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My Birthday Week 2017

April 04, 2017

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African Rock art in Wrexham

If you have never heard of Wrexham you might wonder why the idea of an exhibition about rock art in that particular corner of the world might strike me as bizarre, but I have been turning it over in my mind ever since I visited it yesterday at the Wrexham County Borough Museum, thanks to the Illustrious Parent, who lives near Chester, who noticed an advert in the local newspaper. It will be much easier to understand why I am so enchanted with Wrexham's Museum if you understand the dubious virtues of poor old Wrexham itself. Wrexham, in North Wales was a small but hopeful offspring of the Industrial Revolution. Always overshadowed by its glamorous and ancient neighbour just over the border, the gorgeous city of Chester, its main claims to fame are its enormous and wonderful church, its lower division football club and a small university that sits on very the fringes of academic life. A struggling town centre was given a terminally crippling blow by the decisi...

The Petrie Tour of the Northwest, July 2012

Macclesfield Museum The museums of northwest England offer a diverse mix of Egyptology collections, big and small, all assembled in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They are all unified by Nineteenth century history - the development of Egyptology, the simultaneous enthusiasm amongst the new industrial classes for collecting, and the philanthropic ideal that promoted the sharing of collections, for educational purposes. Large numbers of artefacts passed from private collections into museums where the public could experience them. As a consequence, many of these museums collections tell the stories not just of Egyptian ancient history but also of modern English social history. These three themes – the development of Egyptology, the vigorous collecting in the northwest and the belief in the importance of museums for education – came over strongly in the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology’s Tour of the Northwest in July 2012. Usin...

Favourite objects from the Petrie Museum: Hippopotatmus Bowl

The simplicity of the design of one of the Petrie Museum's hippopotamus bowls is deceptive. The composition and execution, though minimalist, capture the scale and physical presence of the hippopotamus, its impressive monumentality and its importance to the people of the early Predynastic period of Upper Egypt. The hippopotamus was a recurring theme in Naqada I pottery, part of an explosion of creativity and expression in decorative crafts at a time when the people living in various settlements along the Nile were beginning to define themselves as hierarchical societies. As new funerary traditions evolved, painted ceramics, beautifully shaped palettes, animal-headed combs and pins, beads and items of jewellery could accompany the dead into the afterlife The hippopotamus bowl, UC15337, flares from a tiny base to an open mouth, 15cms diameter at its widest. Made of Nile clay it is typical of Petrie's White Cross-Lined style, the white bask...

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