Story Category: Legacy

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

This week is National Insect Week – #NIW2020 – a biennial initiative by the Royal Entomological Society to push the importance of healthy insect populations for a healthy and balanced environment.

We thought it would be good to share our graphic panel from the Booth Museum, with handy tips on how to identify an insect:

Discover More

For more tips, ideas and competitions please visit the Royal Entomological Society’s #NIW2020 home page

Lee Ismail, Curator of Natural Sciences  

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Beth has a new theme for this week, Big Cats, Little Cats! She’s drawn a purrfect cat from one of our old postcards, are you feline up to the challenge? 

Beth

Draw Artists

We are very pleased to see that some of you have taken part in our online Mid-Week Draw, here are some of the fantastic works that have been sent in.

Nikki Shaill / Originary Arts

Orla ‘Predator in Cosmetics’. Created with mascara & make-up!

Sue

Nicola

Ann

7yr old Awab

Ossie

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 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:

• Draw a self-portrait from your reflection in a spoon.
• Combine two subjects that don’t belong together in the same scene.
• Sketch a gardening tool, if you have any ie spade or secateurs.

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.

With this lovely weather I have been thinking about my summer holidays and travel to far flung destinations. Some of the objects in RMP collections are getting longer holidays, with loans nationally and internationally being extended by the Covid-19 crisis.

One of such is a lovely charcoal drawing on paper

Elizabeth and Sarah Martin, 1929, charcoal on paper (FA101848)

These two sisters (nieces of the Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia) were brought to paper conservation in March 2019 where I was able to give them a thorough condition check to prepare them for loan, and, after a quick remount and frame with conservation grade mountboard and UV filtered glazing, they were ready for travel. All works travelling on loan leave the building with a full condition report and with a digital image. This condition report records any damage or marks on the art work in detail so it can be checked at each venue when unpacking for display, and then repacking for transport, and any change or damage can easily be identified. Some example of such damage could be a split or tear in the paper, insects inside the mount, or perhaps mould growth – all very undesirable.

In April 2019 the works were packed up into a crate (which can be recycled when it returns) and transported by a recognised art transport agent and accompanied by a courier. Couriering means travelling with the art work, usually from when it’s packed up until it is unpacked at the final destination to ensure that the item is correctly and safely transported and installed. It can often be time consuming and expensive to send a member of staff on each trip and so, when possible, we try to find other lenders to share with. We have been able to do this here and sent these under the watchful eye of a UK National museum.

Still Life with Eggs and Mushrooms, 1930, Frances Hodgkins oil on canvas (FAH1940)

This art work (along with the above Still Life with Eggs and Mushrooms, 1930, oil on canvas (FAH1940) has gone to New Zealand for a touring exhibition: Frances Hodgkins: European Journeys and is the culmination of a significant international project to bring together art works from New Zealand and around the globe to explore the artist’s place in 20th-century art.

Born in Dunedin, New Zealand, Frances Hodgkins (1869–1947) left for Europe in 1901. Today, she is celebrated as one of New Zealand’s most successful expatriate artists of the 20th century.  

Gallery closures in New Zealand have led to requests for the exhibition dates to be extended and a return currently booked in for April 2021. We hope that the exhibition will be a success over there and look forward to the art works safe return next year.

Mary Kisler, Senior Curator at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, kindly contributed these words:

Frances Hodgkins – European Journeys

Both of these works have played an integral part in the touring exhibition Frances Hodgkins – European Journeys, which opened at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki in 2019, and has since travelled to Dunedin Public Art Gallery and Christchurch Art Gallery. Their last display on the New Zealand stage will be at the Adam Art Gallery at the University of Victoria, Wellington in September 2020.

Frances Hodgkins: European Journeys exhibition at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. *

Ethiopian-born, British-educated physician Hakim Workneh Eshete (also known as Dr Charles Martin) sent several of the children from his first marriage to England for their education in the late 1920s. Elizabeth (Elsie) and Sara studied at The Vyne, a private girls school which was part of a huge Elizabethan mansion in Hampshire, where Frances Hodgkins stayed for several weeks in the summer of 1929. According to the headmistress Lucie James, the sisters fascinated Hodgkins, who made several studies of them. They possibly reminded her of the young Māori women who were her favourite subjects before she left New Zealand in 1901.

