After focusing on a silent old stone in a wall up Holgate way, here’s another small object with a story to tell, a rather handsome bell, mounted on a wooden base.

The inscription reads:
‘PRESENTED TO
ALDERMAN T. MORRIS J.P
CHAIRMAN OF THE WATCH COMMITTEE
IN COMMEMORATION OF THE OPENING BY HIM
OF THE NEW FIRE STATION ON THE
27TH OF APRIL 1938.’

The ‘new fire station’ referred to is the building on the corner of Peckitt Street and Clifford Street, before that a chapel. There’s more information about the bell in Nick Morris’s comment.

But of course photos aren’t quite enough. This is a bell, a fire engine bell no less, and we need to hear it doing its ringing thing. Here you go, professional quality too, not like my clunky hissy recordings.

Wouldn’t be enough to clear a way through the traffic noise in the 21st century, would it. But presumably alarming enough back then.

This nice old bit of film of 1930s firefighters (in Birmingham) gives an idea of those times.

. . . . .

Thanks to Nick Morris for the photos and audio.

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The art gallery is about to undergo major refurbishment, and will be closed for two years. As the building has recently been emptied in preparation for this, an open day invited us to draw on its empty walls. An accompanying yarn bomb event (more here and here) saw the gallery frontage and nearby parts of Exhibition Square decorated with colour.

On the railings of King’s Manor, knitted hearts.

Beautified bench …

Brightened bicycle …

Particularly impressed by the pigeons. This is a proper ’sense of place’. Sitting in Exhibition Square towards the end of the afternoon I’ve noticed how many pigeons congregate here, one afternoon watched their courtship routines. Flying rats? Not quite. Some pigeons have won medals, and they’re actually extremely intelligent. Which is perhaps why they hang around the art gallery so much.

Admittedly the knitted ones don’t have the droppings mess …

The knitted pigeon on the left is, I believe, the famous ‘Peckasso’. Featured in the publicity for this event.

Really nice to see inside our art gallery before its long closure, but this associated event in the square outside was to me the highlight.

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It includes bosses and corbels from St Martin’s church on Coney Street.

They reminded me that often the story behind exhibits is as interesting as the objects themselves. Maybe the ‘how they came to be here’ adds extra poignancy or a deeper sense of connection to our multi-layered history.

The wooden carvings, dating from the 15th century, were taken down during work on the church roof in the 19th century. I don’t know why they weren’t reinstalled, and whether they were immediately donated to the museum, or rescued by a local antiquarian, but it’s fortunate they weren’t put back. The church was badly damaged by bombing during the Baedeker raid in 1942. They wouldn’t have survived the fires.

Now here they are, conveniently at eye level, so we can appreciate them perhaps more than our ancestors did. Complete with original painted decoration.

Also on display just outside that room is a silk cap worn by a woman more than a thousand years ago. It was discovered during the Coppergate excavations. Once green, apparently, it looks brown now, and the silk is worn away in places. Such a delicate thing, and its survival is again remarkable. It is displayed not flat, but as if around an invisible head, making me imagine that head, and the thoughts she had, and the world she knew. More brutal and difficult than mine, and with few possibilities for anything beyond day-to-day working, surviving, childbearing.

Jewelled exhibits crafted from valuable metals may attract the most attention. But just as valuable, in my eyes, are these objects, carved from wood, woven from silk.

Links

An earlier visit to the museum, after its refurbishment: Changes – Yorkshire Museum

More information on the current exhibition: 1212 – the Making of the City – Yorkshire Museum’s website

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6 October 2011

This sculpture has been standing at the corner of Bishopthorpe Road and Scarcroft Road since 2010, though I have to confess I didn’t know about it, and found it by chance, when wandering down Scarcroft Road on my way to the shop on the corner. As I’d just had an unpleasant incident with officialdom, and a reminder of modern paranoias over innocent folks innocently taking photographs, mood-lifting was required, and finding this did the trick.

It’s called ‘Conversation Piece’, and was created by Ailsa Magnus, who was commissioned to create a sculpture representing the past, present and future of the community in this area of York.

The three figures are a woman, a man, and a child. The male figure is a modern-day worker, representing the present, doing his shopping on his way home from work. I liked his facial expression – fretful? overworked? quizzical? bemused? – and the way he’s clutching his bag and briefcase.

The woman is holding a Terry’s Chocolate Orange. She (sadly) represents the past, as the factory closed years ago, but many of its once large workforce lived in the area – the factory is further up Bishopthorpe Road, now looking rather decrepit and still awaiting redevelopment.

