Can you identify this 1920's family?

Can you identify the family or locations in these 1920’s stereoscope photographs?

During our customary month long stay at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last August I decided 
to take an online course on the development 19th century stereoscopes. It was a fascinating and informative course enhanced by being delivered by the University Of Edinburgh. I could pop into the National Museum Of Scotland and had seen a linked exhibition in 2015.





I decided keep an eye out for a stereoscopic viewer whilst browsing in antique and charity shops as I wanted to experiment with stereoscope images for my artwork.

19th century stereoscopes are magnificent beasts but not always the most portable or storable objects, so I was delighted with a recent find.

Last week at the corn street antiques market in Bristol the first thing to catch my eye was this little portable viewer. A later date than I really wanted but the moment it was in my hand I knew it was mine. The weight, the materials, the texture. The mechanism  pops up and folds down into perfect pocketable portability.
I glanced at the double photographs within and struck a good deal with the stall-holder.

The first photograph in the pile was the jolly little boy looking cheekily towards the camera. I was further enchanted by the enormous polar bears at a zoo, frozen forever in their cramped mock Arctic environs.

Please do take a moment to look at the photographs. It looks as if the family are on holiday, a day out at the very least, precious enough to immortalise with a stereoscopic camera and processed as postcards. I have a feeling the beach may be in South Wales, perhaps the zoo and castle are there as well?

Do let me know if you recognise any of the family or the locations. I’d love to know where they are and if you may be related?

Images & text ©Heather Tweed 2017

Pens And Post Boxes Images Of Birmingham Jewellery Quarter

If you are not a magpie attracted to shiny things, or into expensive bling, you may think that Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter is not for you? Stroll around the historic industrial architecture and pay a visit to the fascinating pen museum and you may discover a few surprises.
penmuseum.org.uk

All images © Heather Tweed 2017

3 reasons I ❤️Venice Vending Machine Art Installation

Having recently joined the team at ART-E-MOTION I would like to share my reasons for loving the Venice Vending Machine installation. Scroll down for details on the artist call and how to help keep the project free for everyone.

1. Marina Moreno: Instigator of the installation, Venetian live-art artist Marina is a magical motivator, full of passion for her project and keeping art open to all.

 

Marina oversees the Venice Vending Machine

2. The Concept: An international Art Vending Machine with a mission to invite the casual visitor to question how much a piece of artwork is worth. A participatory, inclusive artwork that functions on multiple levels without dumbing down.

                                      

www.venicevendingmachine.com

3. The Location: Picture-book-Venice during the Biennale need I say more?

A lucky visitor collects her prize of artwork

How much would you pay for a piece of artwork? That's the question artist and curator Marina Moreno will be posing at the Venice Biennale in October.

       

In return for a response to her question Marina will use a symbolic token to activate a large vending machine, brim-full of circular pods each carefully packed with a piece of selected artwork. In this playful exchange, visitors to the gallery can then enjoy popping open the pod to discover their surprise free artwork to take away and treasure.

       

Marina believes that art is something that can, and should be experienced by anyone. Alongside arts professionals, curators and collectors, her Venice Vending Machine installation attracts many people who are not in the habit of visiting more traditional art galleries.

       

Drawing from her live art background, Venice born Marina opens a dialogue to the visitor by posing the question: “How do you value art?”. A simple monetary figure is sometimes the response, the social and philosophical value of art in society are sometimes debated. Marina is open to all suggestions.   As she explains: “Through the game of interaction and the inherent chance of the machine,(an automatic distributor) an exchange takes place for both the artists and the receiver of the art work. The Venice Vending machine is a serious reflection on the dynamics of the art market and the function of the gallery. The surprise and subversion of pre-established rules.”

       

To keep the project free for her growing audience and the artists involved this year she has set up a crowdfunding campaign where rewards include lots of goodies ranging from a Thank You postcard to a printed catalogue to a top of the range package including an invitation to the private view and named ‘Angel’ status across published media.

       

The project is expanding and Marina is excited to be invited by the prestigious GAA Foundation to show her Venice Vending Machine at this years festival, hosted by the Seychelles Pavillion at Giardini della Marinaressa.