Installation shot of the exhibition showing the Elizabeth and Sarah Martin drawing

Around the same time, Hodgkins painted Still Life with Eggs and Mushrooms where the viewpoint is from above. Of most interest is the shirt sleeve dangling on the left, which is almost certainly a precursor for the cloths that weave in and out of her paintings over the next few years.

Installation shot of the exhibition showing Still Life with Eggs and Mushrooms

Photographs by Jennifer French, Auckland Art Gallery 

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Frances Hodgkins: European Journeys exhibition

View and download Frances Hodgkins works on our image website

Amy Junker Heslip, Paper Conservator

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Today (22nd June) is World Rainforest Day – a time for celebrating the diversity of rainforests and finding ways to protect this valuable habitat. As part of our Climate Conversations series we’ll be looking at the role rainforests play in relation to climate change.

Rainforests are known for having high biodiversity, meaning there are lots of species. Here’s a staggering example:

https://worldrainforestday.org/

The UK is one of those countries.

Why so many?

The world’s rainforests are situated in areas of high sunlight and rainfall, which makes plants productive. They also have a stable climate, where plants and animals can survive all year round without the need to migrate or hibernate. The competition and adaptations to deal with survival and breeding have led to the biodiversity present in the rainforests today.

That’s niche

Plants and insects evolve together so that the plant can defend against insect attack and the insect can go on eating the plant. These competitive interactions between species result in many pockets of individual niches for plants and animals to exploit for their survival. Rainforests have many niches over a small area that are filled with unique species of plant and insect that aren’t found anywhere else. There are also many insects that will eat other insects, which opens up further niches. Of course, that’s just the insects and plants. There are countless more niches and interactions in rainforests around the world.

The 5 largest rainforests in the world:

The Amazon, South America

Probably the most famous. It covers 8 countries across South America. It is also famous for deforestation for cattle ranching.

The Congo Rainforest, Equatorial Africa

Known for its populations of mountain gorillas, bonobos and chimpanzees. It is also home to forest elephants and many, many species of birds and other organisms.

Bosawas Biosphere Reserve, Central America

This rainforest is situated in Nicaragua and is a meeting point for species from the North and South American continents. It is estimated that 13% of the world’s species are found in this tropical rainforest.

Wet Tropics of Queensland, Australia

This is the oldest continually surviving rainforest in the world. It stretches across the northeast coast of Australia and reaches all the way down to the sea. It contains the majority of many species found in Australia.

Southeast Asian Rainforest

This rainforest ranges across many countries in Southeast Asia, including Thailand and the Philippines. While it is one of the oldest, this rainforest is being lost faster than any other in the world.

Rainforests and climate change

The world’s rainforests release 20% of the oxygen that we need to breathe, and correspondingly they take in a large amount of carbon dioxide, helping to counteract climate change. Unfortunately, deforestation, mainly for agriculture, means that as this unique habitat is lost, we also lose the rainforests as carbon sinks. As climate change worsens, the rainforests also suffer from the change in climate, exacerbating the problem.

https://worldrainforestday.org/

https://worldrainforestday.org/

https://worldrainforestday.org/

The causes of deforestation:

https://worldrainforestday.org/

Solutions

While there are many restoration projects that seek to plant trees, these can never recreate the diversity that previously existed. Preventing deforestation is much more important. This protects biodiversity and helps mitigate climate change.

https://worldrainforestday.org/

Discover More

Read more from our Climate Conversations series 

Kerrie Curzon, Collections Assistant

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Today, 21 June, marks World Giraffe Day. To celebrate we look at a print of King George IV’s very own giraffe.

This caricature by John Doyle, titled Le Mort from 1829 shows the king, George IV, accompanied by other figures, crying over a dead giraffe, which is lying dramatically on her back on the ground, legs in the air, and her head resting on gold-fringed cushion. What is the story behind this?

Le Mort, John Doyle; Thomas McLean; Joseph Netherclift 1829 © Royal Pavilion & Museums Brighton & Hove

Although exotic wild animals and birds had been around in European menageries since the middle ages (there was, for example, a polar bear in the menagerie in the Tower of London in 1252), giraffes proved to be the most elusive and unusual of wild animals. Impossible to catch or tame as adults and of such fragile build that even the transport of a young giraffe mostly ended in the death of the animal, this strangely shaped and curiously beautiful creature captured the imagination of pre-Darwinian society.

