The history of the world

Release Date:  18-Jan-2010

An iron bar, dispatch case and paint pot angel - just some of the objects that tell a history of Bristol and its place in the world.
 
BBC Bristol and museums across the city have today, Monday 18 January revealed the list of 10 objects they have chosen to tell a history of Bristol and its place in the world.  The list of 10 objects can be seen on the BBC local site for Bristol and all the objects are on display at the relevant museums.

The list of 10 objects for Bristol is part of the wider A History of the World project formed out of a unique partnership between the BBC, the British Museum and 350 museums and institutions across the country.

Deputy Head of Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery, Tim Corum, said: "Bristol’s amazing museum collections are all about Bristol but they also demonstrate how the city has so often been at the centre of world events. The ten objects we have brought together tell the story of a city that has shaped world trade, been a focus for new ideas, creativity and radical thought. We thought long and hard about our selection but we don’t claim to have the definitive list and we look forward to seeing what other people from Bristol list as their top ten.”

Listeners and viewers will be asked to suggest further objects and can actively participate by uploading photographs of their own objects that have a local or global appeal.  At the end of February 2010 it is hoped that each BBC Local website will have an additional “People’s 10 Objects” telling the history of their region and its global connections.

BBC Project manager for the Nations and English Regions, Seamus Boyd, said: “A truly fascinating range of objects has been chosen for each list across English regions. Some of them may have great monetary value, others little or none, but they're priceless in how they bring to life moments from history. This initial collection is just the blueprint to which we hope viewers and listeners will add their own objects and help to create a truly unique and vibrant tapestry of the past.”

Museums in Bristol will be holding events in February half-term to celebrate A History of the World.  At the ss Great Britain, Mr Brunel will be visiting the ship from Saturday 13th to Sunday 21st February,

Also as part of A History of the World, on tonight’s BBC Inside Out West, Monday 18 January, BBC One, 7.30pm, presenter Josie d'Arby tells the fascinating story of a superstar's brooch that was hidden away in a storeroom at Bristol's City Museum. 

BBC Bristol Managing Editor, Tim Pemberton, said: "It's really exciting to tell the history of the city in this way. I'm fascinated by people and what motivates them and so am particularly looking forward to learning more about the hymns of Charles Wesley. With his more celebrated brother John, he was an important character in Bristol's history and his songs continue to live on to this day."

The 10 items are:

1. St. Peter hunting jug – Bristol’s City Museum & Art Gallery
This medieval jug represents the very start of the story of trade and exchange in Bristol. This type of pottery was known as Ham Green ware – the name taken from a kiln site excavated in a field next to Ham Green Hospital in the 1950s. Dating from between the middle of the 12th and end of the 13th century, this type of pottery was successfully exported in large quantities to both South Wales and the east coast of Ireland. The figures on this pot represent an archer with his bow ready to fire on a stag and doe. Although all these figures are made of applied strips of clay the potter has managed to convey a real sense of fear in the eyes of the stag as it tries to escape its fate. The sheer number of pieces found in Ireland alone testifies to the importance of Bristol's trade activities over 800 years ago.

2. Bristol reform iron bar – Bristol’s City Museum & Art Gallery
The inscription on this metal bar reads "This Bar Was Wrested From the hands of the first of the Bristol Rioters that came to destroy the Bishops Palace". The bar dates from 1831 when England was going through a period of economic distress and social discontent. The people wanted changes in the system of government and more say in how they managed their lives. 
Saturday 29 October 1831 marked the start of unrest in the city after an act for parliamentary reform was rejected by the House of Lords. For three days Bristol was the scene of fierce rioting, looting and arson. The Bishops Palace was one of the many public buildings targeted by rioters. Many houses and businesses were gutted and numerous people killed or injured.

3. Alfred the Gorilla – Bristol’s City Museum & Art Gallery
From his arrival at Bristol Zoo Gardens in 1930, Alfred the Gorilla was destined for stardom, becoming an icon for the city through times of peace and war, as well as an international animal star. He became renowned for his dislike for bearded men, double-decker buses and aeroplanes and his antics in his enclosure. During the war years of the 1940s thousands of postcards of Alfred were posted back to the USA from servicemen billeted in the city, so spreading his star status across the globe. At his death in 1948 he was the longest living gorilla in captivity anywhere in the world. He is now one of the star attractions on display at the museum. His story demonstrates the changing attitudes people have had towards animals and the natural world.

4. Clara Butt brooch – Bristol’s City Museum & Art Gallery
Dame Clara Butt (1872-1936) was one of the first truly international stars, a star of radio whose voice crossed continents, paving the way for the international mass culture of today. She was a concert singer with a remarkable contralto voice for which Sir Edward Elgar wrote his Sea Pictures.  Her family moved to Bristol when she was 7 years old and she retained such fond memories of the city that for her marriage to Kennerley Rumford, she turned down the offer of St Paul’s Cathedral in favour of Bristol Cathedral. On 26 June 1900, shops and factories closed and thousands of people thronged College Green to see the wedding of the year. Bristolian’s had subscribed towards a special wedding gift: a diamond and ruby brooch in the form of the letters ‘CB’ which stood for both Clara Butt and City of Bristol. It remained one of her favourite pieces of jewellery and one she frequently wore at concerts.

