Conservation

So I'm very excited! Ham House has closed for the winter and now cleaning happens and I'm on the both the book cleaning team and the conservation team which do the whole house (as far as I can understand but training is on Tuesday).

I am very very excited for both of these things to happen and will try and blog better. I had book training yesterday and it was interesting to think of books as objects rather than just content. It was also interesting to see how books are bound. I found it kind of amazing but upsetting that books which were bound centuries ago might last longer than those today because the old ones were hand sewn and no corners were cut whereas new ones have a 'perfect' binding which seems to be all glue and cracks. I feel our material culture could maybe someday be a detriment to our history. So right now I get annoyed at fires for meaning a lot of old ancient things were lost, like the Library of Alexandria but maybe someone might get annoyed because all our books just fall apart because we had no care. But now we live in a digital age I'm sure there will be copies somewhere.

We also got to look at some of the brushes we should use while cleaning. We use pony hair (dust particles don't sink into brushes made with natural fibres) mainly but Caroline also showed us badger hair, some others I cannot remember right now and SQUIRREL HAIR which was so damn soft. Now I want a squirrel. A domesticated one. So I shall be off to see Mr Wonka about it. Maybe he'll give me one if I ask nicely!

To bed now. More soon.

He doesn't want to be turned into a brush if you ask me. 

Putti, Cupids and Croquet.

Well, I have been thinking about this for the while, what are the difference between putti and cherubs or even cupids? They all look like ugly babies to me and my mother. I have understood that this was because the artists wanted to show that while they look like babies they actually had a lot of knowledge as they were spirits not babies. Which just makes them look like ugly babies, as I said before. I have understood that putti were more like spirits and therefore secular compared to cherubs which are baby angels with Christian meanings. Cupid fits more with the putti profile since he is usually seen as the offspring of Venus and is often seen with her in paintings and so more pagan. But at Ham I found a picture of Cupid and Putti Playing Croquet and Other Games and I want to know how anyone can tell the difference between the two. 

So I want to look at this more. According to my trusty friends at the OED (ok I don't know them personally but I wish I did) putti are the plural for putto which are "Esp. in Renaissance or Baroque art: a representation of a child, usually a boy, naked or in swaddling clothes; a cherub, a cupid." Which is annoying because they encompass all three in one. Maybe I don't want to be friends with them.

So on to the OED people for Cherub. There are five different definitions but the one most relevant to us is... well apart from being a provincial form for a Barn owl there isn't a definition I want to hear. It either seems to be describing the seat of dwelling of the deity or 'fullness of knowledge' or "a being of a celestial or angelic order." But nowhere does it say they are chubby babies like putti. I did find on 'trusty' Wikipedia that Donatello used putti during the Renaissance but used them with a more Christian meaning and maybe that's where we get the similarities from.

And Cupid is just the son of Venus but we knew that already. I don't seem to be getting anywhere really. I did find somewhere that all cherubs and wings and all that don't are putti but sometimes putti have wings but it just depends on the context. So I haven't really worked out which is which and how one knows but if someone has an easy way of telling please tell me, however I think the important thing that I'm looking over here is that these putti and cupids or whatever are playing CROQUET which is just a wonderful wonderful game. Maybe I should just leave it at that.

Because Croquet is just Awesome.

Augustus Whipple

The animal known as a P.I.G. 

So I might not have been updating this blog as much as I want to but I am still volunteering at Ham and I keep on finding things I want to talk about but today I found something WONDERFUL! (Maybe too much excitement, you can judge later.)

So today I was in the library for the first time and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I liked the fact Mr Norman Norris from Brighton bequeathed all his books to the trust when he died and they gave them to Ham, since our book collection had been sold in 1938, and some to nearby Osterley Park. I also loved the globes with their inaccurate portrayal of Australia being connected to the mainland, the misshapenness of certain countries (according to one visitor they just couldn't get the longitude right (or was it latitude) until they had accurate time pieces apparently) and the wonderful old names like New Holland for Australia.

But the thing that struck me was a book just at eye height on the end of the shelf entitled "On the Care of the Pig" by Augustus Whipple. Well not only is Augustus Whipple such a fantastic name but it reminded me of P.G Wodehouse's Blandings novels in which Lord Emsworth is obsessed by pigs. I loved the 1995 TV adaptation as a child which was how I got into Wodehouse. While I was revelling in this discovery and thinking that I had to check it out on the internet because it seems the pig obsession just might be the 'in' thing, I saw that the book was only half a book with a piece of wood at the back. There was one of these on the other side of the shelf and on some of the other ones.

When I went on my break I asked Gwen one of the House Steward she said it was because when Ham recieved Norman Norris's collection he had a lot of smaller books which didn't fit on the big bookshelves so they added shelves and the wooden bits I saw were brackets and the half books were there to disguise them. So she confirmed that "On the Care of the Pig" was not a real book and I was very sad about this.

HOWEVER when I googled it I made a wonderful discovery and found this on Wikipedia. August Whipple (or Whiffle I can't work out which one's better) DOES have something to do with Wodehouse and Blandings. "On the Care of the Pig" is Lord Emsworth's favourite reference book for looking after his beloved Empress of Blandings.

So whoever designed that fake book hid an obscure cheeky little Blandings reference which I sort of got and I love them for it. I now need to check out if any of the other fake half books are hiding sneaky references. Though to be fair with a name like Augustus Whipple, I should have guessed Wodehouse had a hand in it. His characters have wonderful names. Now I am off to fill to read as much Wodehouse as I can. Pig hoooey!

Thoughts and Reasons

At my graduation ceremony after finishing my Classical Civilisation degree, I was telling my lecturer about the volunteering work I have been doing at Ham House and she suggested I blog about it. So here is the start of that little idea and hopefully I will have lots of things to write. I have thoughts in my head but who knows if they'll come out right or not.

So, quick overview of Ham. It is a National Trust property situated on the river Thames between Richmond and Kingston. The house was built in 1610 and given to William Murray by King Charles I in 1626. Murray had been the Kings whipping boy in childhood and they remained friends so the house and estate was bestowed as gift and Murray became the first Earl of Dysart. Apart from Murray, the other two main figures you hear of around the house are Elizabeth Murray (William's daughter) and the 4th Earl Lionel Tollemache, Elizabeth's great grandson (he liked tapestries). After that nothing much has changed.

That's all I'm going to write for now. More soon.