My Kind of Random

Yesterday was another beautiful day and I opted to do some of my school work in Hyde Park in a notebook, instead of sitting in my apartment. I was under a tree, enjoying the sunshine and watching all the activity around me. Most of what I saw was what you would expect in a British park.

There were people on blankets having picnics. There were couples pushing strollers around. There were a number of football (soccer) games being played in all directions. There were some joggers.

And then there, off to my left, were two men.... boxing!

I know it was a little creepy of me to take their photo, but it was so random that I had to.

Weeks Ten and Eleven

Week ten was spent at Hampton Court, preparing mannequins for display and artifacts for shipment to the Royal Fusiliers Museum at the Tower of London.

Enough said.

Week eleven was madness, but in a good way. Monday and Tuesday was spent conserving the chin strap of King George V's bearskin hat. It was a lot of not-very textile conservation work, such as cleaning the brass rings with ethanol and applying a liquid consolidant to stop the leather from powdering everytime you look at it. I also spent some quality time working with a magnifying light, so I could sew the strap back together through the original (and very tiny) stitch holes.

Wednesday... let me start off by saying that I am not making this up! The regiment sent their minibus to move the artifacts and mannequins back to the Tower. They sent not one but three flesh and blood Fusiliers, in full uniform, to ferry us over. Three interns and three soldiers in a bus, it sounds like the beginning of a long joke (or, if that joke were being told by a flooring associate at the Home Depot, a dirty joke). For the most part they ignored us on the hour and a half ride over and we interns talked amoungst ourselves, but its not everyday that you get driven around by a soldier. I was still without a functioning camera at that point, otherwise I would have taken a sneaky photo.

Thursday I woke up and my only thought was 'George's head'. There had been so much talk and so much prep work, I could hardly believe that it was finally the day to see him all together. His incredibly detailed, life-like head arrived on Thursday and we could see him put together for the first time. I have a photo of him but it doesn't seem right to publish it before the museum is open to the public, so you will have to wait for that next week.

There were also the modern uniforms to begin installing. The primary challenge with them has been the boots. We had to get modern boots from the regiment's stores because we had to cut up the backs of the boots so they could fit on rigid mannequin feet. These boots have been polished and every time you handle them, boot polish flakes off. Like this.

I came up with a protective cover so the polish doesn't transfer to the pant legs of the uniform (it's essentially a foam spat) and it looks like this.

Exhibit installation involves lots of frantic work, followed by a lot of standing around while very important last-minute decisions are made with lots of imput by everyone in the building who could possibly have an opinion. A long process, but I love every minute of it. So that was my crazy week.

So Much For Planning

Last weekend Jenn and I planned for a visit to the Natural History Museum. It was highly recommended to us as one museum we had to see in London. And we visited it... sort of.

We saw the dinosaurs and the mammals exhibits. We were not particularly impressed. The displays looked dated and very dusty (the mammals in particular). One bit we did enjoy was the moving diorama that showed how a camel does fine in heat, while a man dies (complete with fake beads of sweat). Then we went to look for lunch, looking at a few more galleries on the way (geology was surprisingly interesting). We thought we’d go outside for some food and then would come back to look at more of the museum.

Except we never went back.

It was a beautiful, sunny day and there was no wind. These kinds of days are very rare in England and spending it inside seemed like a waste. So we went for a wander. We found some buildings near Albert Hall that we think we should live in.

And no judging the photos in this post- all of them were taken with my (now old) camera with a broken screen, so I couldn’t see what I was snapping.

We had lunch in the cafeteria of Whole Foods, which I highly recommend. Then we went for a wander in Hyde Park, which I have decided that I will pack up with me in my suitcase and take back to Canada. It’s such a diverse park; if you find that one area has too many people/ birds/ children for your liking, you just walk ten minutes and it feels like you’re in another park. In one section, there were lots of people on skateboards and rollerblades doing tricks and proving how terrifyingly fast they could go.

The park was so nice that I went back on Sunday and took some photos (again, without being able to see what I was shooting).

This coming Saturday, Hyde Park will be one of the areas that mass demonstrations are taking place. The British Government released their budget this week and I'm sure this will be the first of many protests that will take place because of it.

Westminster Abbey

One of the great things about London is that entry to many museums and other cultural attractions are free. And then there are the places you have to pay to get into. On my student budget, I've been avoiding most of the places that charge an admission fee but I made an exception to go see Westminster Abbey.

So last weekend I got in the huge line (populated mainly by Italian tourists) outside the church and paid my fee. I did find that it's a lot easier to wait if you have something nice to look at, like this.

