waterton’s World is in the permanent collection of the Hepworth Gallery, Wakefield. He writes a nature diary for the Dalesman magazine and his local publications include Walks in the Rhubarb Triangle and Waterton’s Park, a trail guide to the history of Walton Park.

John Welding and John Whitaker will be running a workshop about the production of the comic for 8-12 year olds as part of Wakefield's Lit Fest. It is a free but bookable event on 26 September 3.30 to 5pm.

John Welding will also be running two bookable sessions for us as part of the Big Draw in October - a family event on Tuesday 27 October, and an adult event on the evening of Wednesday 28 October.  Watch this space for booking details coming soon!

Big Draw event - create a mini-explorer with John Welding! More details to follow

  

A special exhibition called the Extraordinary Life of Charles Waterton (30^th September – 7^th November) will open at Wakefield Museum, charting the development of the comic and displaying some of the finished original artwork.

The comic itself will be available in a limited edition print from the end of October.

Aviary in the Atrium

As part of the Nightingale Festival, Wakefield Museums commissioned artist Andy Singleton to create an Aviary in the Atrium, inspired by Charles Waterton's last diary entry in 1865.

Andy Singleton has created two stunning and intricate display cases in the atrium space at Wakefield One:

Photo: Nick Singleton

Photo: Nick Singleton

Photo: Nick Singleton

Photo: Nick Singleton

The detail in these display is incredible, come and visit to see for yourself.


Andy Singleton also worked with a group of school children from The Waterton Academy Trust (Walton Primary Academy, Normanton Common Academy, Normanton Junior School and Lee Brigg Infant School)  to create an installation of 150 birds. 

Pupils from across the four schools made their own birds, following a demonstration by Andy.  Hundreds and hundreds of amazing birds were hatched.  so it was a difficult job to select just 150, to represent 150 years since Charles Waterton's death.

As part of the pupil's experience they had a tour of the museum displays and a special peak behind the scenes.  They helped to select the birds and worked with Andy in creating a swirling flock.

Selecting the birds for display

Behind the scenes

Creating the display

The three atrium cases are a beautiful celebration of Charles Waterton's love of birds and wildlife.

For full details of Nightingale Festival events please see Nightingale Festival 

@WFMuseums #Waterton150

 

Charles Waterton

 

 

Half Term Fun

This week has seen Wakefield Museums deliver quite a variety of family workshops!

From booked sessions to drop-in crafts, families have created, participated and been hands-on. There has been mosaic coaster making, digital drawing, puppet shows and even live owls!

Castleford Museum held a drop-in session for visitors to make their own mosaic coaster with ceramic tesserae – staff worked hard to keep up with demand for the grout to stick designs together!

Mosaic coasters

  

27 May was the 150th anniversary of the death of Wakefield explorer and pioneer conservationist Charles Waterton, to mark this event we delivered our Barmy Birds workshop. We had some amazing creations made and participants even got to look at owl pellets and what they contained - thanks to Jo from the RSPB Yorkshire (Old Moor) for supporting this session.  Feedback from the sessions included “A fun and educational workshop for children and adults alike”

Barmy birds!

There were also some owl related crafts as part of the Wakefield Artwalk and Nightingale Festival (#Waterton150), along with a display of real owls from the Yorkshire Owl Experience. One youngster told us “That was cool, glad we went!”  

Owl Crafts

Charles Waterton and Ruby the Owl!

Some Brilliant Boats were designed over at Castleford Museum.  From origami sail boats to sparkly canoes youngsters (and parents alike) produced some wonderful paper boats.  One design will be taken into school as we were told the child’s new topic will be ships and boats this term – good timing for all!

Brilliant Boats

Cusan Theatre delivered The Princess of the Rainforest - An enchanting visual story with life size puppets, masks and visual treats. “I liked the monkey and snakes, but they had to find somewhere new to live! I liked it” said one of our younger visitors.

The Princess of the Rainforest

The digital drawing session saw the use of object from the collections and museum displays being given a bit of a makeover. Using a free app on iPads participants created their own amazing digital artwork and images. Feedback included “Very informal session. Kids loved every bit of it – working with museum objects, exploring the museum space, learning new app – everything was fun (and yet educational!) Very relaxing as well Thank you.”

Digital Drawing

Taking inspiration from the artist and sculptor Henry Moore, there were drop-in activities at Castleford Museum, with tiles being decorated in our own take on Henry Moore's artistic style.

And still to come:

Henry Moore Sculptures
Saturday 30 May
11am – 2pm
Castleford Forum Museum
Be inspired by the community case created by St Joseph's School and create your own Henry Moore sculpture from clay.
Suitable for all!
Free, no need to book

At Wakefield Museum there are NEW activity sheets that have been developed by Wakefield Museum Young Curators Club (YCC) out for families to use on a daily basis too. The YCC in their last meeting looked around the museum and developed some word puzzle activities for others to take part in. These are out in the museum ‘front room’ for you to have a go.

Keep updated on all our activities by joining our mailing list!

The Nightingale Chorus

Nightingales to be heard in Wakefield once more….

May 2nd 1865. On this night at 11 o’clock two nightingales were singing melodiously in the Park at Walton Hall.

This is the last entry in the notebook of Charles Waterton, the Wakefield naturalist, explorer and pioneering conservationist. He died 150 years ago in 1865.  

From May 2015 Wakefield Museums and Countryside will mark this anniversary to celebrate Waterton’s incredible life and commemorate his legacy.

As part of the Nightingale Festival Wakefield Museums have taken inspiration from Nightingales singing melodiously and have created a chorus of Nightingales across the city.  Venues across the city will be playing snippets of beautiful and entrancing Nightingale song on 2 May, 27 May and throughout June.

There is also an exciting programme of events and activities planned as part of the festival including a spectacular exhibition at Wakefield Museum, a Waterton comic, artist commissions, workshops, talks and much more.

For more information about the Nightingale Festival

www.wakefield.gov.uk/nightingale

@WFMuseums #Waterton150

Further information about Nightingales:

Latin name: Luscinia megarhynchos

Nightingales are a bit bigger than a robin, with plain brown feathers. They are difficult to spot, and like to hide in thick bushes. The nightingale is on the amber list for conservation in the UK. Numbers fell by over 50% between 1995 and 2008, due to a decline in its preferred habitat  You are now extremely unlikely to see a nightingale in Wakefield.  They are found in the south east – Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Kent & Sussex. Despite the name, nightingales also sing throughout the day.  It is the males that sing. The collective noun for nightingales is a watch.