Story Category: Legacy

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Continuing this weeks Heritage Open Days theme of Hidden Nature, we take a look at some of the hidden flowers among the Royal Pavilion wallpaper.

During Covid-lockdown the Royal Pavilion team of conservators and curators worked hard on rehanging the Chinese wallpaper in Queen Victoria’s Bedroom and redecorating the Ante-Room. The glorious yellow-ground paper (the yellow now faded to a mellow sand colour), populated with exotic birds, plants and insects, once again turns the walls of the Queen’s bedroom to windows into another, far away world.

Before the furniture was reassembled, I managed to have a good look at the flora and fauna depicted on the wallpaper. At the same time I began cataloguing dozens of watercolours of the plants in the Royal Pavilion Gardens, created in the early 2000s by artist and former Head of Conservation Mike Jones. They were published in his meticulously researched book about the gardens, Set for a King (2005). The book includes a timeline of plants that flower and change colour through the year, illustrated with his watercolours, which now form part of the Royal Pavilion Archive. Over the coming months I am aiming to match his drawings to the actual plants in the gardens. But some of them can also be found inside the Royal Pavilion.

Around the time Chinese wallpaper was in high fashion in the West, many new plants and seeds were being imported from the Americas and Asia, especially China. This was no easy task. The journey from China by ship would take at least four months, during which the plants, seeds and bulbs had to be kept in the right conditions. Special miniature greenhouses were made to protect plants on their long journey. This one was drawn by Mike.

In George IV’s lifetime many newly arrived Chinese plants were being successfully propagated at Kew Gardens. By 1813 the Royal Gardener at Kew, William Townsend Aiton, recorded a total of 120 species that had recently been introduced from China. In the same year Aiton planted the garden at Carlton House for the Prince Regent. Two years later the Brighton gardener John Furner met with the architect John Nash and Aiton in London to discuss the new planting of the Pavilion gardens, which included many of the newly imported and propagated Chinese plants.

Many of them could be found in the Pavilion gardens in the early nineteenth century, for example the Hydrangea, now common in British gardens, but first brought to Kew only in 1789. Others are autumn-flowering chrysanthemums (1795), the tree peony (Paeonia suffruticosa, 1787) and several types of camellia (mid to late 18^th century), while the Chinese Lantern (Physalis alkekengi) had been known in Britain since the 16^th century (and can now be bought as exotic fruit in British supermarkets).

It is perhaps not surprising that several of these can also be spotted on the Chinese wallpaper in Queen Victoria’s bedroom. Imagine Her Majesty seeing peonies or oriental poppies on her bedroom walls when she first opened her eyes in the morning, and later spotting the same flowers in her garden. I now have the very enviable task of cataloguing the flower power of Mike Jones’s gorgeous watercolours and matching them with the Pavilion’s interior exotic flora. Here is the first example. As access to the workspaces and equipment is still restricted because of Covid-19, excuse the snapshot style of some of the photographs.

Peony – The King of Flowers

Along with silvery bamboo, peonies are the most commonly represented plants/flowers on Chinese wallpaper. Peonies appear in the form of shrubs and spindly trees, and come in a wide range of strong colours, which surely must have appealed to both the creators of the papers in China and the consumers in the West. The peony is also a deeply symbolic flower in Asia. Known as ‘the King of Flowers’, the tree peony (牡丹 mudan) in particular represents power, wealth, beauty, and is often associated with the Imperial family. One wonders whether George IV or Queen Victoria were aware of this symbolism. As all flora and fauna on Chinese wallpaper and ceramics is to some degree stylised, it is not always easy to identify peonies, or distinguish them from roses. Here are some great examples of pink and lilac peonies from our Chinese wallpaper in Victoria’s bedroom, and some of Mike’s watercolours of deep red ones (Peonia officinales ‘Rubra Plena’ and Peonia officinales mascula), both in bud and opened. The flower can be seen in the Pavilion gardens in high summer.

A peony on the Chinese wallpaper in Queen Victoria’s Bedroom in the Royal Pavilion, c.1800

A pair of peonies on the Chinese wallpaper in Queen Victoria’s Bedroom in the Royal Pavilion, c.1800

Scarlet peonies in bud and opened, painted by Mike Jones in 2002

A deep red peony in the Pavilion Gardens

Discover more

• Visit the Heritage Open Days website to learn more about England’s largest festival of history and culture, 11 – 20 September.
• Read more of our Heritage Open Days posts
• You can find more information on the Chinese wallpaper from an earlier post The Royal Pavilion: Strolls in exotic gardens
• Find our about the Conservation and Restoration Work in Queen Victoria’s Apartment

Alexandra Loske, Curator (Royal Pavilion Archives)

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

The theme of this year’s Heritage Open Days is Hidden Nature. We’re taking a look at the birds scattered around the Royal Pavilion.

