Terracotta Warriors in Liverpool

More than 8,000 life-sized Terracotta Warriors have been unearthed in burial pits at the tomb complex of Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, since 1974 near Xi’ in North West China. They’re one of the “wonders of the world” and a small selection of them are currently visiting Liverpool as part as an exhibition at the World Museum in Liverpool.

We went to see the exhibition last Friday evening. It’s proving to be very popular (not surprising really) and tickets have to be booked a few weeks in advance.

My colleague at work was a little scathing as only a relatively small number of the warriors are on display. He felt that the spectacle was in seeing the massed ranks.

Visitors are allocated a time slot but we still had to queue up to wait to get in. First of all you’re shepherded in to watch an introductory film. Personally I didn’t find it very enlightening and don’t think it set the scene particularly well. However it didn’t last too long and we were soon entering the exhibition proper to be greeted by a horse and its groom.

We were able to get quite close to the life size figures – within a metre. Photographs were allowed (no flash), and although the exhibition was busy, we were able to get a good look.

Then into the main part of the exhibition where we learned about how China was unified under the First Emperor and about life in China during his reign. There was a good selection of artefacts on display

supported by information panels

Then the main display of warriors – seven of them in a row

Again, we were able to get very close to the figures and inspect their features, clothing, armour etc.

The life-sized figures vary in height, uniform, and hairstyle in accordance with rank. They all have different features although experts have identified 10 basic face shapes.

Although today they appear as terracotta grey, they were original painted in bright colours, like this reproduction on display in the foyer of the Museum,

which has faded and flaked off. However, by getting close it was possible to see traces of the paint. Most of the figures originally held real weapons such as spears, swords, or crossbows, but very few remain as they’ve either been robbed or disintegrated over time.

Here’s a closer look at some of the figures.

The General

An Officer

A Light Infantryman

A Heavy Infantryman

A Charioteer

A Standing archer

A Kneeling archer

This wasn’t the end of the exhibition. Some high ranking notables and later Emperors also had their own armies created – although these were smaller than life size and not as realistic.

and there was a beautiful golden horse found in the tomb of Emperor Wu, the 5th ruler of the Han Dynasty

Well, despite my colleague’s warning, we were not at all disappointed – quite the reverse. We learned quite a lot about the history of China and the early Emperors, and it was fantastic to be able to get close up to the figures. They were breathtaking.

The National Museum of Finland

We visited the National Museum of Finland on the first full day of our recent stay in Helsinki – on the Sunday afternoon after we’d been to the Didrichsen Art Museum. It tells the story of Finland and its people, going right back to the pre-historic times and is definitely worth a visit to get an understanding of this relatively young nation.

The museum is in a distinctive Finnish National Romantic style building, designed by architects Herman Gesellius, Armas Lindgren, and Eliel Saarinen, directly opposite the Finlandia Hall, close to the city centre. The exterior is rather austere and influenced by medieval architecture but with some Art Nouveau / Jugendstil touches.

Inside includes murals and other Finnish style Jugendstil features, particularly in the central hall and main staircase. It’s hard to do justice to the ceiling mural in the central entrance hall which depicts scenes from the Kalevala, the Finnish national myth.

There were some beautiful stained glass windows on the main staircase

The first half of the museum concentrates on the history of Finland from the Middle Ages to the foundation of the independent Finnish State in 1917 (after the Russian Revolution). It’s what I would call a traditional type of museum with lots of artefacts presented in a relatively static way with limited interaction. This doesn’t mean it wasn’t interesting and we learned quite a bit about the history of Finland when it was a colony of Sweden and then, later, a Russian Grand Duchy.

The Medieval room

A recreated room from the 18th Century when Finland was a Swedish colony – the large white “cabinet” is a ceramic heater – needed in the depths of the Finnish winter!

The throne used by the Tsar during his visit to Finland when it was under Russian Imperial influence

The second half of the museum, covering the modern era from the beginning of the 20^th Century to the present day was very modern in style with lots of interactive and hands-on displays including this interactive panorama of Helsinki at the end of the Russian era

and a “book” where the content was projected on to blank pages.

