Archive for the ‘Conservation’ Category
Picture of the week
Here’s an attempt to uphold Iona’s tradition of picture of the week. This is the car show room at the Museum of Transport, the majority of cars have gone and the wrapped items are bicycles waiting to be transported to the Riverside Museum.
Glasgow’s Queens prepare for final voyage to Riverside
The three largest ship models in Glasgow Museums’ collection – the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth and the QE2 – are preparing to make their final voyage. In the next few weeks, they’ll make the last leg of their epic journey from the Clyde Room at the Museum of Transport to the new Riverside Museum.
Like all of the ship models in the collection, these three ships are incredibly fragile. Unlike the others, however, they are huge! These are hefty models that weigh up to 258kgs each, and took a team of six people to carefully move them out from their display case in the Clyde Room and onto maneuverable skates.
Specialist contractors from Constantine carefully lifted them into custom-built wooden crates using fabric straps. The models were then covered in protective sheeting, the crates built up around them, and the interiors filled with packing to prevent the models moving. Soon they’ll be forklifted down into the main hall then loaded onto a lorry and taken to the Riverside Museum.
Round-up of the install at Glasgow’s Riverside Museum
Since the New Year things have been moving pretty fast down on the Riverside Museum site. It’s full steam ahead with locomotives and their tenders being eased into place. All the buses and trams are on site too, ready to be positioned into their final display location.
Last week we transported the fire engines down to the Pointhouse site. This week the exhibition install teams started building the display units around them and some of the other large objects.
The re-created street, which promises to deliver more than the old Museum of Transport’s well-loved Kelvin Street, has seen the majority of its objects going into the shop units. Many of the bicycles have also arrived on site and been lifted into their dramatic setting. The Faslane caravan, for years a fixed presence at the Faslane Peace Camp, has also been installed at the Riverside Museum; its contents carefully conserved and returned to their original spot, just as former resident and peace protester Disco Dave left them.
Outside, the plaza has been surfaced, trees planted, and work’s started on the car park. And only a few days ago, a dredger vessel sailed into the area to begin dredging the Kelvin Harbour.
Conservation continues despite the extreme temperatures
The recent big freeze caused a few problems at the Museum of Transport, but thankfully nothing too serious, and work on the Riverside Project hasn’t been too disrupted.
The slideshow above has a few wonderful pictures from the museum’s icy backyard. Throughout this winter, we’ve monitored the enviroment at all times to ensure the safety of the objects. Fortunately, we’ve not had to take any drastic action to protect them; though the plummeting temperatures haven’t always meant great comfort for us!
Picture of the Week – Shadows of a Ladder
A few weeks ago we told you about the raising of the turntable ladder on our Dennis-Merryweather fire engine. Since then, under the watchful eye of the Conservation team, the Dennis-Merryweather’s been patiently sitting in the corner of the main hall at the Museum of Transport at Kelvin Hall; the frame of its extended ladder casting an intricate shadow against the wall.
Glasgow Humane Society’s Bennie boat ready for Riverside move
The long process of preparing the Bennie rowing boat for display at Riverside Museum is nearing completion. Back in August, we started the slow process of drying the boat out. Although in great condition, she’d not left the River Clyde, with a few exceptions, since her launch in the 1950s!
Bennie is named after her builder, Ben Parsonage, the former Officer of the Glasgow Humane Society. Ben built the boat in the 1950s and in keeping with the tradition of naming the boat after the Glasgow Humane Society’s current officer, it was named Bennie. Ben’s son George, who is himself now Officer of the GHS, donated Bennie to Glasgow Museums earlier this year. With the help of Bennie and the other GHS resuce boats, George and Ben Parsonage are credited with saving thousands of lives.
After drying her out, Riverside staff moved Bennie to the conservation lab. There, under the supervision and guidance of conservator Gretel Evens, Museum of Transport Visitor Assistants carefully cleaned Bennie, revealing the different colours on her hull.
Now Bennie is ready to be transported to her new home in the Riverside Museum, which is due to open in spring 2011.
Slideshow: update on the Museum of Transport’s clear-out
It’s been a while since our last update on the progress of the clear-out of the old Museum of Transport at Kelvin Hall in Glasgow. As you can see in the slideshow above, the Riverside team have been very busy and the inside of the old museum is now looking very different.
Our decant team and contractors have moved all of the trams and locomotives to Riverside. The majority of the motorbikes once on display in the mezzanine level have gone too.
With the clearing of more and more space in the museum, the main hall has become a working area for staff. It’s currently full of cars and boxes, crates and ladders.
Packing of the smaller objects continues in the stores, while Admin and Visitor Assistants work on the archiving of books and other printed material in our offices. Most of the ship models have moved to their destinations, either Riverside or GMRC.
The next big job is going to be moving the cars which are in the main hall cleaned, wrapped, and waiting to go.
The dismantling of the displays at the old Museum of Transport is also approaching completion, and you can see the metal walkways that once ran between the trams lying in bits awaiting disposal.
There’s still an awful lot of work to do, but the final evacuation and move to the new Riverside Museum looms excitingly closer.
Raising of the … Dennis-Merryweather turntable ladder
Last week saw the turntable ladder on the Dennis-Merryweather TL fire engine raised inside the Museum of Transport for the very first time. We needed to test the ladder prior to its move to the Riverside Museum where it’ll be displayed in a much more dynamic way.
During its working life with the Glasgow Fire Service, the engine’s motor would have whisked the ladder up at high speed. Attached to the top of the ladder would be the belt man, whose job was to operate the hose and direct the jet of water onto the fire below.
Without the need to save lives, we took our time – several hours! – erecting the ladder. We had to raise the ladder slowly by hand – about o.5° in five minutes! It was extremely slow to say the least, and we all have the blisters to prove it.
Picture of the Week – Car Photography
A great deal of our transport objects going into the Riverside Museum (and some that aren’t) have had to be photographed for various reasons including for our displays, for publicity use, and for documentation purposes. This weeks picture of the week shows our black Morris Minor motor car photographed in our studio at the Museum of Transport just before it closed it’s doors to the public earlier this year.
Car photography can be tricky, especially when not able to be done in purpose built studios. We managed to do the best we could with what we have though, and created a space away from the displays big enough to house one car at a time, and the lighting necessary to shoot it. Once it was all painted white, and with all hands on deck, technicians and conservators wheeled a car in each week over a period of a year, ready for the photographer to work on.
In order that the cars could be turned easily, they were hoisted onto a turntable in the room, leaving the photographer free to move it into it’s different positions herself. Specialist lighting techniques and reflectors helped to reduce the reflections you would normally see in the finish of a car and to highlight their unique curves and shapes.
Once shot, the background and the turntable were digitally cut out of the images, leaving us with a whole series of images just like todays picture of the week.
R.I.P. Room 109! Riverside conservation lab moved to GMRC
Yesterday was a sad day indeed as our home for the past four-and-a-half years was finally laid to rest. Room 109, or as we called it, the Clean Lab, has been packed, wrapped and shipped out to Glasgow Museums Resource Centre in Nitshill.
The conservation workshops and labs are all being relocated to GMRC as part of the Riverside Museum Project. This means that the majority of the conservation disciplines will be housed in the same building for the first time. The remaining conservation team is based at the Burrell Collection.
But that’s not to say Riverside’s conservation team is leaving Kelvin the Museum of Transport at Kelvin Hall. Work is still progressing on the large objects around the building and will continue in the new Riverside building right up to opening. The dust you get with a new building is a constant battle for us … and one we will win!
Riverside Museum 