Duck for cover

Enter the Music Room and your eyes will rest on many a stunning detail, however, there are more obscure details that may go unnoticed. In amongst the wading birds on the walls there is one bird more hidden than the others. You may be thinking it is peeping out of the reeds and grasses but this bird is probably the most hidden bird in the whole of the Pavilion.

The outline of a duck hides on a wall, perhaps not quite in plain sight and is surprisingly hard to find. You really have to visit to see what I mean.

A fowl feast

Speaking of ducks, it seems obvious now but the kitchen wasn’t the first place that sprang to mind when thinking of birds. There are taxidermy ducks, pheasants and swans in the Great Kitchen. The menu features a fascinating range of birds: terrine of larks, ducklings Luxembourg, consommé with chicken quenelles, tart of thrushes au gratin and braised ducklings with lettuce – these are just a few of the dishes.

An ostentation of peacocks

We will sweep past the ostentatious peacock in Queen Victoria’s Apartments, as it is the least likely bird to be hidden and they appear everywhere – on clocks, wallpaper and barometers.

There are many birds that appear on the wallpaper in Queen Victoria’s apartments. The list includes, cranes, parakeets, lovebirds, wading birds, common pheasants, golden pheasants and many more.

Some of the species are harder to identify than others. In an attempt to discover the species that are represented, I embarked on some bird detective work.

Hidden identity

One that I was fairly happy to identify was the blue magpie, seen here:

However, it took a lot more work to identify these:

These birds have fairly clear colours and patterns, but I went for another detail when trying to find out what they are.

You can see in the picture below that there are whisker-like details that have been painted around the bird’s beak.

These are known as rictal bristles and appear on birds across very wide ranging species, from nightjars to kiwis. They were thought to aid birds in catching airborne prey. However, it is now thought that they serve to inform the bird of their speed and orientation in the air. And in the case of the kiwi, they help it forage for prey at night.

Digressions aside, knowing that I was looking for birds with rictal bristles I narrowed down the geographical range that fits with the Royal Pavilion. Adding a little bit of bird knowledge, the likely candidates were Asian barbets. Here’s one from our hidden collections (behind the scenes) at the Booth Museum:

Unfortunately, I still haven’t been able to narrow it down to a single species so its identity remains hidden. Do share if you think you may know what it is.

If you want to discover more birds from our collections, you can piece together this jigsaw of a bird illustration that appears in a book at the Booth Museum.

Discover more

• Visit the Heritage Open Days website to learn more about England’s largest festival of history and culture, 11 – 20 September.
• Read more of our Heritage Open Days posts

Kerrie Curzon, Collections Assistant

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

As part of the Heritage Open Day programme and this year’s theme of Hidden Nature, we take a look at a Decorative Arts Pearlware enamelled figure group.

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This ceramic figure group shows a huge tiger mauling a man dressed in military uniform. It was made in Staffordshire in 1825 and is part of the Willett Collection of Popular Pottery, on display in Brighton Museum.

When you look closely what strikes you most?

Is it the size of the tiger, its unusual markings or even the lack of blood on the victim?

The real story

This somewhat gruesome ceramic was inspired by a true incident that took place in India in December 1792. Munro, only 16 years old and a cadet in the East India Company, disembarked from his ship along with three other passengers on 22 December to hunt deer on the Island of Saugur. The island, known to be rich in game, was also notorious for its large ferocious game-hunting tigers that swam in the rivers.

As the group sat eating lunch of cold meats by a fire, they were disturbed by a tiger hidden in the undergrowth. As one of the members of the party described in a letter:

‘I heard a roar, like thunder, and saw an immense royal tiger spring on the unfortunate Munro…In a moment his head was in the beast’s mouth, and he rushed into the jungle with him, with as much ease as I could lift a kitten, tearing him through the thickest bushes and trees, every thing yielding to his monstrous strength.’