5. Bristol Boxkite - Bristol’s City Museum & Art Gallery
The Bristol Boxkite was developed in 1910 at the UK’s first commercial airplane factory in Filton, Bristol. It was the first full production airplane; over 70 were made and were sold worldwide The history of airplane manufacture continues in Bristol to this day incorporating the stories of mass travel, the airbus and the white heat of technology, Concorde.
 
The Boxkite at Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery is a replica, one of three built from the original drawings by Miles and Co for the 1964 film 'Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines', where it featured as the Phoenix Flyer. After filming, 20th Century Fox sold the aircraft to the British Aircraft Corporation at Filton, who presented the plane to Bristol’s City Museum & Art Gallery in 1965. It has hung in the front hall ever since.

6. Drawing of the slave ship Brooks – Bristol Record Office
The slave ship Brooks was first drawn and published in an abolitionist broadside by William Elford and the Plymouth chapter of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in November 1788.

It was published in Bristol the following year and later redrawn and republished in Britain and America many times in the years that followed. It came to epitomize the cruelties of the trade in enslaved Africans of the 18th and 19th centuries and the struggle to abolish that trade. The Brooks itself was a real slave ship, one of 26 surveyed in Liverpool, under instructions received from the Prime Minister, William Pitt. Captain Parrey of the Royal Navy conducted the survey. It is possible that Pitt himself leaked Parrey’s findings to the Plymouth and London abolitionist committees. The Plymouth committee's broadside utilised a cut-away diagram of the interior of the Brooks at the top and the image that would become another iconic abolitionist image: a slave in chains, hands raised, asking, “Am I not a Man and a Brother?”

7.    Unique examples of John Wesley’s Hymn’s – John Wesley Chapel at the New Room
Charles Wesley, brother to John, wrote this and many similar hymns while in Bristol. Those who joined the Methodist movement in 18th century England were often illiterate, but Charles Wesley's skilful use of poetry was the means by which the beliefs of the movement were propagated. Easily remembered, and sometimes set to popular secular song tunes, they led to the statement that "Methodism was born in song." The music like Methodism travelled from Bristol to all parts of the world, creating new musical traditions.

 8.   Alfred Leete’s Painting – Sanctuary – North Somerset Museum
Alfred Leete is best known for his portrait of Lord Kitchener in the famous “Your Country Needs You” poster that encouraged so many young men to volunteer to fight in the Great War (1914 – 1918). But his work from the trenches, where he was a member of The Artists Rifles, reveals an artist who was also aware of the great sadness and human cost of war and had sympathy for those caught up in it.
 
‘Sanctuary or the Ever Open Door’ is a haunting painting. It shows Belgian refugees fleeing the conflict in Flanders coming ashore in England. There is a sense of pride that Britain is able to offer shelter to the helpless and needy, but also a sense of despair that the war has left them in such a state. Sadly, such scenes are still being re-enacted across the world in places of conflict and hate.  Though the costumes have changed, human nature remains the same, and Alfred Leete’s picture helps remind us of this.

9.   Brunel’s Despatch Case – ss Great Britain
This despatch case belonged to the incredible British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. He is best known for the creation of the Great Western Railway, a series of famous steamships, including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship, and numerous important bridges and tunnels. His designs revolutionised public transport and modern engineering. The case now lives aboard one of Brunel's masterpieces, the ss Great Britain, at its home in Bristol. This uniquely successful ship design brought together new technologies in a way which transformed world travel. It was launched in 1843. She was immediately successful - on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic the ss Great Britain easily broke the previous speed record. Although effectively a prototype, she continued sailing until 1886, and travelled around the world thirty-two times.

10.   Banksy’s Paint Pot Angel – Bristol’s City Museum & Art Gallery
Banksy’s urban art has a universal and timeless appeal, the bandit and folk hero fighting corporate culture. In summer 2009 Banksy – a native of Bristol - carried out an audacious 'heist' by transforming Bristol Museum and Art Gallery overnight. The collision of urban art with the establishment museum highlighted a new attitude to culture. The exhibition was probably one of the most publicised visual arts events in living memory and the most popular art exhibition ever held in Bristol. The Paint Pot Angel was placed overnight in the front hall of the museum by Banksy for the ‘Banksy versus the Bristol Museum’ exhibition where it still remains today.

Author:   Helen Hewitt, Corporate Communications, tel. 0117 922 2646.

For all media enquiries relating to this press release, please contact Corporate Communications on 0117 922 2650.

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