There are no photos allowed inside the Abbey (although that didn't stop plently of people from snapping away, to my slight horror). I'm not much of a church person but I really enjoyed my visit and would highly recommend it to anyone visiting London. The interior of the church is packed with tombs and memorials; I was amazed at how much stuff could be fit into one building. I won't start listing all the famous people buried there (that's what guidebooks are for).

Just off the quire is a memorial to James Wolf, who commanded the British to vicotry in Quebec and died for his efforts. I was obviously a lot more interested in this huge sculpture than most of the other tourists. There are two colours (flags) as part of the memorial- one is old and beautiful and the other is old and shredded (it needs to be conserved badly). The ceilings in the church are breathtaking, anytime it got crowded in front of me I just looked up and consistently found something beautiful. And the cloisters (a grassy courtyard in the middle of the Abbey complex) is such a beautiful place to sit, relax, and look at the flying buttresses.

One of the more famous items kept at the Abbey is the coronation chair, which is currently undergoing conservation work. It's been moved into a very large display case and the work is being carried out in front of the public (although not on a Saturday, obviously). I image that the work will be long and painstaking, since they are repairing the guiltwork. I'm sure it will look shiny and spectacular in the end.

Westminster Abbey also has the most unique bag search I've run into yet (many places do bag checks before you are allowed in). The guard got me to open my purse and took what looked like a dowel or sawed off broom handled and knocked it around my purse. That way he got a good look without actually reaching inside and touching anything (although now that I think about it, his stick may have something to do with my camera's screen spontaneously breaking this week...hmm).

How to Pad Up a Mannequin

A lot of my work lately has revolved around mannequins- I finished editing my research paper on long-term costume display tonight and have been working with mannequins for the past few weeks. So what exactly am I doing? Let me show you.

Like I said in my last post, costume mounting isn't as simple as buying a it mannequin to the right side and putting a garment on it. You need to make sure the mount fits the garment as well as it possibly can to properly support it. Poor support will distort the garment and that's a really bad thing.

The first part of padding up is to pin the padding to the mannequin where you need it. Then you cover it in tissue and try the garment on over it. Then you see where you still need padding, take the garment off, and add more padding. And continue to repeat these steps until you are happy with the fit. You then stitch the padding to the mount and hope you find all the pins in the process. You will be left with something that looks like this.

You then cover that with a layer of stretchy cotton jersey fabric, which you make sure is as tight as possible.

The next step is to create arms out of padding and cover them in fabric. This particular mannequin has two layers of fabric- the first is jersey (which keeps the padding in place) and the second is silk fabric that makes sliding the arms in and out of the jacket sleeves easier.

The jacket being mounted on this mannequin has a sloped front hem, so extensions are needed to support them properly (otherwise there the jacket curls under the edge of the mannequin- very bad).

The fabric for the extensions matches the jacket's lining. However, the only way you can see them when the jacket is on the mount is if you are laying on the floor, which means the only visitors who will ever be in a position to appreciate this are bored children and I doubt they'll care.

The neck area is visible when the mannequin is on display, so that area is covered in nice fabric- in this case a stretchy cotton black jersey. First you sew it to the neck area...

And then you finish it off with a disc covered in the black fabric.

That's the basics on how to pad up a mannequin.

Weeks Eight and Nine

The last two weeks were spent working on the same thing, so I combined them together. As I have previously mentioned, I'm working on a project assisting in the installation of a new exhibition space for the Royal Fusiliers Museum at the Tower of London. There are three historical costume figures that will be included in the display and I get to mount them.

The first two are short, very small military jackets from the 1800's. One is a red jacket with medal ribbons sewn to it. It is generally in okay condition, but some of the ribbons are shredding so I get to stabilize them. The second is a tailcoat that is in good condition.

Mannequins are the best way to display clothing because it is easiest to understand on a body. It is not possible to take a mannequin and put clothing on it and expect it to fit perfectly. This is for a number of reasons. Clothing often stretches and sags with wear and when it is on display in a museum it's important to give it a supportive mount so those disortions don't get worse. The popular body silhouettes also change with time, so mannequins with modern body shapes don't match the corseted Victorian waists (for example). Also, people come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. It is a myth that people in the past were smaller, it's just that the smallest sizes were often the ones that were saved. Let me explain...

Fancy clothing is expensive, so it was often re-purposed. If your dress made of embroidered Italian silk was no longer in fashion, you would get it remade into something else (that way you don't have to keep buying new dresses of expensive silk). Or if you didn't fit you dress anymore you slimmer sister might take your silk dress and get it tailored down to fit her. However, if you happen to be a very petite person, your dress may be too small to repurpose. But it was expensive, so you wouldn't discard it. You would keep it just incase it is useful- someday. And after you are long-dead, your ancestors find the expensive dress that you've tucked away in the attic and donate it to a museum. Make sense? Rant over, back to the jackets....