His friends fired at the tiger which released Munro from its savage jaws. Munro staggered back covered in blood but his injuries were too severe to survive. His friend reported that Munro ‘lived 24 hours in the extreme of torture; his head and skull were torn, and broke in pieces, and he was wounded by the jaws all over his neck and shoulders..’ On 23 December his body was ‘committed to the deep’.

Who was the victim?

The victim’s full name was Hector Sutherland Munro, identified as the illegitimate son of General Sir Hector Munro of Novar, KB, MP. General Sir Hector Munro, who was unmarried but had several children by different mothers, had made his fortune in India and was well-known for the part he played in the British Conquest of India. The victim enlisted in the East India Company as a cadet in May 1792, and arrived in Calcutta, India in November 1792. The manner of his death and his father’s identity meant that when news of the incident reached London in July 1793 it was widely reported and was published in the Sporting Magazine and Gentleman’s Magazine.

It appears that Hector Munro was not the only son of General Sir Hector to meet an untimely end. His youngest son, Alexander, who also enlisted in the East India Company in 1803 was devoured by a shark off Bombay aged 18.

More about the Tiger

The ceramic tiger figure, relative to the victim, appears huge and incredibly powerful. This was no doubt influenced by the description given by Munro’s companions:

‘The beast was about four and a half feet high, and nine long. His head appeared as large as an ox’s, his eyes darting fire, and his roar, when he first seized his prey, will never be out of my recollection.’

The beast was a male Royal Bengal tiger, a species that lives in India, China, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Burma. Larger than other species of tigers, the males can grow to 3 metres long and weigh up to 569 pounds (258 kg). They attack stealthily and with their exceptionally large canines and killer instincts, poor Munro stood little chance. It must have been a truly fearsome sight for the group who had probably never seen a real-life tiger before.

Munro’s legacy

The death of Munro was recounted as cautionary tales for children in various books as well as plays over the first half of the 19th century showing the long-lasting popular appeal of the incident. Ceramic pieces such as this one began to appear around 1810. It is unlikely that some of the potters had seen real tigers which would probably account for the odd-looking markings on the tiger.

The most famous exhibit possibly related to the death of Munro is ‘Tipu’s Tiger’, a mechanical organ in the form of a tiger savaging a soldier. Taken in 1799 from the palace of Tipu Sultan, ruler of Mysore, it is now in the V&A Museum, London.

Finally, Munro’s death may have had some impact on the fate of tigers on Saugur Island. In 1819 the Saugor Island Society was formed to reclaim and develop the island, with rewards given for every tiger killed. There are now no tigers on Saugur Island. In common with other species of tigers, Bengal tigers are now an endangered species with only 2967 recorded in India in the 2019 Tiger Census report.

Discover more

• Visit the Heritage Open Days website to learn more about England’s largest festival of history and culture, 11 – 20 September.
• Read more of our Heritage Open Days posts

Cecilia Kendall, Curator, Collections Projects

Figure Group of a tiger mauling a soldier, c1825. From the Willett Collection of Popular Pottery

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Welcome to the start of this year’s Heritage Open Days, England’s largest festival of history and culture, 11 – 20 September.

This year we have moved our activities online so get ready for a week of stories, music, art and heritage brought to you at home.

• View all our Heritage Open Days stories to date

Hidden Nature

When we heard that this year’s theme is Hidden Nature we got very excited. There is so much to explore with the Royal Pavilion & Museums. How were the Royal Pavilion interiors inspired by the natural world? What unusual plants live in the Royal Pavilion Garden?

The Booth Museum of Natural History team began exploring some of the real life inspirations behind the Royal Pavilion’s nature themed decoration, including exotic birds and dragons.

Heritage volunteers at Brighton Dome & Festival have been investigating some of the more elusive fauna and flora in the Royal Pavilion Garden.

All of this will be shared though a series of blogs starting tomorrow. Check brightonmuseums.org.uk each day for new stories.

New Note Orchestra

If you’d have gone down to the woods at Three Cornered Copse in Hove last month, you’d have been sure of a big surprise as you might have come across the New Note Orchestra dreaming up a brand new piece of music.

In a first get-together since lockdown restrictions eased, the musicians met to create a unique composition to accompany a new online exhibition of some of Brighton Museum’s best-loved artworks. Inspired by some of the rich images of landscapes that appear in the online exhibition, the orchestra took to the woods for the day and the result is a very ethereal arrangement with the calming chime of hand bells taking centre stage. The musicians also used the natural environment around them to enhance the music, using sticks and gently knocking on tree trunks for added percussion. We are launching the online display with the newly created composition for this year’s Heritage Open Days. Look out of it towards the end of this week.  