The giraffe in this print was a real one. The female specimen arrived in London in the summer of 1827 and was the first living giraffe to have reached England’s shores. She was a diplomatic gift from Muhammad Ali, Viceroy of Egypt. He gave a second giraffe to Charles X of France, and a third to the Emperor of Austria. Each giraffe had two Egyptian milk cows, two Egyptian keepers, several other African mammals, and a translator for company on their journeys to Europe.

Wearing you hair ‘a-la-giraffe’ in the late 1820s.

Several beautiful images of the giraffe were created after her arrival, but critical caricatures depicting the giraffe greatly outnumbered these. To be fair, the caricaturists poked fun at George IV more than the giraffe. The giraffes’ arrivals in England, Austria and France sparked a new fashion coined ‘giraffe-mania’, which resulted in yellow becoming a favourite colour in women’s fashion and home-furnishings, and many decorative items, such as fans, candle-holders, and even cakes, music, hairstyles and wallpaper were inspired by the exotic creatures.

A weeping lady

The seated figure next to George is his last mistress, Lady Conyngham. From 1827 George spent much of his time with her at the Royal Lodge in Windsor Park and never returned to the Royal Pavilion. He kept his giraffe at his private menagerie at Sandpit Gate in the Park and together they visited her almost every day.

George IV at Sandpit Gate, his private menagerie at Windsor Great Park, late 1820s.

After George’s death Lady Conyngham was depicted by cartoonist William Heath as taking precious things with her when being kicked out of Windsor Castle. Among these was the skeleton of the giraffe, which was considered extremely valuable. This didn’t really happen but shows how rare giraffes still were at the time, even dead ones.

Who is the man with the bagpipes?

The man with the sad face, playing a mournful tune on the bagpipes, is Lord Eldon, who had been Lord High Chancellor under George III and George IV. In the accompanying text the elderly statesman is disrespectfully referred to as ‘old bags’. A pill box and a medical prescription can be seen next to him, which could be for Eldon, George, or the giraffe. They are all in a sorry state. George was frequently criticised for putting his own pleasures and toys (such as the giraffe) before his duties. Here is the King of England crying over a dead giraffe instead of looking after the wellbeing of his country and people.

Bandaged legs

The giraffe suffered badly from injuries sustained on the long journey from deepest Africa to Windsor. In the months before her death she was unable to stand and a giant frame with a sling was constructed to hoist her up. In the summer of 1829 the naturalist James Rennie reports the state of the giraffe in volume 1 of his book series The Menageries:

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From the period of its arrival at the Menagerie at Windsor Great Park to the present time (June 1829) the animal has grown eighteen inches. She can now reach about thirteen feet. Her usual food is barley, oats, beans (which are split), and ash-leaves. She drinks milk. Her health is not good. Her joints appear to shoot over, and she is very weak and crippled, affording little probability that she will recover her strength. She is occasionally led for excercise round her paddock, when she seems well enough; but now, in the day, she is seldom on her legs. Indeed, so great is the weakness of her forelegs, that a pulley has been constructed, being suspended from the ceiling of her hovel, and fastened around her body, for the purpose of raising her on her legs without any exertion on her part.

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A double-page from James Rennie’s The Menageries, vol 1, showing an image of George’s giraffe.

The bandaged legs here are a also reference to George’s troubles with gout and other ailments. Earlier caricatures showed him with bandaged legs, unable to mount his horse unaided. Both the ageing and ailing George and the giraffe were great fodder for caricaturists.

Was the giraffe dead yet?

In John Doyle’s Le Mort the death of the giraffe is anticipated, as the print was actually published two months before the creature’s demise. The giraffe is wrongly assumed to be male in this print. The public was critical of the costs incurred by the giraffe, for example, whether the taxpayers would pay for having her stuffed. The giraffe was dissected and stuffed by the talented young taxidermist John Gould.

The Times reported in April 1830: The stuffer to the Zoological Society, Mr. Gould, has had the performing of his duty [sic]…Soon after the giraffe expired, De Ville, the modellist, was ordered down to Windsor, by His Majesty, and took a cast of the animal. From this cast a wooden form was manufactured, on which the skin of the animal is now placed, and which preserves its beauty in an extraordinary degree.

It had been George’s intention to donate the stuffed giraffe and her skeleton to the people. His successor William IV formally presented both the skin and bones to the Zoological Society of London’s museum in August 1830. We don’t know where her remains are now, but I am still looking for her, with the help of a couple of other giraffe-enthusiasts.