Nationalist feeling was growing in Finland at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century – which is reflected in the Jugenstil and National Romantic architecture so prevalent in Helsinki. After the fall of the Tsar, taking opportunity of the Bolshevik policy of  National Determination, Finland declared independence on 6 December 1917. A Civil War followed between “Reds” and conservative “Whites”, the latter eventually being victorious.

At the beginning of WWII Finland was attacked by Soviet Russia leading to a bitter “Winter War” where the much smaller country defeated the Red Army, yet the Moscow Peace treaty ceded territory to Russia. There was a period of peace before war resumed in autumn 1941 when Russia was preoccupied with defending itself from the German invasion.  Power relations had changed and The USSR were now allied with Great Britain, which resulted in the latter declaring war on Finland on 6 December., and Finland was supported by, if not allied with, the Nazis. I felt that although much was made of the hardship and heroics of the Winter War (quite rightly), this aspect was rather glossed over.

After WWII Finland was in a difficult position with a long border with the USSR and and had to balance carefully between the big powers maintaining a neutral stance. Like the other Nordic countries it developed a strong welfare state which largely remains today despite some economic difficulties and the rise of the Nationalist right who are now in Government.

Last year was the Centenary of the founding of the Finnish state and the final exhibit in this part of the Museum was a film show with an image of a Finn from each year from 1917 until 2017 projected on a large screen. Visitors could control both the direction of the film (past to present or vice versa) and the speed.

As we were about to leave the museum we realised we’d missed a whole section devoted to prehistoric Finland, so we went to have a look. Again, it was an interesting exhibition, well presented in a modern way.

Given it’s position in the frozen north, early population was sparse and life would have been hard so no major civilisations developed like in more temperate environments. However there was some migration after the last Ice Age and a number of artefacts were displayed, such as weapons and jewellery.

as well as displays and models about the environment and how people lived.

We enjoyed our visit to the Museum. There was more  to see and we could have spent longer there, but we were starting to feel tired so it was time to head back to our hotel for a rest and to get ready to go out for something to eat.

 

A visit to the ancestral home

The oldest building in Australia stands in the middle of Fitzroy Gardens in central Melbourne, only a short walk from our Appart-Hotel. It wasn’t actually built in Australia but in Great Ayton and was the home of the parents and other family members of James Cook the renowned 18th century explorer and navigator who is something of an icon in Australia. The cottage was brought to Melbourne in 1934. Each brick was individually numbered, packed into barrels and then shipped to Australia where the cottage was re-erected. Cuttings from ivy that adorned the house were also taken and planted – I doubt they’d get away with that today given the strenuous measures taken when entering Australia to prevent foreign specimens being imported..

We have a particular interest in Cook as he’s in my wife’s family tree – she’s descended from one of his siblings (as are my children, of course!). So we could argue that it’s her ancestral home! So a visit while we were staying in Melbourne was a must. Unfortunately the family connection didn’t result in the entrance fee being waived!

The cottage has been furnished to be representative of the how it would have looked in the 18th Century

In the extension there’s an interesting exhibition about Cook and his voyages.

The house is surrounded by a reconstructed English style cottage garden

where there’s a statue of the man himself. He probably never actually lived in the house as his parents moved there after he’d left home for Whitby.

Although the house is quite small it was worth the visit and the entry fee (many tourists were standing outside the garden taking photographs without paying to go inside (to be honest, so did I last time I was here!). It was interesting to see the reconstructed interior of an 18th Century artisan’s cottage where my wife’s ancestors lived. The exhibition was interesting too and the guides, wearing period costume, were very helpful and keen to tell us about Cook and the cottage.

Performance Art at the NGI

Just after I’d arrived at the National Gallery of Ireland on Sunday and was starting to explore (I had a couple of hours before my time slot for the main exhibition), when I wandered into the Shaw room, a rather grand large room close to the Merion Square entrance, it was clear something was going on. I could see a group of people with musical instruments who were clearly setting up to perform and several people setting up easels.

It didn’t take me long to suss out what was going on. Like most Galleries holding major exhibitions, the National Gallery of Ireland has held a number of events to accompany the Vermeer and Masters of Genre Painting Exhibition, and this was one of them.