Test our new digital apps

If you are out and about in Brighton & Hove then get involved with two new digital experiments. Gardens, outdoor spaces and fresh air have been appreciated more than ever in 2020. A mindful tour of the Royal Pavilion Garden will launch on our audio guide next week. Rather than simply give you a history of the Royal Pavilion Estate, it will encourage a more mindful appreciation of the space and invite you to think about the people and plants, the sounds and sensations, the questions and the qualities that make up this historic garden.

The second is Then & Now, a new interactive map that uses our collections to show how Brighton & Hove has changed over time. We’ve pinned some of our historic photographs and artworks to the locations they depict. We invite you to take your own photographs of the spot and share them with us so we can present a compare and contrast of the present and the past.

Meet Queer the Pier Community Curators

If you are really missing Brighton Museum, as we all are, take this opportunity to meet some of the Queer the Pier exhibition Community Curators, in these new short films. Due to lockdown Brighton Museum closed a few short weeks after the exhibition opened. As we can’t share the exhibition with you in person on this year’s Heritage Open Day, we would love to share some of the stories behind it online with you instead. The Community Curators explain how the show they made came together, what’s in it and the way it helps us all better understand the spirit of the city we recognise so fondly today. 

We hope you enjoy this coming week of new stories and activities. Tune in to brightonmuseums.org.uk each day to be part of our Heritage Open Days 2020.

• View all Heritage Open Days stories to date

Jody East, Creative Programming Curator

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

September highlights a member of the tubenose family.

UK conservation status: Amber

Fulmars are not gulls; they are part of the tubenose family (which includes albatrosses). The tube on top of their beak is used to discharge excess salt. Salt accumulates from swallowing seawater when they catch fish, shrimp and squid. Fulmars are also known to eject a foul liquid from their stomachs if they feel threatened. 

Fulmars spend most of their time offshore, only coming to land when breeding. They use cliffs for their nest sites. They are most commonly found along the coasts of Scotland and Northeast England. Fulmars are also present in East Sussex, but are less common here. You may catch a glimpse of one of them on the Undercliff walk.

Kerrie Curzon, Collections Assistant

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Plants form part of the immense collections at the Booth Museum of Natural History. Included in these are seaweeds – some of which are over 100 years old.

These seaweeds were carefully dried and mounted by the Victorian women who collected them – often forming delicate displays or arranged in beautiful bound books.

But why keep 100 year old seaweed? Is it all just for display? Dr Gerald Legg, former Curator of the Booth Museum of Natural History reveals all…

Algae specimens from Mrs Mary Merrifield’s collection at the Booth Museum of Natural History 

A window to the past

The seaweed collection at the Booth Museum includes 832 specimens representing 270 or more species. An important value of historical natural history collections is to be able to see what was found in the past compared with what is found now. What has been lost and what has been gained. The seaweed collections like those of Mary Merrifield, Mrs Leopold Grey and Dr Omerod in the Booth collections contain incredibly detailed notes showing exactly where they were found and the date they were collected. Data collection like this, over the last century and in more recent decades, has helped to provide key information for conservation.

In Sussex, data from one important group of seaweeds, the kelps – tough leathery and often large ‘brown’ seaweeds – is helping towards the restoration of a vital marine habitat that was hidden to most people beneath the waves.

Kelp Forests

Kelp forest canopy, photo by Andy Jackson

In the not too distant past, kelp forests were abundant along the shore and off the coast of Sussex. These kelp forests provided important nurseries for fish, helped to combat local effects of climate change and were a crucial habitat for a host of species.

Sussex kelp forest cover 1980

Kelp densities in the 1980s, photo by Andy Jackson

However, with trawling, dredging and the storm of 1986 much of the dense ‘forests’ have been lost. We no longer get masses of seaweeds washed up on Worthing beach causing a stink and making a useful fertiliser to be collected by farmers and the like.

Sussex kelp cover 2019

Kelp densities now, photo by Andy Jackson

What it’s like now

One lonely frond of kelp, photo by Andy Jackson

Taking Action!