Alexandra Loske, Curator, Royal Pavilion

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Continuing our Climate Conversations series Diana Wilkins show us how to calculate our carbon footprint. This is one of the acts we can all do to help combat the climate crisis. Dr Diana Wilkins gained a DPhil in Biological Sciences from the University of Sussex and worked on climate change and other environmental issues from 1991 to 2014. She is a volunteer at the Booth Museum.

Climate change is an urgent threat. However, it’s not always clear what we can do about it as individuals. A good place to start is to find out how much our everyday activities are contributing to the problem.

Climate change is largely driven by the use of fossil fuels. When petrol, oil, gas and coal are burned they release carbon dioxide – the main gas that causes climate change. Yet we use these fuels all the time to heat and light our homes, to travel and to produce the things we buy. It’s these activities that we need to target if we want to make a difference in our daily lives. A ‘carbon calculator’ can help us find out how to reduce our impact on the climate.

WWF provide an easy-to-use carbon calculator online. By entering information about how you get to work, how often you fly, what you eat and what you buy, you can estimate your ‘environmental footprint’. You can compare your footprint with that for an average person in the UK and with what’s needed to avoid dangerous climate change over the long-term. Some examples are shown below.

Amount of Carbon Dioxide emitted per person per year

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19 tonnes: Person A: Includes a return flight to Asia, driving a diesel car, higher spending & well-insulated home

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10.5 tonnes: UK average in 2020 (WWF figure)

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8.2 tonnes: Person B: No flights, electric car, solar panels, lower spending, well insulated home

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1 tonne: Goal for Global average in 2050 (WWF figure)

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(Icon made by Freepik from www.flaticon.com)

The WWF calculator gives you a broad idea of how carbon-intensive your lifestyle is. It is particularly useful for showing the relative contribution of different activities such as travel, home energy, purchases and food, as well as the contribution from the things that we all use such as hospitals and schools. However, it doesn’t break down the numbers in great detail. If you want to find out how to reduce your footprint even more, you need to run the WWF calculator again with different assumptions about things such as your car use.

Alternatively, you can investigate what difference you can make by looking at the biggest sources of carbon dioxide emissions. WWF describes flying as “the single most climate-polluting activity an ordinary person can do; even a single flight can dramatically increase your carbon footprint”. This is one reason why person A has more than twice the footprint of person B in the table above.

There are several websites that give more information on the impact of flying and how to reduce it by, for example, swapping to cleaner forms of transport. For example, travelling from London to Paris by train rather than by plane reduces emissions by 90%. Choosing sustainable transport has much more effect than small steps such as not using disposable coffee cups. As we can see from the table below, a person would need to avoid paper cups for nearly seven years to make up for one flight to Paris. Carbon calculators show us that some sources of emissions are simply much bigger than others.

Comparing different sources of emissions (tonnes of carbon dioxide)

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Flight to Paris 0.064

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Train to Paris 0.004

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Car use for a year (12,000 km) 2.33

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Paper coffee cup 0.00004

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(images and reference from https://climatevisuals.org/ )

It’s also possible to make big savings in carbon dioxide by improving your use of energy at home and by choosing a cleaner type of car. The Energy Savings Trust provides details of how to do this and also includes information on financial costs and savings.

You can even look at how the UK can reduce its emissions. The government’s 2050 Model (to be updated soon) allows you to choose different pathways for radically cutting back emissions from the energy sector – one of the major sources of carbon dioxide.

The climate crisis is so severe and urgent that countries need to make great efforts to clean up their economies. The UK, for example, is committed by law to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. Meeting this target will require significant action by government and businesses. Individuals can also make a contribution through the choices they make. Using a carbon calculator can help us make more of a difference.

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

Recognising something is a way to enjoy it more, which is certainly true for plants. Finding your way into the greenery delivers more texture and detail, which leads to more enjoyment and understanding. This post is about highlighting a few of the flowering plants you might see this spring.

Woodland carpets

Before the trees regain all their leaves, the woodland floor comes alive. Bluebells are famed for their beautiful displays, and there are other swathes of colour to behold as the season progresses. At the beginning of the lockdown the dog violet, with its purple flowers peeping out between the leaves, carpeted woodland floors. Lesser celandine provided a bright yellow delight. Forget-me-nots offer another shade of blue and are appearing in cracks of pavements as well as wooded areas.

