Category: Uncategorized

Who woz ere?

Find a dark corner of the museum, step behind a velvet rope and climb a narrow spiral staircase, and you reach a forgotten spot that is little more than a landing. But before you continue your journey and enter the next room, pause and look at the walls.

This little room behind the scenes in the museum is entirely wood panelled and seems to have become a spot to make your mark. Covering the walls, the door and even the ceiling are names and dates scratched into or scribbled onto the wood. The dates go as far back as 1920. Names, initials and numbers from the last 10 decades now overlap to create a textured collage.

It’s unclear how this tradition started, or why it seems to have been tolerated by the museum for so long, but it seems that hundreds of people who have spent time here wanted to leave a permanent reminder of their presence.

Some graffiti artists returned to admire their work and add to the collection many years later. Kevin Titcomb’s name is one of the larger in the room and he first made his mark 1978.

But look up to the ceiling and you’ll see his name appears again, with the date 1998. It looks like this time he’d run out of space on the walls and resorted to the ceiling – his handwriting suggests it’s a lot harder to write with your hand above your head!

The most recent addition was made in 2013, the year the museum closed for a roof renovation. You may remember we found some pretty significant graffiti back then too, as documented on our blog. Maybe the 2013 scribbler was inspired by this and wanted their name to be seen in 150 years time.

I was surprised that, after a good while searching the scribbles, I didn’t see any names that I recognised from current staff or museum legend. So who are these people who wrote on the walls? Staff using an alter ego? Visitors who snook behind the scenes and wanted to mark their bravery? Whoever they were, standing on that tiny landing surrounded by names, the graffiti certainly creates a feeling of history and a connection with the people who’ve been here before.

Rachel Parle, Interpretation and Education Officer

 

“A thoroughly charming and highly skilled man”

At the beginning of the month we heard about the sad death of Brian Edmondson. Brian was a carpenter and ran his own business in Oxford for 42 years. Although many of the staff in the Museum may never have heard Mr Edmondson’s name before, they certainly know his work.

Thirty years ago, the Museum’s Hope Entomological Collections started an enormous project to ‘rehouse’ their millions of specimens, moving them from substandard storage boxes to proper glazed drawers. Brian and his team beautifully crafted a huge number of drawers to hold the specimens and made them to satisfy the Museum’s exacting demands for design and build quality. For example, it was essential that they were airtight to prevent any pests (larvae of the museum beetle) getting in.

Dr George McGavin, television presenter and Honorary Research Associate of the Museum, remembers working alongside Brian on this project.

“Brian Edmondson was a thoroughly charming and highly skilled man. His workshop was on the Abingdon Road in Oxford and every so often a truck would arrive and teams of us would carry hundreds of drawers all the way up to the attic floor of the museum (there was no lift in those days!). Brian was a true professional and led a team of first rate craftsmen – the drawers were so well made you could often swap lids from one drawer to another and they still fitted.”

The drawers that Brian designed are still in use today and hold millions of insects in the Museum’s collection. Each time a drawer is pulled out and its contents admired or inspected, we mustn’t forget to pause and appreciate the craftsmanship that went into creating the specimens’ bespoke home.

Rachel Parle, Interpretation and Education Officer