But now, 2020, the HelpOurKelp project has been launched to bring the kelp back. Sussex Inshore Fisheries Conservation Authority, who manage fishing within six nautical miles from the Sussex shore, agreed a new byelaw on 23 January 2020 which will prevent trawling from a 304 km² of Sussex. This will hopefully reduce the pressure on the habitats favoured by the kelps allowing it to regenerate.

Discover the latest updates of the HelpOurKelp campaign how kelp can migitgate climate change, and what you can do to help on our Ocean Blues website.

Discover More

• Read more from our Climate Conversations series 
• Visit our Ocean Blues website

Dr. Gerald Legg, former curator Booth Museum of Natural History 

Kelp by Jeffrey Yang

How easy it is to lose oneself

in a kelp forest. Between

canopy leaves, sunlight filters thru

the water surface; nutrients

bring life where there’d other-

wise be barren sea; a vast eco-

system breathes. Each

being being

being’s link.

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

With the August Bank Holiday fast approaching, Beth has chosen a getting yourself to Brighton theme! 

Beth

Join In

If you are tempted to have a go, please share your drawings with us! We would love to see them. Email them to Beth at beth.burr@brighton-hove.gov.uk.

Tweet @BrightonMuseums or tag @brighton_museums on Instagram. If you are uploading them to Facebook with pride, share the url in the comments section below.

Come back next Wednesday to see what new objects Beth has chosen.

This week’s additional ideas:

• Put a pair of scissors on a blank bit of paper and draw around them to create people and animal heads. The scissors can be open or shut. Both methods bring out their own expressions and character!
• If it has been raining, see if you can find any leaves / plants with raindrops on as a subject. Maybe take a photo so you can sketch it indoors if it is still raining and also so you can zoom in to see all the detail. Often the drops look like they are made of liquid silver!

Discover More

• The Mid-Week Draw

Beth Burr, Museum Support Officer

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

The coronavirus epidemic has meant that it has not been possible for Royal Pavilion & Museums to offer school work experience placements this year. However, it is an opportunity to look back at some of the work of Year 10 pupils from Longhill High School and Patcham High School in June and July 2019.

Royal Pavilion & Museums is committed to supporting young people’s learning. One of the many ways this is achieved is by offering a few young people from Brighton & Hove schools the opportunity to undertake work experience at its museums.

Students started the week shadowing the front of house team across the Royal Pavilion Estate. Working on the floor of the Royal Pavilion and Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, this important role gives a hands-on insight into customer service. Tasks involve welcoming visitors, answering queries and helping with security measures that protect the public, staff, buildings and collections.

Part of the working week was spent with myself giving an overview of the varied work of collections staff. One of the activities the Longhill and Patcham pupils were tasked with was cataloguing, digitising and rehousing a collection of almost 100 aviation-related postcards. The pupils received training in object handling, object marking, using the museum’s collections management system and scanning equipment. This work took place in Brighton Museum’s MuseumLab and timed with other public engagement activities including a Brighton-Past Coffee Morning and our weekly ‘Behind the Scenes’ sessions.

Results of their efforts have been processed and are now available to view online via the museum’s Digital Media Bank. A number of the postcards highlight the significant role Shoreham Aerodrome played in the history of early aviation in Britain before the First World War. It was one of the first flying fields in the country and is the only one still operating as a public licenced airport. The collection also includes the faces of some of the pioneering aviators, a few of whom lost their lives during the war serving in the Royal Flying Corps/Royal Air Force.

Releasing these images times with the 110th anniversary of the first powdered aircraft flight in Sussex. In May 1910, a former pupil of Lancing College, Harold Piffard, began testing a 40 HP biplane that he had designed and built in London. Remembering an expanse of flat fields to the south of the College on the western bank of the River Adur, Harold chose one of the fields to test his aircraft. A red flag would be hoisted to warn local residents whenever tests were to be carried out. Richard Almond writing in Issue 14 of Sussex Industrial History (1984) states that the landlord of the nearby Sussex Pad bet a crate of champagne that the machine would not fly the length of the field. On 10 July 1910 after days of waiting for suitable weather, Harold made a successful flight, winning the wager and making history.

Dan Robertson – Curator of Local History & Archaeology

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

Tree-gnawing, tail-slapping and dam-building, beaver behaviour is familiar to most people. But beavers are both liked and loathed.

Beavers (Castor fiber) were wiped out in the UK in the 16th century, however, reintroductions began in 2009. Here in Sussex, the aquatic rodent will be reintroduced later this year. With the River Otter Beaver Trial ending earlier this year, will the benefits to biodiversity and flood management guarantee it a place, or are some right to be concerned?