Many of the paintings in the exhibition feature musicians and musical instruments from the Dutch “Golden Age”– virginals, lutes, harpsichords, violas and the like as well as singers. So the Gallery had organised a collaborative event – Performance Art – with the Royal Irish Academy of Music (RIAM) and the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA). Musicians from the RIAM performed music from the Dutch Golden Age on instruments of the time, while members of the RHA had set up their easels so they record the scene live – sketching and drawing.

A good crowd gathered to watch the musicians and the artists at work. It was an enjoyable event and I stayed for a good hour, only leaving because it was getting close to my time slot to see the exhibition.

The musicians were Catriona O’Mahony playing baroque violin, Miriam Kaczor who played the recorder and baroque flute,

David Adams on harpsichord, Andrew Robinson, who played the viol and lute,

who also told us a little about the instruments and the type of music that was played during the Golden Age

and soprano Clodagh Kinsella.

The artists were Una Sealy, Blaise Smith, Cian Mcloughlin, Sean Molloy and Comnghall Casey. They didn’t seem to be at all put off by everyone watching them at work and taking photographs.

The Mersey Tunnel

Many, many years ago, when I was at University in Liverpool, I always used to wonder what this building, located at George’s Dock, just behind the Mersey Docks and Harbour building, one of the “Three Graces” at the Pierhead, was.

A large Art Deco style structure faced with Portland limestone and decorated with Egyptian motifs that were popular in the 1930’s, not long after the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen. I eventually discovered that it was a huge chimney surrounded by offices built as part of the ventilation system for the Queensway Tunnel (also known as the Birkenhead Tunnel). It’s certainly one of the fanciest chimneys I’ve ever seen!

It was designed by Liverpool architect Herbert James Rowse (1887-1963) and the carved Egyptian style decorations on the portals are by sculptor Edmund Charles Thompson (1898-1961).

The tunnel was opened in July 1934, and at the time, at 3.24 kilometres (2.01 mi) long.  it was the longest road tunnel in the world, a title it held for 14 years until the opening of the Vielha Tunnel in Spain in 1948. It remained the longest underwater tunnel though, until 1955. The entrance is right in the centre of Liverpool and being built in the 1930’s it only has a single carriageway of four lanes, two in each direction.

Mersey Travel, who own the tunnel, organise regular tours of the tunnel showcasing its history and allowing the public to gain access to the old control room, ventilation equipment and the tunnel itself. They also can arrange special tours for schools, companies and other organisations and last week I took part in a visit organised for delegates attending a conference at the nearby Crowne Plaza Hotel on the Liverpool waterfront. Given the theme of the conference – about the control of exposure to hazardous substances – the tour was customised to highlight how the air quality is controlled.

After donning our hi-viz vests and safety helmets, our guides, Alison and Billy, gave us a potted history of the tunnel and described how it was constructed. Billy was a real “Scouser” – born and bred in Anfield (although a true Evertonian!) with lots of stories and plenty of jokes and wisecracks. A true entertainer!

The tunnel cost £8million to build  and employed 1700 men in difficult working conditions under the river bed. 1,200,000 tons of rock and gravel had to be excavated by two teams working from either side of the river. Pilot tunnels were excavated, one starting in Liverpool and the other in Birkenhead, eventually to meet in the centre – less than an inch out of alignment! – on 3 April 1928. The pilot tunnels were then enlarged to create the full sized tunnel.  There’s more information about its construction on the Merseyside Maritime Museum Website and a more detailed description here.

First stop was the old control room, which was in use until relatively recently. This required climbing several flights of steps (you need to be fit for this visit!!)

Ventilation of the tunnel to remove contaminants from vehicle exhausts, is provided by massive fans located at 6 ventilation stations, including the one at George’s Dock. Fresh air, brought in from above street level, is blown through the ducts beneath the roadway. The air enters the upper half of the tunnel through outlets18 inches apart at roadway level. The air flow is balanced by varying the size of the outlets to ensure an even distribution of air throughout the tunnel. Contaminated air is extracted through vents in the roof of the tunnel to the exhaust chambers at each of the six ventilating stations.

It’s incredible to think that the original fans, built and installed in the 1930’s, are still in use. They are enormous, with the largest capable of moving 641,000 cubic feet per minute (315 cubic metres per second).