Because people come in all shapes and sizes, you try to find a mannequin that fits as close to that jacket as possible with some room to spare. Then a textile conservator (me) pads up the mannequin to match the exact size of the jacket... or as close as I possibly can. You then stitch the padding in place to the mannequin and cover the whole thing with a layer of fabric. I'll show you the process of this tomorrow.

The third mannequin is for King George V's uniform. I so far have done very little work with him, but have been watching one of the conservators step by step as she prepares him for exhibit. George (as we like to call him) was a custom-made mannequin made specifically for this uniform. While he still requires some padding up, he didn't need as much as the other two figures. For example, he had no bum to speak of when he came to us. His arms have provided us all kinds of problems but once we made him new hands (which were much lighter than the ones originally provided) he seems a lot happier.

This may not be the clearest blog entry on the planet but it will make more sense in the coming weeks. I have one more week of exhibit prep and then I get to spend almost two weeks to help install the exhibit. And there will be lots of photos as everything progresses. Stay tuned.

Sunday's Walk Part Three

This has to be one of my favourite monuments in London that I've seen so far(which has nothing to do with the fact it has clothes on it).

It's somewhere between the Parliment Buildings and Trafalgar Square. I'm not being vague- the road changes name three times between those two spots an I'm not sure exactly where I was.

Once I got to Trafalgar Square I sat down on the steps of St. Martin-in-the-Field church and pretended to be cultured enough to appreciate the Russian music festival going on in the square.

And as I sat there, a spontaneous dance party broke out!

I swear I am not making this up. A group of yellow-clad dancers swarmed the church steps and proved that you can dance anywhere.

It would have been much cooler if they had music. Some of them had headphones and mp3 players so they individually had something to dance to. Sadly, the sight of a bunch of people dancing to music you can't hear or pretending to dance with no music at all is a little odd.  

After that I walked to Waterloo Bridge and then went home. Which, I feel, makes for an epic day.

Did You Have Pancakes?

Yesterday I had pancakes for dinner to celebrate Fat Tuesday, even though I don't participate in Lent. It's always been a tradition in my family and the extremely limited kitchen in my apartment wasn't going to stop me. But there were some issues to deal with.

Problem One: The only bowls in my cupboard are two small-ish cereal bowl. In order to make pancakes, you need a mixing bowl.
Solution: Appropriate the fruit bowl on my table and make it a mixing bowl.

Problem Two: I don't have a stove, just a single hotplate which produces very variable temperatures. On a good day, in a normal kitchen, I'm likely to burn a few pancakes.
Solution: Do a trial run last Friday and realize that it's best to set it on low.

Problem Three: I only have one fry pan and it is very little.
Solution: Make only two small pancakes at a time and become very skilled at prying them apart when the inevitably run together.

Somehow, despite all of this and having very little counter space to work with (and when making pancakes I need all the counter space I can get) I managed to make the most beautiful pancakes ever.

And, because they were banana pancakes, they made my apartment smell delicious all night.

English pancakes are completely different than their North American counterpart. They are very thin, like a crepe. They don't have any baking powder or baking soda in them, so they don't rise. Usually, they are served drizzled with lemon juice and powdered sugar, although the grocery store ads featured pancakes drizzled with chocolate sauce (Scottish pancakes are another beast all together- they look at lot more like the pancakes I'm used to).

And the day is known as 'Pancake Day' in the UK. The grocery store had a big sign directing you to the aisles that contained pancake supplies. I decided to make from scratch (there were already too many variables to deal with, using some crazy new mix was not going to improve my chances). While picking out flour, I found this.

I guess if betting on who would win a fight, you should put your money on Canadian flour over wimpy English flour? This was the only flour on the shelf with the word 'strong' in the name.

Sunday's Walk Part Two

My walk took me to one of the most iconic areas of London- Westminster. No photos of the Abby because it is closed for tours on Sundays, so I will be going back this Saturday. However, the Houses of Parliment complex is big enough that I could go for long stroll around it.

Big Ben.

The Victoria Tower in particular caught my eye.

Beautiful, but so many tourists. It's hard to gawk when you're tripping over a lot of humanity.

The rest of my walk will be posted soon...

Sunday's Walk Part One

As previously mentioned, I went for an epic walk on Sunday around London and saw a number of tourist attractions. First stop was Buckingham Palace, in order to buy something at the gift shop to add to my Mom's Royalty collections (hint: it's a textile- that way it won't get broken on the plane ride back). I didn't take any photos of the palace itself because all you would see is the gate with lots of tourists standing in front of it. Instead, I had a stroll around the palace. It looks like this.