       

She is also keen to open up new opportunities for artists and the selected artwork includes some unique and limited edition pieces produced by both established and emerging artists. 250 artists have participated since 2010 in Hamburg and Venice and she is putting out a call to artists across the world to apply for this special opportunity.

 So what would you pay for a piece of artwork? Visit the Vending Machine installation at the 57th Venice Biennale 14th - 22nd October 2017 Giardini della Marinaressa, Martiri 30122

For details, updates on venue, and artist opportunities please visit www.venicevendingmachine.com

To help fund the project: https://www.gofundme.com/art-4-all-the-vce-vending-machine

GAA Foundation: www.gaafoundation.org

Lloyds Bank Law Courts Branch; Twinings, Tweed, an unexpected part 2

In my last post I wrote a little of the beginnings of Twinings Tea Merchants their bank  and the link with my family tree.
Last week I happened to walk past Lloyds on the Strand and popped in to take a closer look.

Twinings bank was first established to offer a selection of financial facilities to family and friends. Initially part of the thriving tea company it soon became successful enough to become a separate business in its own right.

In 1824 the lone clerk, sat at his high desk squeezed alongside the safe in his tiny office. Delicious aromas of tea and coffee wafted through the door from Devereux Court as he exchanged cheques for cash, weighing out expensive fine tea or coffee as part of the deal if required.

Soon many merchants from outside the family circle were using the expanding bank. New, larger premises were required and the Twining’s built a new establishment beside their tea shop on the Strand in 1835, a very suitable arrangement as their tea trade supported the bank safely through several national financial crises.

As the 19th century progressed many smaller banks combined and swelled their coffers to cover ever larger areas. In 1892 Lloyds put in an offer to take over Twining’s Bank. At the time Richard Twining And Co consisted of six partners, each being listed as ‘Banker and Tea Man’* with Arthur James Tweed and Charles Twining Sidgwick both living at the bank’s address, 215 Strand.

Across the road from Twining’s and the bank, the Royal Courts of Justice long rebuild was completed in 1882. Bigger and grander than its ancient predecessor, it was felt that a new restaurant was needed to match it’s splendour. The chosen spot was at 222-225, where the once famous Palsgrave Head Tavern had stood.

The splendidly titled architects Wimble and Cuthbert created a magnificent outer lobby using Royal Doulton ware, majolica style ceramics and intricate arabesque mosaics. Through the doors the interior lobby is richly decorated and wood clad. John McLennan designed images for large conjoined Doulton tiles, including Ben Johnson characters, fashionable golden chrysanthemum types from the nearby Temple Gardens, and Frederick Palsgrave (husband of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia) reflecting the history of the previous tavern.

The restaurant failed to attract its target audience of barristers, judges and upper class clients from the Royal Courts of Justice despite the obvious draw of a ventilation system powered by two women on a tandem!The business failed twice and Lloyds took over the building in 1895. Richard Twining became a director at Lloyds and retired two years later at the grand age of 90.

The branch is due to close in August, if you are passing it’s well worth a visit to admire its sumptuous interior, who knows what it’s future holds?

*Supplement to the London Gazette, Feb 1892

Information display inside the branch at 222-5 Strand.
http://www.lloydsbankinggroup.com/Our-Group/our-heritage/2015-our-milestone-year/250-years-of-lloyds-bank/branch-stories/law-courts-london/
http://tilesoc.org.uk/tile-gazetteer/westminster.html
http://londonist.com/2016/09/is-this-london-s-most-beautiful-bank
https://www.innertemple.org.uk/index/the-inner-temple-garden?showall=&start=1
http://chestofbooks.com/gardening-horticulture/Gardener-1/index.html

Tom's, Twinings and Tweeds, a British institution

Twinings has long been associated with fine teas but actually sprang from Tom’s Coffee House. This blog explores a little of that early history and links to Tweed family members who lie within my own ancestral tree.