A beaver at the water’s edge. Per Harald Olsen/NTNU.

The first UK reintroduction was in 2009 and in May last year beavers became protected by law in Scotland. Meanwhile in Devon, beavers were released without permission in 2008 and by 2014 they had produced kits (young). Despite local protests, The Devon Wildlife Trust (DWT) was given permission to run a five year trial on the River Otter. A report of their findings was released in March. Earlier this month, the decision to allow the beavers to stay in Devon permanently was approved. There will be a consultation on the strategy for further reintroductions later this year. The outcome of the River Otter Beaver Trial will help to influence decisions on further releases, which bodes well for the future of beavers in England.

Early this year, Sussex became the eleventh county in England to get the go ahead to reintroduce beavers. They will be released at the Knepp Estate in autumn once the area has been made secure. As our local rewilding project, Knepp is a promising place to reintroduce beavers. The beavers will be joining reintroduced white storks and free-roaming cattle and pigs that occupy the place that once wild aurochs and wild boar would have filled.

The Old Hammer Pond on the Knepp Estate may be used by beavers in the future. CC-BY-SA 2.0 © Marathon.

Beavers were hunted to extinction for their fur, meat and castoreum (a secretion used in perfumes and food additives). Beavers are keystone species, as many organisms rely on their presence. Beavers are also ecosystem engineers, as they modify the landscape by removing trees and creating dams that change waterflow. These newly created habitats provide varied areas for plants and other animals to thrive in. In a time when biodiversity loss is an urgent crisis locally and globally these habitats provide vulnerable species space to exist.

A beaver dam in Scotland. Patrick Mackie CC BY-SA 2.0.

Some people are wary of reintroductions. Beavers change the habitat on a large scale and farmers are worried about flooding caused by beaver-dams. The National Farmers’ Union (NFU) are also concerned that the beaver will cause destruction similar to the coypu (Myocastor coypus), an invasive species which was subsequently eradicated from the UK in 1989. However, coypu feed on different types of vegetation, destroying habitat for native species, unlike the beaver that creates habitat for vulnerable native species, from fish to butterflies.

Beavers also control and slow the flow of water, providing ecosystem services in the form of flood mitigation and improvements in water quality, among others. In a time of extreme weather events and increased flooding due to climate change, this is potentially of huge value.

The Knepp rewilding project was established in 2001 and has seen its own share of controversy. However, Knepp is part of The Sussex Beaver Partnership, which has been in consultation with the NFU for two years, providing hope that the release will be welcomed. Indeed recently, the president of the NFU, Minette Batters stated that beavers are part of the solution for flood management.

As native mammals and ecosystem engineers, beavers benefit biodiversity and control water levels. Through further reintroductions, the benefits should become more apparent to those at higher risk. Let’s hope the beaver is here to stay.

Kerrie Curzon, Collections Assistant

This is a legacy story from an earlier version of our website. It may contain some formatting issues and broken links.

This week Beth is naming the Draw, The Magpie and the Shiny Things! 

Beth has also captured her drawing in stages to share her process of creating a picture. We’d love to see yours.

© Lee Ismail

Tuba1. Pencil sketch, marking areas of light and shade

Tuba 2. Pastel added to show colour

Tuba 3. White pastel also added to highlight shine

Tuba 4. Charcoal used to emphasis darker areas

Tuba 5. Ink pen added to sharpen image up and add tonal background to show depth of the object

Join In

If you are tempted to have a go, please share your drawings with us! We would love to see them. Email them to Beth at beth.burr@brighton-hove.gov.uk.

Tweet @BrightonMuseums or tag @brighton_museums on Instagram. If you are uploading them to Facebook with pride, share the url in the comments section below.

Come back next Wednesday to see what new objects Beth has chosen.

This week’s additional ideas:

• Take a piece of paper and scrunch it up. Try to draw the folds and shadows it creates.
• Find an interesting landscape either in real life, or a photograph and try to draw it in seven lines.
  There is no time limit – but you can only draw seven lines on your page. As soon as you lift the pen off the sketchbook, the line is counted and you only have seven lines in total. The exercise makes you think about the most important elements within the image as a means of representing it.

Discover More

• The Mid-Week Draw

Beth Burr, Museum Support Officer