Bluebells © Sarah Wilson

Common dog-violet (Viola riviniana) with purple flowers and heart-shaped small leaves, seen among the larger spotted leaves of lords and ladies (Arum maculatum).

Lesser celandine © Kerrie Curzon

Lesser celandine close-up © Lee Ismail

Forget-me-nots © Kerrie Curzon

The grass might well be greener

For those of you with gardens, or visiting parks, you may want to take a minute to consider grass. It is usually kept short and neat as this is good for sitting or playing games on. In my opinion, it is much harder to identify but you can still enjoy the variety in meadows where it grows longer. Grasses come into flower at different times of the year, grow to different heights and even the leaf shape varies, so there will always be something different to see. As well as grasses, meadows support a whole range of wildflowers, and because of this a huge variety of insects and other invertebrates, as well as birds, mammals and reptiles. Grasses also have excellent Latin names, which, if nothing else, are fun to call out while standing in a meadow. Admittedly, the last time I did this, I was on a field trip studying plants, but to share just a few: Alopecurus pratensis, Festuca ovina, Nardus stricta and one of the best Deschampsia flexuosa.

Grasses in a meadow © Lee Ismail

Getting to know you

Flowers often have more than one common name. Formally known as Lotus corniculatus, this bright yellow flower is a member of the pea family, giving it readily recognisable flowers. It is also known as birds-foot trefoil, which describes the shape of the seed pods. Another of its many names is bacon-and-eggs, due to its colouration, which is yellow with patches of red.

Lotus corniculatus © Lee Ismail

Gorse (Ulex europaeus) is so often in flower, it has its own phrase: ‘when gorse is out of bloom, kissing is out of fashion’. Gorse flowers have a wonderful coconut fragrance but be careful of the spikes when you lean in to sniff it. It’s another member of the pea family, so you might be able to recognise the flower shape. It also makes great habitat and linnets and other small birds can often be seen perched at the top. Gorse is also known as furze, which you may have heard of.

Gorse © Lee Ismail

Not what they seem

As well as many seemingly serene flowering plants, there are also poisonous plants and meat-eating plants, here in the UK.

Lords and ladies (also known as cuckoo pint and many other common names) has bright red berries, which are poisonous to humans. In the flowering stage this plant actually gives off heat to attract and trap insects for pollination. Sundew may sound like a lovely name, but it’s a very small plant that catches flies in it’s sticky ‘dew’ and consumes them to gain nutrients.

Lords and ladies © Sarah Wilson

Plants are often overlooked but not only do they take up carbon dioxide and provide us with the oxygen we breathe, they are interesting in their own right and provide the basis for other life. They provide food and habitat for many other organisms, not only animals, but fungi and other plants too. There may also be surprising details to learn about their appearance if you stop and look and much more to uncover in their names and functions.

Discover More

Have a look at the previous posts in the Nature at Home series to help with insect identification. Look out for upcoming posts for more details on flowers and trees.

The Field Studies Council (FSC) has excellent guides for trees and other plants, which are often very easy to use.

The Woodland Trust produce handy swatches:

Wildflower swatch

Rewild Yourself: Making Nature More Visible in our Lives, by Simon Barnes

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 the weather has been so lovely and sunny, Beth has chosen a theme of ‘time to get your hat out!’ She has drawn a finely woven split cane hat from the James Green collection in our World Art department. 

Beth

Draw Artists

We are very pleased to see that some of you have taken part in our online Mid-Week Draw, here are some of the fantastic works that have been sent in.

Sue

Sue

Sue

Ossie

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 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:

• A set of keys – this subject may seem rather easy, but it’s more complex than you think
• Draw a famous statue
• Imagine yourself as a bust – so a self portrait and turn it into head and shoulders on a plinth

Discover More

The Mid-Week Draw

Beth Burr, Museum Support Officer

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Often regarded as “Nigeria’s first modern fashion designer” (Denzer, 2010a, p.332) Folashade (“Shade”) Thomas-Fahm created innovative garments which combined traditional Nigerian textiles and styles with a western silhouette. Her designs appealed to urban elites throughout southern Nigeria as well as to the global fashion scene, as Thomas-Fahm participated in many international fashion shows. This particular garment – an embroidered tie-dye buba (blouse) carrying the label ‘Shade’s Boutique of Lagos’ – was purchased in Brighton and now forms part of the collection of Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove.