An inscription on the stone base reads: ‘LISTEN TO THE PAST – TALK ABOUT THE PRESENT – LOOK TO THE FUTURE’. Around it are bricks bearing shapes which also have inscriptions – fragments of conversation, questions – submitted by residents, which range from the general: ‘What if?’ to the more specific ‘Can we stop global warming?’ Like all the best art, this work has depth and ‘a story’, as well as being visually striking, though I didn’t know its story until I got back home and looked it up online.

The shapes around the base are based on a popular 18th century sweet created by Terry’s, which featured conversation starters such as ‘Can You Polka?’. The sculptor explains that the Terry’s Conversation Lozenge ‘was a very early version of texting or Twitter’ – and she set up a Twitter account so people could tweet suggestions for the text on the 21st century ‘Conversation Lozenges’. Brilliant.

The child, of course, represents the future.

I see the child appears to be holding a plant – a tree sapling perhaps. A lovely symbol of the future – but I hope he gets advice on where to plant it, and doesn’t innocently plant it on a verge somewhere …

More information

‘Talk about the present’ – Ailsa Magnus’s blog entry giving an insight into the creation of ‘Conversation Piece’

Terry’s Chocolate Orange image to appear in Bishopthorpe Road art – York Press, 16 Nov 2009

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July 2011

Exciting times at the art gallery. There’s a long-awaited Etty exhibition, which everyone should see. The female nudes always seem to be used to illustrate Etty’s work, and I expected it would all seem rather familiar. But no. A surprise were the male nudes, some quite startlingly raunchy. Ladies, take a fan to wave in front of your face, to hide any blushes.

Instead of an Etty nude, I’m including photos of this lovely pair of jugs …

From the upstairs exhibition ‘Honest Pots‘. Beautiful.

‘Conversation Jugs’ is a collaborative work by Alex McErlain and Alice Kettle. The jugs are inscribed with a verse from a traditional Devon harvest jug, and with words from Rubaiyat’s ‘Book of Pots’.

Entry to York Art Gallery is free, and really worth a visit, whether you want to admire the smooth glaze of lovingly created 21st century ceramics, or the handsomely rendered rounded parts of 19th century nudes.

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July 2011

I’m sure many of us, while investigating the varied delights of the Castle Museum, have rushed past the military section. All that fearsome weaponry isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But among the military hardware from centuries past is this significant item of clothing: ‘Buff coat of Sir Thomas Fairfax 1612-1671, Parliamentarian General’. The nearby ‘diary extracts’ of the siege of York aren’t authentic, but I’m assuming this buff coat is.

It’s rather impressive that this 17th century garment has survived the centuries. I’m not sure how it ended up in the Castle Museum. I’d love to know, but cuts to services mean there’s apparently no one to ask, and I’ll have to wait until at least 2014 for an answer. (See update, below.)

In the meantime …

Buff coats, made from cowhide, were worn in battle, usually under armour. The information displayed alongside explains that the phrase ‘in the buff’ – meaning naked – may have come from soldiers fighting dressed in buff coats, without armour, and therefore not fully protected.

It didn’t look to be very large – though hard to tell as it’s in a glass case. (Shame that the modern trend to allow the public to handle historic exhibits hasn’t extended to textiles, as it would be a grand thing to try on Thomas Fairfax’s coat. I’d be first in the queue. I might even queue overnight to be first in the queue.)

These garments apparently became status symbols, and were treasured, valued more than other garments might be. See Dressing the Elite, in the links below.

See also

Related pages on this site: Thomas Fairfax is buried at Bilbrough, near York. There’s a memorial to Thomas and his father Ferdinando in York Minster.

More information/links

Wikipedia page on the buff coat

Extract from Dressing the Elite: Clothes in Early Modern England – an interesting account of John Hodgson’s deep attachment to his buff coat.

Apparently some of Thomas Fairfax’s armour was on display at the Yorkshire Museum some years back. I’ve emailed for confirmation as to whether they still have it, but haven’t had a reply.

If you’re bored with 21st century fashions, you could buy a carefully-crafted modern replica buff coat.

Update

My email enquiry via the form on the Yorkshire Museum website wasn’t answered, but thank you to the correspondent who let me know that the buff coat was a gift to the museum in 2004, from a descendant of Sir Thomas, and that the armour was displayed temporarily in the Yorkshire Museum in an exhibition some years ago, but is part of the Castle Museum collection.

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