I was rather pleased to hear that one of the two fan suppliers was Walker Brothers of Wigan who specialised in equipment for mines. In the 1930’s there was little knowledge or experience of how to control air quality in road tunnels so, perhaps not surprisingly, they fell back on the technology used to ventilate coal mines.

This diagram illustrates the operaton of the ventilation system (showing the Birkenhead side). It appeared in the second edition of a short lived British magazine “Wonders of World Engineering”,  published in March 1937.

I found the image here.

We were then taken all the way back down and below ground level to look inside the tunnel itself. It’s very narrow and the cars speeded past only centimetres from where we stood on the observation platform. No photographs were allowed to minimise the distraction of drivers of the vehicles passing through the tunnel – we didn’t want to be the cause of an accident.

Then it was back up the stairs to the ground floor where we handed in our safety gear at the end of what was a very informative and entertaining visit.

Return to the IMMA

 

I’m back working in Ireland this week. I caught the fast ferry from Holyhead that arrived early afternoon, so I had a few hours to myself before heading to my hotel in Naas. I decided to head over to Kilmainham, about half an hour from Dublin Port and on my route to Naas, to visit the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in the old Kilmainham Royal Hospital. It’s somewhere I’ve visited quite a few times over the past few years – there’s usually something on that’s worth seeing and it’s always pleasant to take a walk in the formal garden which changes with the seasons.

There were four exhibitions showing, and I was able to look around all of them. I wasn’t impressed by the Patrick Hennessey exhibition, his work didn’t appeal to me, but there were a number of works I liked in the exhibitions of the work by the Italian artist Carol Rama and in the IMMA Collection: A Decade, which

provides a snapshot of how the National Collection of modern and contemporary art has developed over the past 10 years. 

I also enjoyed the multimedia exhibition The Humanizer by the British/Japanese artist Simon Fujiwara, newly commissioned by the IMMA.

I also had time to take a stroll through  the formal gardens. Everything was fresh and green

 

but being early in the season very few plants were in bloom. The garden will be at it’s best in a few weeks, I think.

The Asgard

While I was at the Irish National Museum at the Collins Barracks on Sunday, continuing the theme of Irish rebellion against the British, I called in to see the exhibition which told the story of a sleek yacht, the Asgard, that had been renovated and was on display on an out building at the former barracks.

The Asgard was built in 1905 to a design by Colin Archer, a Norwegian naval architect, based on a Norwegian pilot boat. It was commissioned by Erskine Childers and his wife Molly. Childers was a writer and the author of a popular novel, the Riddle of the Sands, a patriotic espionage story about a German plot to invade Britain. Ironically Childers was also a supporter of Irish Home Rule and used the Asgard to transport guns from Germany over to Ireland on the eve of the First World War.

The Asgard set out from Conwy in north Wales on July 3rd, and sailed down the Welsh coast, around Land’s End and into the Channel. It rendezvoused with a German ship, the Gladiator during the evening of July 12 th off the coast of Belgian where the cargo of 1,500 German made Mauser rifles together with 49,000 rounds of ammunition were transferred to the yacht. It sailed back to Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire and then across a stormy Irish Sea to Howth, a small port on Dublin Bay just north of the city.

It docked on July 26th and the guns and ammunition were unloaded by a large group of Irish Volunteers (the Republican paramilitary organisation) who then marched in formation back to Dublin proudly bearing their arms.

The Mauser rifles dated from 1970 when they were “state of the art”, but by 1914 they were rather outdated. However the Asgard’s cargo was one of the main sources of weapons used by the rebels during the Easter Uprising in 1916.

Asgard was sold in 1928, and would have three further owners before being purchased by the Irish Government in 1960, after which it was used as a training vessel for naval cadets between 1961 and 1974. It was “retired” and put on display in dry dock at Kilmainham until 2001 and was then put into storage.

Inspection of the Asgard revealed that there was considerable damage from corrosion. It was decided to repair and restore the vessel and after a major restoration project it was put on display at the Collins Barracks where it remains today.

It’s beautifully preserved and the sleek vessel is an impressive sight. It can be viewed from the ground, looking up from below, and also from a viewing balcony at deck level. Panels around the room tell the story of the Asgard, it’s owner and crew and the Howth landing.