Blouse (Buba), Lagos, Nigeria, Africa

Thomas-Fahm was born in 1933 into a Yoruba family who migrated from Oyo to Lagos whilst she was young. After completing her education in Lagos, in 1953 Thomas-Fahm left Nigeria for the United Kingdom to undertake nurses’ training. Inspired by the boutiques of London’s West End, she quickly changed to a course in design at Barrett Street Technical College (later London College of Fashion) and then went on to study fashion at St. Martin’s College of Arts (later Central St. Martins). Her determination to succeed in the field of fashion saw her secure a role at Stenoff and Sons Furrier, a couture house on Old Bond Street, London (Denzer, 2010b, p.335). She also worked as a fashion model.

In 1960 Thomas-Fahm returned to Nigeria intending to establish her own fashion business, just months before the country celebrated its independence from British rule. She opened a boutique and factory, Maison Shade (later Shade’s Boutique), on an industrial estate in Yaba, a Lagos suburb. The factory remained in that location but the boutique moved, first to the Federal Palace Hotel and then to the Falomo Shopping Centre.

Inspired by the wider project of post-independence nation-building, Thomas-Fahm sought to create a new, modern fashion identity for Nigerian women. Frustrated by the apparent preference of many Nigerian women for British fabrics and designs over Nigerian ones, she sought to innovate Nigerian fashion, popularising the use of aso oke (Yoruba handwoven textiles), adire (Yoruba hand-dyed fabrics), akwete (Igbo handwoven textiles) and Nigerian-produced cotton prints in western styles. Her garments initially found popularity amongst European women living in Nigeria, but then attracted the interest of Nigerian elites. In 2018 she was recorded as recalling that, in the 1960s:

Nigerians were greatly influenced by everything that came from abroad. The socialization process, made Nigerians feel that the English culture was better and superior to ours. …. And so, we abandoned what was ours and embraced the fashion that was brought to us at that time. The years of colonial rule also gave many Nigerians a complex, about wearing ankara dresses or the tie and dye. When I returned to Nigeria at that time after my studies abroad, I had a hard time trying to convince Nigerians to wear dresses made with local fabrics, because we were under the British rule, we always felt that the English culture was better. That was what we were brought up to believe. …  Luckily for me, with hard work and continuous pushing, it was the colonial women who first embraced the African designs much more than our own people. And when the European women started talking about Shade’s boutique and wearing my designs, Nigerian women followed suit. (Thomas-Fahm quoted in Akintoye, 2018)

Thomas-Fahm created garments for the modern, urban woman which offered a uniquely Nigerian aesthetic. As Victoria Rovine has observed: “She created zippered skirts that resembled wrappers but were easier for working women to wear, kaftans for women adorned with local styles of embroidery or made of adire, and beachwear made of locally woven fabrics” (2015, p.109). In pioneering her fashion business and demonstrating local and international interest in and demand for Nigerian fashion, Thomas-Fahm established a professional pathway which other designers would follow. Her accomplishments were recognised in a lifetime achievement award in 2011 given at Arise Magazine’s Fashion Week in Lagos. She remains a vocal champion of Nigeria’s fashion industry.

Helen Mears, Keeper of World Art / Member of the Fashion Cities Africa exhibition team

Sources

Akintoye, Omolara, 2018.  “FOLASHADE THOMAS-FAHM: Allow your imagination run wild”, The Nation, 3 June 2018. Available at: https://thenationonlineng.net/folashade-thomas-fahm-allow-your-imagination-run-wild/ (accessed 1 July 2019)

Denzer, LaRay, 2010a. “The Nigerian Fashion Scene”. In: Joanne B. Eicher and Doran H. Ross (eds.) Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress: Africa, Oxford and New York: Berg, pp.331-356.

Denzer, LaRay, 2010b. “Snapshot: Shade Thomas-Fahm”. In: Joanne B. Eicher and Doran H. Ross (eds.) Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress: Africa, Oxford and New York: Berg, pp.335-356.

Rovine, Victoria, 2015. African Fashion, Global Style: Histories, Innovations, and Ideas You Can Wear, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Today we are revisiting our blog on the influential Brighton campaigner and suffragette, Minnie Turner.

First published to mark the centenary of the first women being granted the vote in 2018, Minnie’s story highlights Brighton & Hove’s suffrage heritage and she is a key figure in our 100 Pioneering Women of Sussex blog series.

