Cuming Museum: On Loan

While you can often see items from the Cuming Museum on display in other museums, we also loan objects and artworks to organisations which, for various reasons, will not be putting them on display.

Our Hawaiian feather cape was originally collected on Captain Cook’s third voyage. It is kept at the British Museum’s stores as they have the right conditions for this very fragile object which is too delicate to display.

We also have two items on loan to the V&A, an embroidered coif (close fitting cap) and a pair of linen gloves, which are used in their textile history research.

Little was known about one of our early Italian Renaissance paintings until it was sent to the National Gallery for identification.  On discovering that it is a rare example of work by the artist Nicholas di Pietro, the National Gallery and the Courtauld Institute agreed to clean and conserve the painting.  The intention is to display the final result but in the meantime it continues to be stored by the National Gallery.

Research into objects and materials, as well as their conservation, helps build the body of knowledge we have about artefacts and culture.  We will keep you updated, here on the blog, about future projects which see items from our collection going out on loan to other museums and organisations.

Cuming Museum: On Display

Although the Cuming Museum doesn’t have its own permanent display gallery at the moment, it is still possible to see items from the collection on display in other locations.

We often loan out parts of the collection to other museums. This can be for a temporary exhibition of a few weeks, or could be a longer term loans for a number of years.

You can see 120 items from the Cuming Museums ethnographic (people and cultures) collection on the ground floor of the Saffron Walden Museum, Essex.

One of our Roman funerary urns is on display at the Cater Museum in Billericay.

If you visit the music gallery at the Horniman Museum in South London, you can see a little ceramic whistle in the shape of a horse from our collections.

For the next few days you will be able to see various items relating to Camberwell, Southwark, on display in the library. This includes the commemorative key for the opening of Sceaux Gardens, a Shire horse medal which was presented to Camberwell Council for their working horses and a Camberwell  Beauty butterfly.

When items go on display at locations in Southwark, London or further afield, we will keep you posted here on the blog.

 

Amazing Aeronauts

By Judy Aitken, Curator of the Cuming Museum

Throughout our history we humans have been fascinated by the idea of flying and have admired and venerated the creatures which can do this with ease.

Hot air balloons were our first successful flight technology capable of carrying humans.

Although tethered and unmanned attempts were made for centuries beforehand, people only managed to sustain a proper balloon ‘free flight’ in the late 18^th century when in 1783 the Montgolfier brothers managed to get their balloon, manned by fellow Frenchmen Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier and Francois Laurent d’Arlande, to fly untethered at around 1000 metres, for 10 minutes.

It seems this act had as big an impact on the popular imagination of the time as the moon landing did in 1969. Balloon images were everywhere, in clothing, jewellery and endless prints of the feat.

But while NASA took some time to send the first women into space, the first lady balloonists started appearing only a year after the Montgolfier brothers’ balloon first flew.

In 1784 Elisabeth Thible made a voyage in a hot air balloon that was to spark a forty year popular obsession with women “aeronauts”.  Women like Jeanne-Genevieve Labrosse, Elisa Garnarin, Sophie Blanchard, Lizzie Ilhling Wise, Wilhelmine Reichard, Carlotta (Mary) Myers, Leila Adair, the fabulously named Leona Dare and Mrs (Margaret) Graham all took to the skies, many in solo flights.  These women became famous and celebrated although very few are spoken of today. Most were doing it for thrills, many became world-wide sensations, some were doing it as stunts with their male partners and some, like Wilhelmina Reichard, were also undertaking scientific experiments.

Sophie Blanchard was the most famous of these and her tiny, timid and bird like character apparently completely changed once off the ground.  She toured alone and was highly successful until a fatal crash in 1819 ended not only her life but also some of the audience’s taste for ballooning – although it surged again in later years.

Female balloonists were famous across France, Germany and America, while Britain’s own sensation, Mrs Margaret Graham, was making a splash nearer to home.

I first came across references to this lady in posters in our collections for events taking place in Walworth at the Royal Surrey Zoological Gardens.  Mrs Graham claimed to be the only English female aeronaut, which might have been true, but her posters also claimed she was the “only female aeronaut in Europe” which, given the number of other ‘balloonistas’ at the time, was probably poetic licence.

As a skilled self-promoter she knew a good story when she saw one and wrote thrilling accounts of her exploits, including the time when, just as she was touching down, a man with a lit taper came up behind the balloon and accidentally set fire to it.

Margaret Graham at first worked with her husband in their joint balloon ascents but by the 1840s he had all but stopped.  Mrs Graham carried on alone, occasionally accompanied by one or more of her seven children, especially her daughter Alice.

Balloonists risked life and limb, particularly as they were fond of setting off fireworks from the balloon cars once in the air, which, although spectacular, seems unwise.  Balloons were filled by attaching to gas valves and Mrs Graham recounts “filling up” at Lambeth gas works before a flight – which sounds a hair-raisingly risky operation.

Mrs Graham had her share of accidents, including one which caused her to miscarry, but she often turned these to her advantage as she used the danger to promote the next flight after her recovery.

Unlike many of the intrepid balloonists she lived a long life and died peacefully in bed well into her seventies.

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