There are also some interesting buildings on the streets near the palace.



I continued my stroll into St. Jame's Park and admired the view from the bridge in the middle of it.

Generally I enjoyed the park. The Mall, a major road that runs through the park, is closed to traffic on Sundays so it's a good time to go for a walk. However there are many, many birds in St. Jame's Park and all of them think you are about to feed them. There were a few tourists trying to get pigeons or squirrels to eat out of their hands (while I like squirrels, I don't get the appeal of doing that at all).

More tomorrow...

Real Places In Fiction Part One

Week Eight can wait to be blogged about. I went for an epic walk today and have lots of things to tell you about. However, I do need to go to bed soon so I can function at work tomorrow, so expect numerous posts through-out the week.

London is a famous place and it's not surprising that it's the backdrop for many books, movies, and other fictional stories. There are a few places that I want to visit here because I seen or read about them. The first is Waterloo Bridge (all of these photos are taken from the bridge).

There are many bridges in London that stretch across the Thames. They range from pretty to utilitarian and ultra-modern to antique. Waterloo Bridge is not the most spectacular structure to look at. However, it is the main meeting point for fictional detectives John May and Arthur Bryant.

The Bryant and May mystery series is written by Christopher Fowler (who also happens to have a very interesting blog, you’ll find it here http://www.christopherfowler.co.uk/). They are funny books about a group of misfit cops working for the Peculiar Crimes Unit, a police division that solves murder cases that are too odd for conventional methods. I just re-read ‘The Victoria Vanishes’ which is about a serial killer attacking women in pubs, one of which occurred in a pub that doesn’t exist. The books are hilarious and London is firmly a character in all of them.

At least once in every book, Bryant and May meet on Waterloo Bridge. So I had to go there. Today was a typical British day: gray and just cold enough to make my nose runny (but no rain and the odd ray of sunshine, which I am very thankful for). There wasn’t much foot traffic, so I had plenty of time to take in the view and imagine (just for a moment) that I had two of my favourite detectives standing next to me.

The Mousetrap

Today I spent the afternoon at the St. Martin's Theatre and saw The Mousetrap, which is one of the things I really wanted to do during my time in London.

It's a mystery play written by Agatha Christie that has been running at this theatre for 59 years. Yes, that is a record. It takes place in the front room of a guest house in the English countryside, during a snow storm that keeps everyone stuck inside the place. A murder was committed in London and the police found evidence that the killer would strike again at this normally quite house. I can't tell you the ending, as they ask at the end of the play that you keep the secret to yourself, but I will say that it is a twist ending. I sat in the cheap seats but still had a really good view.

The acting is quite good and the actors that play the more eccentric characters put a lot of effort into it. One of the house guests is an overly-excitable architect who has a child-like personality (and the energy level to match). Another house guest is the mysterious foreigner who no one knows anything about. He has a dark sense of humour and the actor had impeccable timing, delivering his lines just at the right moment.

The plot is twisted but not implausible. By mid-play they've proven that just about everyone could be the murderer. I had two theories about who the murder was and it turns out that if I put them together, I would have been right. There were enough subtle clues that I didn't pick up on initially but meant that I had a good think about all the details on the subway ride home.

News

Here's a brief round-up of some of the stories that have been in the news recently.

Of course, the headlines have been on the exploding political situation in Libya. In Britain the government was highly criticized for its slow response for getting its citizens out of Libya. BP was actually able to get planes to evacuate British nationals before the UK government could.

There were thousands of UK oil workers that needed to get out of remote areas of Libya. I saw a few newspapers asking the question if companies put their workers in remote areas, is it the responsibility of the government or the company to get them out? The British Government has also taken a lot of heat because they have been selling arms and other weapons to the Libyan government. Not good.

All of the London boroughs have been forced to make massive cuts to their municipal budgets- together the cuts equal billions of pounds in savings. Libraries have been primary targets although everything, from children`s centres to office jobs, are being closed somewhere. The public have had to be banned from many of the council meetings because they have been too disruptive- fights have broken out and a chair was even thrown through a glass door at one point. Protests in Camden town blocked the main road last night protesting against 35 million pounds worth of cuts- only ambulances were allowed through.

Finally, British fashion designer John Galliano has been suspended from his head design position at Christian Dior due to a very public drunken, anti-Semitic rant directed at a couple in a Paris cafe. I know this made the papers back home but this was front page news in Britain. While this story breaks my heart because I idolize Galliano but he’s obviously got a lot of issues to sort out, which unfortunately had to surface in a very public way. I’m sure that the massive design machine that is the House of Dior will manage Paris fashion week (which is next week) without him, but long-term I’m concerned about the image of the house.