Royal Pavilion & Museums’ Learning Assistant Karen Antoni dresses up as Minnie Turner for her role with the museum and also runs guided tours around Brighton & Hove exploring the history of the suffragettes in the city.

She told us about the life of Minnie Turner and what she enjoys about stepping into the shoes of Brighton’s most influential women’s campaigner.

Who is Minnie Turner?

Minnie Turner, 1909

Minnie Turner was born in 1867. She was bought up in a modest house in Preston Street in Brighton. Her family ran a very busy shop selling knitted garments. She and her elder brother Alfred loved books. They were mainly self-educated. As a young woman she made her living running a lodging house. Her guests were professional people. She became very interested in politics and social justice, particularly women’s suffrage.

In 1906 the UK had a new Liberal government. Prime Minister Herbert Asquith had promised women the vote, so lots of women had tirelessly campaigned for the Liberal party. Minnie, like many other women, felt very let down when they broke their promise. So in 1908, she joined the WSPU – the Women’s Social & Political Union.

Minnie outside ‘Sea View’

Minnie advertised her home at 13-14 Victoria Road, Brighton as “Seaview”. Suffragettes could recuperate after being released from prison or prominent speakers addressing meetings could stay. Lots of women connected to the women’s movement stopped in Seaview. All the Pankhurst sisters, Constance Lytton, Emmeline Pethic-Lawrence, Annie Keeney, Flora Drummond to name just a few.

Mary Clarke

An office opened in 1909 at North Street Quadrant to organise demonstrations, sell tickets for events in London and as an address for correspondence and letters in the press. Minnie was one of the organisers along with Mary Clarke (Emmaline Pankhurst’s sister) who also stayed at Seaview. The windows at Seaview were broken after rowdy meetings on the seafront. Minnie was arrested twice for her suffrage activities. In 1911 during a protest opposed to Asquith’s Reform Bill, she broke a window at the Home Office and was sentenced to 3 weeks imprisonment at Holloway.

In 1912 Minnie had furniture seized through non-payment of taxes. She was a member of the Tax Resistance League for Women’s Suffrage which argued ‘No Taxation without Representation.’ By 1913 Seaview had acquired a mixed reputation as a “Suffragette boarding house” harbouring a colony of militants. In April 1913, the windows of the house were stoned by local youths. Minnie Turner and her guests retaliated by sticking up signs in the windows declaring the damage as an illustration of ‘Masculine Logic, the only logic men understand.’

How did you end up acting as Minnie Turner?

In 2010 the Royal Pavilion opened the WW1 Indian Military Hospital Gallery.  To mark its opening a few learning assistants were asked to be costumed characters awaiting the arrival of the wounded Indian soldiers in 1914. Women didn’t have the vote at this time, so I thought it would be interesting to play a woman that might have been part of the women’s suffrage movement. They would have been very active before the outbreak of WW1 and such women would have been very good at organising and have the knowledge to be aware of the soldier’s religious and political needs.

What do you admire about her?

Minnie was passionate about suffrage and social justice. She felt a responsibility for the community. She was a very brave local woman, who fought for what she believed in. Not only did she actively campaign for the right for women to vote she went on to improve the conditions of the Brighton Workhouse in Elm Grove after WW1.

Minnie Turner in her garden

How do people react to you when you are in character?

I love playing a suffragette. All sorts of people come on my tours and I was invited on to the stage with Sandi Toksvig when she came to the Dome to talk about the Women’s Equality Party she has set up inspired by the WSPU.

All sorts of people came on my walk and talks. I would always finish with a rousing campaign song called ‘Rise Up Women’ that everyone really enjoyed singing along with me and a reminder that now we do have the vote then we should always remember to use our vote.

What can we learn from people like Minnie and other suffragettes/suffragists?

Brighton Museum has some incredibly rare artefacts on display which belonged to Minnie Turner. These are a Holloway sash and brooch presented to members of the WSPU who had undergone imprisonment in honour of the sacrifice they had made for women’s suffrage. There is also a brooch designed by Sylvia Pankhurst described as the Victoria Cross by the WSPU. The items were donated to the Museum by a relative of Minnie Turner.

The story of the women’s movement and the fight for the right to vote has fascinated lots of women, myself included. It has inspired a pride in my sex/gender and more importantly a political awareness.  How could you not be inspired by these women?

Caroine Sutton, Press Officer & Karen Antoni, Learning Assistant