Walking along the Strand in 1706 a waft of aromatic coffee and stimulating chit chat may have enticed you to take a little diversion to savour the delights of Tom’s Coffee House*  tucked on the corner of the Strand and Devereaux Court. The rival Grecian Coffee House opposite boasted Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Hans Sloan and Dr Halley, calculator of the orbit of the eponymous comet, amongst its patrons. The air of the court was thick with learned argument and debate.

Thomas Twining (1675-1741)

Thomas Twining was born in Painswick, Gloucestershire and was nine when his father Daniel moved

the family to London. Thomas was apprenticed to a weaver but gave that up to work for early importer of tea and East India merchant, Thomas D’Aeth. He bought Tom’s Coffee House from Thomas D’Aeth in 1706 and began selling expensive tea alongside his coffee brews.

The business quickly took off and his fine tea blends were soon outselling the coffee. 

By 1717 he had expanded the business to three interlinked houses   around the original premises, serving hot tea in tiny china cups for a shilling and, offering exquisitely combined and single estate, dried blends to a top ranking customer list. Over the decades, Jane Austin, Josiah Wedgwood and Sir Christopher Wren ordered their tea from the shop.

Coffee Houses were strictly off limits to women so they resorted to sitting in their carriages whilst a groom or butler fetched the desired brew.
Artist, William Hogarth struggled financially as disreputable printers sold copies of his work without paying royalties. He built up a sizeable bill with Twinings and, reputedly, struck a bargain with Thomas. Hogarth painted a portrait of Thomas and thus cancelled out the debt.

The Twining dynasty holds some interesting descendants, including philanthropist, Elizabeth Twining who painted beautiful botanical watercolours and wrote “Ten Years in a Ragged School and Readings for Mothers Meetings”.
Her sister Louisa was also an artist and art historian with an active interest in social reform. 

Elizabeth Twining (1805-1889)

In 1856 Thomas’s Great, Great Granddaughter Frances Mary Twining married Rev Henry Wilson Tweed, my 6th cousin 5 times removed.
Their son Arthur James Tweed entered the family business and was one of six partners in 1892. He was also involved with the Twining banking business, Twining & Co. which merged with Lloyds in 1892.
Frances, or Fanny as she was known, sadly died in 1867 aged only 34. Henry went on to marry the splendidly monikered Louisa Anna Maria Von Stilfried du Rattonitz.

The family continued complicated interdynastic intertwining of the family interests as Dulcibella Twinings son, Charles Twining Sidgwick, married Ellen Frances Tweed, daughter of Henry, sister to Arthur. Keep up at the back!
Arthur’s daughter Ellen Irene Rosalind Tweed married Richard Haynes Twining in 1915, Richard went on to become Vice-Chairman of the Stock exchange and President of Middlesex County Cricket Club.

London Gazette, February 24, 1892

Many Twining family members were born and lived at 215 and 216 Strand, as well as owning properties in Twickenham and around the country.

Today it is the smell of crisp, aromatic tea leaves infused with bergamot or rose that pulls you through the sculpture embelished  doorway into a surprisingly narrow space, neatly packed with wooden shelves, copper dispensers with their own little tea scoops, and pristine glass cabinets. Gilt framed oil portraits of Twining ancestors stare down at a stream of customers from all parts of the globe, perhaps proud that the company holds the record for the oldest, unaltered, continuously used trademark in the world a mere 230 years after it was first designed.
    
*not to be confused with Tom’s Coffee House on Russell Street where owner, poor Thomas West jumped to his death in 1722 deranged in an agony of gout.

Twinings today c.HDT

Select sources and links:

London Gazette, February 24, 1892
The Annals of London, John Richardson, Cassell & Co. 2000
The London Encyclopaedia, C Hibbert et al, Macmillan  2008
www.twickenham-museum.org.uk
www.twinings.co.uk
www.ancestry.co.uk
www.lloydsbankinggroup.com
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=SHOW&db=tweed&recno=41870

Detailed botanical drawing by Elizabeth Twining

Cryptozoology: A Curates Egg of Impossible Taxidermy

Cryptozoology: A Curates Egg of Impossible Taxidermy

by

Heather Tweed

 

Thylacine or Tasmanian Wolf

 I began writing a post on taxidermy back in 2011 after creating my own version of a Mermaid Monkey for an exhibition, then saw the haunting Thylacine  video in The South Australian Museum. I rediscovered my notes and have added some new photos that I took at Bristol Museum and National Museum Of Scotland.

The Tasmanian Wolf was actually a carnivorous marsupial

The strange solitary creature paces its cage, back and forth. Forever looped in haunting melancholy. It is a strange made-up sort of animal, part dog, part striped marsupial, with an odd thick, static, kangaroo tail that it can never wag. The Thylacine was declared extinct in the1980's. The last lonely survivor lived in Hobart zoo and died in 1936.

The animal was once real, but seeing the oddly proportioned hybrid in its taxidermied form, preserved for ever in a glass case can be an oddly jarring sight. It looks cobbled together. Does its three dimensional form, the texture and the pattern of its pelt have more of a visceral reality than a photograph, a film, or does the static sculpture distance us? We need to be reminded that this once living creature moved, hunted, scavenged, thrived in Tasmania.

The Dodo at Bristol Museum
Heather Tweed 2017

More familiar in popular culture is the Dodo, immortalised in Alice In Wonderland. Again a real beast that can be seen in models that we believe to be a true likeness. But we are mistaken. Only parts of this committee designed bird exist and descriptions are scant, a few sketches from the 17th century exist. We are asked to believe in this creature although it no longer roams the earth and we are sculpting a best guess at what it looked like. Our familiarity with its oft printed image also means that we are perhaps not as astounded as we might once have been.    

Sceptical 18th century scientists at first refused to believe that the platypus was a real beast, searching for stitches on a specimen.

In the late 19th century an explorer and illustrator returned to his family home from an long expedition. Exhausted and penniless he needed distraction. A bon viveur and consummate entertainer, reputedly enlivening many a dinner party by crawling on all fours and biting his guests legs, he was bored, fed up. In line with the fashions of the day he decided to alleviate his ennui by learning the art of taxidermy. The result was a collection of extaordinary, intricately crafted animals, a kitten with angel wings, a yeti and a curious bat-duck hybrid with bird wings, webbed feet and fangs. The creatures look plausible but Professor Copperthwaite their creator is a fiction.

A sub genre of this form of cryptozoology exists in the form of sometimes whimsical, sometimes moralising, sometimes conceptual tableau in which real animals are anthropomorphised, costumed, placed out of context. Polly Morgan produces sometimes breathtakingly beautiful artwork, preserving and modelling the animals herself then placing them in incongruous yet poignant juxtapositions, a fox curled luxuriously in a hunters top hat, a tiny bird severed in mid flight by a pane of glass.

Arch shock tactic taxidermy-artist Damien Hirst famously bid an unsuccessful million pounds, to keep the work of Walter Potter together. One example, immovable and preserved as long as the mothballs last, is the charmingly frightful cat orchestra.

Charles Avery has taken the art form to its logical conclusion and populated his illustrated stories with life-size three dimensional imagined creatures.

Depiction of the
Fiji Mermaid

There are of course hoaxes, The Fiji Mermaid, a quite convincing 1842 merging of shriveled monkey and fish tail. Aimed at deliberate deception to entice more visitors to P.T Barnums extraodinary shows.

Standing before the convincing taxidermied form of a Satyr, a unicorn, a winged dragon, would some of us not desire believe that these creatures once existed?

Only dinosaur bones and illustrations stretching back to ancient China once informed the Victorian public of the true nature of these terrible monsters. Picnicking beneath the snaking neck of a brontosaurus in the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1850 perhaps the families sitting on neat tartan rugs, tucking into their lunch wondered if these beasts could ever have really roamed the earth?

Crystal Palace dinosaurs
in the artists studio

Thylacine at National Museum of
Scotland.
Heather Tweed 2016

samuseum.sa.gov.au

www.nms.ac.uk

bristolmuseums.org.uk

pollymorgan.co.uk

Charles Avery nationalgalleries.org/whatson/exhibitions/the-islanders-an-introduction/highlights-6048

barnum-museum.org